The metro area will be a hub for human sexuality this month, with two national sex conventions taking place around the Mile High City in October. The Sexual Health Alliance's Sexological Conference will be held from October 3 to 6 just outside the city, at the Westin Westminster. Then, from October 17 to 20, the Pleasure Island Experience: Erotic Blueprint Workshop will be at an undisclosed location in Denver.
"This is where it's at. Denver is such a special place," says Heather McPherson, founder and CEO of the Sexual Health Alliance.
These events will be held less than a month after the Denver Sexploratorium, a sex-positive education center on South Broadway, opened the city's only sex-based museum, one of just a handful in the world.
"There is more overt expression in Denver," adds Ian Ferguson, CEO of the Blueprint Breakthrough. "There is quite a community around open relationships, polyamory, swinger culture. ... The people who I know who are super adventurous in these realms tend to go down to Denver to find the scenes that are more expressed."
Both events are expected to attract hundreds of participants from throughout the country, and tickets are still available.
From demonstrations on how to stimulate arousal with energy movement to lectures on how a seventy-year-old virgin discovered her sexuality, the conventions are sure to teach even Denver's most racy and uninhibited residents a thing or two. Here's a look at what the city has in store this month:
Pleasure Island Experience
Since Ferguson and his partner, Jaiya Ma, created the Erotic Blueprints, over 2.3 million people have taken their online quiz. They've also forged a community with 7,000 members and have trained more than 300 sex coaches in the ways of the arousal map. Now the sexologist couple is coming to Denver to continue the instruction — up close and personal.The Pleasure Island Experience will feature interactive workshops on tantra, "sex magic," kink education, energetic orgasms, sexual vitality and more.
“This has become a hybrid of the best and the biggest live workshop stuff that we do," Ferguson says. "The idea is to create an environment for people to really take ownership of who they are as erotic beings, sexual beings, pleasure beings. And to practice boundaries and consent."
Under Erotic Blueprints, a person's sexual desires and needs fall under five erotic types: energetic, sensual, kinky, sexual and shapeshifter. The quiz works like a personality test, sorting participants into certain categories and providing a framework to communicate their sexuality and overcome perceived sexual incompatibility. Ferguson and Ma shared this technique on an international stage in 2021, starring in Gwyneth Paltrow's Sex, Love, and Goop docuseries on Netflix.
“It’s like if your partner speaks German and you speak French," Ferguson explains. "It doesn't mean you're incompatible. It just means you need to learn to speak each other's languages."
While the workshop is all about sex, there won't be any physical intercourse going on. Nudity, drugs and alcohol are expressly forbidden: "It's sort of PG-13 in terms of where we're going on a physical level," Ferguson says. "In terms of the topics we're exploring, it's more NC-17."
Rather than an orgy, participants can expect to reach an "ecstatic state" through breathwork, movement and tantra practices that will show them how to move the energies in their body to stimulate arousal, Ferguson says. They'll also focus on communicating boundaries and consent, keeping sexual passion alive in long-term relationships, and empowering the parts of their sexuality they've suppressed out of shame.
The three and a half days of festivities culminate in a ball where attendees dress as and embody the "erotic personas" they've hidden away to integrate the split personalities. The no-intercourse rule goes even further here, with no touching of any kind allowed during the dance (even between consenting partners) so that participants can focus on their journeys.
Organizers expect between 400 and 500 people to attend the Pleasure Island Experience, with participants ranging from ages twenty to seventy, couples and singles, sexologist industry experts and sexually curious novices.
"I want them to walk out with a sense of erotic autonomy," Ferguson says. “They’re not broken, they’re not weird, they’re whole and complete. They deserve the consensual pleasure they seek, and they have a whole level of skills in order to experience the pleasure they seek."
This will be the third Pleasure Island event, but the first to take place in Denver. The workshop will be held from October 17 through 20. The location will be revealed once tickets are purchased — for $1,290 a pop — at events.theblueprintbreakthrough.com.
Sexological Conference
The brightest minds in sexology — the scientific study of human sexuality — are converging in Westminster this week for the Sexual Health Alliance's second annual Sexological Conference.The event will feature more than two dozen speakers and panelists covering the latest research in sexuality and sexual health, including topics such as preventing erectile dysfunction, identifying the therapeutic needs of sex workers, and how "sex addict" diagnoses can "shame and traumatize" people. The conference is headlined by sex educators Chris Donaghue, Midori and David Ley.
McPherson, whose organization runs the conference, is a marriage, family and sex therapist, as well as a licensed professional counselor supervisor. She started the Sexual Health Alliance to provide training and education in sexuality and sexual health.
“Basically, I'm a therapist who realized there was a huge lack of training, awareness and resources for all mental health and medical providers," McPherson says. "They don't know what they don't know. They're not getting this training in medical school. I know as a therapist, you're not getting this training in graduate school. So when a client or patient starts talking about sex, you look like a deer in the headlights because you don't know this information."
The Sexual Health Alliance held more than fifty smaller events throughout the country before launching its major annual conference in Denver last year.
"In Denver, we have the type of resources and the big-city practices that make this city kind of an epicenter for sexual health," she explains. "Colorado is one of the states with the most sexuality professionals, especially certified sex therapists." The conference primarily attracts sexual health providers like doctors, therapists and relationship coaches, but it's open to everyone: "Anyone should have access to this information," McPherson says. "We’re all about the sex nerds, the sex enthusiasts, the person who is just really passionate about sex.”
Other discussion topics at the conference include a seventy-year-old virgin's journey using surrogate partner therapy, the impact porn has on romantic relationships, navigating a partner's distress over masturbation, and how sex experts can confront "the dark side" of a client's sexual behavior or kinks.
In addition to the professional workshops, attendees will participate in various sexual social events, such as a “sexy strut and dance party" and a "special evening" featuring kink gear.
“We want to provide experiences that help our attendees explore themselves and learn about themselves — and decrease bias, judgment and shame — so that they can be better therapists, doctors, educators, coaches," McPherson says. “We’re all trying to help people have better sex. That alone really unites us."
Organizers expect around 200 attendees at the conference. Tickets for the three-and-a-half-day event, from October 3 through 6 at the Westin Westminster, are available for $550 at sexualhealthalliance.com.
