Workshops

Anton leading a workshop

I facilitate interactive workshops, where I use a range of structured exercises to invite participants to engage with their own thinking and to learn from one another as much as they learn from me.

When it encourages participation, classroom learning can be a fantastic opportunity to benefit from the wisdom, perspectives and support of a whole room full of people who are as passionate about the subject as you are. It’s especially valuable on taboo topics like kink, where opportunities for frank conversations with others are relatively uncommmon.

I developed my style as an educator through a mix of San Francisco Sex Information, where I worked as a member of the training staff for many years, and the National Park Service, where I create programs to help visitors understand and connect with the wonders they came to see.

I’ve presented at KinkFest, Westcoast Bound, Northwest Leather Celebration and Dark Odyssey’s Surrender conference and Fusion campout, as well as leading workshops for Bay Area groups like Society of Janus, Wicked Grounds and Citadel since 2003.

Are you excited to try power exchange, but not sure how to get from “Hi, nice to meet you,” to “Get down and lick my boots”? In this beginners ’ workshop, Anton will present a road map for inviting someone to join you in playing with dominance and submission, and establishing a foundation for power exchange that’s both scrupulously consensual and deeply felt. The class is appropriate whether you’re hoping to negotiate a power exchange scene with a new friend this weekend, or adding a new power dynamic into an established relationship.

Negotiation is the bridge between having kinky desires and getting to make those desires real. Good negotiation ensures that everyone involved has a clear understanding of the experience they’re signing up for and where the boundaries lie. Excellent negotiation gets to the juicy heart of what each partner wants from their experience, and welds the overlap of their desires into an epic journey for them to share.

This workshop will begin at the beginning and give participants a solid foundation in the essentials of intimate negotiation, then take a step beyond and look at how to take your kink play and relationships deeper with negotiation focused on desire and meaning, rather than simply activities and limits. We’ll discuss affirmative consent, checklists and their limitations, limits, safewords and safe calls, aftercare, contracts, building rapport, ongoing consent and more.

Erotic dominance isn’t just for the lifestyle BDSM crowd. Many, many people fantasize about being ordered to please their partner exactly as they demand, go weak in the knees when their lover grasps them by the hair and pulls them in for a kiss, or tremble with anticipation when “Be naked when I get home,” appears in their text messages.

Being the one to take control is a rush! You get to call the shots, push your lover around, and have them adore you for it.

But taking charge in the bedroom can be a tricky dance. Where do you find the confidence to assume control? What’s the line between being romantically commanding and being a pushy jerk? How do you keep coming up with fresh ideas for what to do with your partner once they’re breathlessly awaiting your next command?

This workshop has the answers.

What does it take to be a great dominant or a sterling submissive?

Power exchange is often talked about as though it springs from magical or innate ability. You’re either born a “natural dominant” or you aren’t. You have a “true slave heart” or you don’t. But it isn’t magic. The ability to create and maintain hot, vibrant power dynamics is supported by skills that we can learn, and that we can keep getting better at. They’re mental and emotional skills–invisible skills, subtle but powerful in their effects. Improving at them can help us dismantle roadblocks that have been getting in the way of having satisfying power exchange, or make a good thing even better.In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore the core skills that can make us proficient or excellent at giving and receiving consensual power.

Dominance and submission is made of attention and devotion, command and surrender. None of those things require being in the same room. The connection, intensity and eroticism of power exchange are all available at a distance, and can help to sustain romance and intimacy between partners who are separated in space.

Anton is a power exchange author and educator, and also a park ranger who regularly spends seasons living distant from his partners. Join him to learn principles, techniques, and handy tools for making the most of long distance D/s.

One of the most powerful and most often underestimated kink tools is right at the tip of your tongue. The right narrative can transform an ordinary makeout session or a routine flogging into a profound experience of worship or degradation, communion or conquest. Learn how dirty talk can be used to deepen connection and create a shared narrative with your partner–through hot and shameless communication before, during and after playtime.

This workshop will include advice for the shy and the tongue-tied, and for those who just want to polish their patter. We’ll also cover some fundamental rules for building connection, as well as a plethora of specific ideas for verbal cleverness. Proficiency at talking dirty is equally valuable for both tops and bottoms, and the class will be geared for both.

Delaying or denying orgasm can build the most delicious tension. Controlling when your partner gets to orgasm can inspire desperate devotion. But to realize orgasm denial’s full erotic potential, there’s a lot more to it than just saying “no.”

Learn how to drive your partner into a frustrated frenzy with the right combination of teasing, edging and firm control. We’ll talk about both short term delay within a scene, and long term denial that can unfold over months. We’ll also share ideas for the person doing the denying do amuse and enjoy themselves with their partner’s predicament.

Usually people try to avoid jealousy. Some work to manage it or learn to rise above it. What if you’d rather poke it with a stick?

We’ll share creative ideas for evoking and getting off on jealousy⁠—from the gentlest whispered fantasies through deeply humiliating consensual infidelity⁠—and Anton will cover the keys to ensuring that playing with jealousy remains a positive experience for all involved.

The concept of training features large in many people’s dominant and submissive desires. Images of stern lessons and high expectations echo around our fantasies. The idea of being molded or improved⁠—or of shaping another person to your own will⁠—can be deeply compelling. But the details of precisely what the goals of training ought be or how it can best be accomplished can be complex.

This workshop will explore different things that “training a submissive” can mean, share ideas and possibilities for training goals, and provide training techniques both sexy and practical.

Many of us dream of power exchange that never ends, but only grows deeper over years dominance and submission. Many of us also discover that realizing that dream is more complicated than it looks!

There are tricks and challenges to long-term power exchange that don’t come up in an evening of D/s play, or even in the first six months. We have to find sustainable ways to integrate our dynamics with the demands of our vanilla lives. Novelty fades, and we have to figure out how to keep things fresh. People change over time, and we have to either change together or grow apart. But there are also rewards unique to long-term power exchange that simply aren’t possible in shorter-term dynamics. We can do profound kinds of training, find powerful stability in established structure, and build a unique kind of trust.

Anton will share hard-earned lessons about how to keep D/s vibrant and harmonious across the years, as well as some ideas of what’s possible to do with a years’ long power dynamic. This will be an interactive class, with lots of opportunity for participants to share their own lessons and ideas.

Consensual objectification is a delicious paradox. Objectification means denying a person’s agency and using them like a thing. Consensual means working together for the mutual fulfillment of all involved. On the face of things, they’re opposites, but when they can be coaxed into working together⁠, the power and the sweetness of the connection are incredible. The consensual side creates trust and safety to go deeper into objectification. The objectification becomes a way for each partner to respect a secret, vulnerable piece of the other’s desire that most people wouldn’t accept.

Join me to explore how we can keep the two sides of the paradox balanced through heavy and/or prolonged objectification play.

If you’d like me to present for your group or at your conference:

If you’d like to hear about my workshops and other programs: