liquid love

liquid love is a journey into your senses, rhythm and flow. The concept is simple: we will pour warm oil onto your naked skin, forming a lubricous membrane on your body as you move and flow in a sea of fellow beings.

The terms liquid and love were brought together by Zygmunt Bauman, who dissects the frailty of our human connections in what he calls a liquid society. To him, there is a constant to and fro between our desires for security and freedom. This also informs the structure of our session.

The first part of the night is dedicated to exploring and practicing your boundaries, feeling into your resistances and honing your ability to say No. The second part is dedicated to surrender into the flow. You’re invited to lie down naked, let deliciously warm olive oil be poured onto your body, and, with your focus on bodily sensations, flow in the space together. We invite you to move and be moved without intentions or set ideas, and explore the energetic flow of bodies around you. It is a sensual, not sexual space and non-penetrative. A place where the body speaks and energies can engage, move and be.

Music will accompany you throughout this journey, and two facilitators will hold the space. After the flow, you’ll have time to rub off the olive oil before coming together for a sharing, where each can integrate the felt experience. 

“With their liquid love journey, Jules and Mara facilitate a rich and deep experience. They created the group container in a gentle, attentive and clear way, they embodied and modelled in their space holding the spectrum between complexity and fun that is the potential of liquid love. They bring in their own somatic experience and curiosity around body positivity and intimacy exploration between human beings and their nervous systems in a competent, playful and touching way.” - Nele

"An immersion into an organism.
Setting boundaries to become boundless.
Sexless nakedness.
Heads, shoulders, knees, genitals, you, me, yours, mine, all the same.
A primordial dance." 
- Flo
 

OUR INTENTION
There is something truly magical when music and bodily movements dissolve individual bodies into one big sea of connection. liquid love is an invitation to explore the waves of this sea: from a clothed individual moving into a fluid space of immersion. One important pillar for this to happen is trust. We are aware, through our own experiences in similar spaces, how easily this part can be neglected in sessions, and we want to bring it back to the foreground. So we make sure to take time for embodiment practices around boundaries before we invite you to flow. 

We cherish the power and strength of community, and to us, bodily practices and shared physical experiences play an important part in growing this community. Moving from the verbal to the non-verbal, we invite you to explore on a somatic level what it means to be connected, to flow in this world together. 

We want to offer sessions on a monthly basis to allow for a regular dive into the experience. Although one session of liquid love can feel transformative in itself, we are curious about what arises and shifts when it is experienced as an ongoing practice. 

"liquid love was an amazing experience to playfully and sensually explore my own boundaries and body, and develop a new sensitivity for those of others. I love being naked though being so intimately exposed was definitely a discomfort at first. Staying with it and going through it was however one of the most rewarding experiences I had so far. I felt very connected to myself and others afterwards." - Oliver
 

WHO
Since we intend liquid love to be a space where communities and friends can form deeper bonds and explore their boundaries together, we’ll open the space only to friends, and friends of friends, to allow for a trusting container from the start.

"I can highly recommend the "liquid love" experience hosted by Jules and Mara. They created a safe space within which we could explore ourselves and each other. After the event I felt very warm, relaxed and connected.  The experience also made me remember that we are all mammals and that bodily contact is a basic human need. And satisfying that need can be so easy. All you need is some lovely people, some olive oil and caring facilitators like Jules and Mara. Thank you both so much for this wonderful experience!" - Nicki 

HOW TO JOIN

When you book your ticket please enter the name of the connection who invited you. In order to create a safe, trusting and responsible space where you can feel comfortable in the presence of other people in the group, we will speak to everyone on the phone who we don’t know personally. This provides the opportunity for participants to raise questions and for us to create a first connection before the liquid love. 

If you have any questions beforehand, please email: liquidlove.berlin@gmail.com

Whilst we create a safe space for all participants, you are responsible for your own well-being at the event. If you have a history of trauma related to touch, or you know that you are prone to freeze response, we encourage you to give liquid love a miss.

FORMAT & TIMES
The event starts at 20:15h DE Time and ends approximately at 00:30h DE Time. Please arrive on time as we’ll close the doors at 20:30h without exception in order to create a safe space.

20:15h ARRIVAL 
20:30h WELCOME CIRCLE
21:00h EMBODIED BOUNDARIES 
21:30h liquid love
23:00h BREAK
23:30h CLOSING & INTEGRATION CIRCLE
 

WHAT TO BRING

• Yourself, sober and showered please.
• A negative covid self-test regardless if you’re vaccinated or recovered. 
• A refillable water bottle and any snacks you might need after the experience
• 2 small towels that can get oily and a plastic bag. There are no showers but we’ll rub you down with kitchen towels first so you’ll have some rests of olive oil on you but not more than from a good moisturizer. It’s less oily than you’ll expect it to be.
• A hairband if you have long hair
• Wear clothes that you don’t mind if a bit of olive oil touches them

TICKETS
We want this event to be as accessible as possible to everyone, regardless of income. We therefore have a limited amount of concession tickets available (15€). In exchange for a concession ticket we ask for some help at the event. Please email us if you like to apply for a concession ticket. Email: liquidlove.berlin@gmail.com

If you are a high earner, please consider the Supporter Ticket which sponsors people with low income. 

If the event needs to be cancelled for any reason, we will refund the tickets. Otherwise, tickets can be passed on to a friend or moved to a different event if you notify us 24 hours before the event. 

If you don't have a credit card, please email us. You can also pay via PayPal or transfer to a German bank account.
 

YOUR FACILITATORS

Mara 
I am an artist, teacher and community-builder, born and based in Berlin. My work revolves around questions of place-making and belonging. The more I explore, the more I value the power of bringing things together. People, disciplines, perspectives, Yes and No and the land between. I work alone and in collectives, each with their own energy and potential, and mostly on long-term projects that allow for relationships with people and place. 

I love creating spaces for people of all walks of life to come together and share an experience - this can be around a sensual dinner, an exploration of the woods using our senses or an artistic intervention in public space. There is an ineffable magic that sparks when people share an immersive experience. I can literally feel the air shift, and in the space that arises, there is room for transformation. 

Jules
I am a facilitator of transformational spaces, community builder and artist developing holistic structures and processes that further our collective evolution.

I run a project called Sex Club which is a group process space where peers exchange knowledge and experiences, to learn from each other and deliberately develop their relationship with their sexuality. Currently, I'm in training for Heilpraktikerin for Psychotherapy.

I have co-founded and lived in an intentional community project in London for 4 years, developing frameworks for group process work and community maintenance. I consult on collective experience design at festivals, artist residencies and co-working environments on how to build true community, amongst others The Psychedelic Society, of which I was a co-director between 2019-2021. My artistic and personal enquiry is the authentic expression of self through creativity, intellect, emotion and sexuality. I spent 10 years in the corporate tech industry before my calling into the not-for-profit sector and I remembered that I'm an artist, as we all are.
 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
liquid love's precise origins remains unclear, yet we know of two communities - i.e. ZEGG, Tamera - that have been practicing this for a long time, as well as the liquidlove.touchandplay.org and liquid.love project that runs regular liquid love events.