Facilitators, Assistants & Emotional Support Team
Agreements Tantric Joy Festival Amsterdam
Our aim is to provide the participants at the festival a container for physical & psychological safety. We all know that in a festival there is not a way to guarantee for 100% that everybody will be and feel safe. We can’t control the behaviors of others and we also can’t prevent that traumas are being triggered. What we can do is to establish agreements from our side which support an open and save environment.
By being a facilitator, assistant or emotional support member at the Tantric Joy Festival Amsterdam you automatically agree to the agreements below. If you have any doubt or comment, please get in contact with us: Mark & Anna: growinglovingrelations@gmail.com
General agreements
- The festival is an alcohol and drugs free event. This includes legal drugs or considered being natural (like plants or mushrooms, Ayahuasca, cannabis oil or Rapé). Smoking tobacco, e-cigarettes, and vaporizers is not allowed in the festival area, also not at your own tent/camper.
- You agree to abstain from giving medical advice.
- You agree to be open to participants of all races, gender, sexual orientation or expression, religion, or national origin. We ask you also to be aware to adhere to what pronoun/other participants and facilitators would like to be addressed.
- You agree to avoid speaking negatively about other facilitators, schools, traditions, and health modalities. Additionally, you will treat other facilitators and colleagues in a respectful manner.
- You will obtain consent from students before photographing, audio or video tape recording and ask participants permission before adding any photo or video on any social media platform.
- You understand that everything said or done during the festival is confidential. You can share your own experiences, but you will not talk about what someone else has done or said.
Professional agreements
Tantra facilitators, assistants and emotional support team, like all health practitioners, are in a unique relationship of trust with participants. The professional relationship is an unequal relationship, which can result in a power imbalance.
This imbalance is due to the position of authority and specialized knowledge in relation to the participant’s own health or personal development theme’s. A student’s desire to improve her/his/their own health, to learn and to grow as a person leads to a need to establish trust in the professional much more quickly and completely than they/he/she might do otherwise. As a facilitator, assistant or emotional support member you are aware of this imbalance and the risk that this implies. You are responsible for setting and managing physical and emotional boundaries.
- You are committed to promoting the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well‐being of the participants.
- You agree to refrain from any sexual exchange of sexual activity with participants. This includes kissing and flirting with participants.
- The first 3 months after the festival you also agree not to involve with any participant with the intention to have a relationship or sexual exchange.
- If a participant is someone who is already your sexual partner before the festival, you can interact with each other as you always do.
- As a facilitator, assistant or emo support member you are allowed to participate at workshops with consideration of the agreements above. At all times participants see you as a representant of the festival, be aware of that during practices with others. If a workshop requires a partner, you can enjoy together with another facilitator, assistant or emo support member.
- If you wish to go to the “Love Tent” you may do so with another facilitator, assistant or emo support member and you agree not to be part of an eventual group sexual exchange.
- You won’t initiate an activity when you know or should know that there is a substantial likelihood that your personal problems will prevent you from performing your work-related activities in a competent manner.
- As a facilitator, assistant or emotional support member you are open to the feedback of others and will reach to colleagues or to us for consultation if you are doubting if a concrete behavior is appropriate.
- You will take responsibility to give feedback to colleagues if you consider that the professional boundaries are not being held.
We hope not to get any complains about your behaviour and if we would do so, we will talk to you immediately and take the measures that we consider appropriate at that moment.
Thank you for agreeing to everything above. Participants will also receive a letter with participants agreements and can send us an email if they wish to get the agreements above. We hope that this will result in a festival where participants can experience tantra and intimacy as safe as possible, in a professional surrounding and in a positive way!
Mark Oostermeijer & Anna Prat i Bascompte
growinglovingrelations@gmail.com
www.tantricjoyfestivalamsterdam.com
