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Frequently Asked Questions

SECTION 1: Understanding This Work

  • A holistic intimacy coach works with the whole person: body, nervous system, relational history, and emotional patterns, to help you build a more connected, comfortable relationship with yourself and others. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which works primarily through conversation, holistic intimacy coaching can include structured, consent-based touch, body-awareness exercises, and relational skill-building practiced in real time.

    You might benefit from this work if:

    • You've done years of therapy and still find closeness costs you something

    • You want to understand your own needs and learn to ask for them

    • You carry trauma, neglect, or relational wounds that live in your body, not just your mind

    • You want support that meets you where you are, without pressure or agenda

    Michelle Renee is a Holistic Intimacy Coach based in San Diego, California, working with clients in person and remotely across the country.

  • Every session begins with exploring what you are hoping for, which sounds simple but is often one of the hardest questions clients have ever been asked. We work together to uncover that from the start.

    Sessions are consent-based and always paced by you. New clients begin fully clothed. As trust develops over time, some clients find that modifying that agreement supports deeper work around body image or early wounds. Nothing changes without your explicit request and our mutual agreement. There is no sexual contact. Touch is optional and introduced only with explicit agreement.

    What happens in a session varies by client, but typically includes:

    • Talking through what you need and what feels hard

    • Practicing slowing down and listening to your body's signals

    • Experimenting with forms of connection in a structured, safe environment

    • Building the vocabulary to name your needs, limits, and desires

    • Deconditioning fear responses to closeness, touch, or being seen

    Think of it as physical therapy for your emotional and relational health. The session space functions as a laboratory: safer than the real world, for practicing intimacy skills that you can then carry into your actual relationships.

    Michelle Renee has over 1,300 hours of hands-on session experience since 2015, with a background as a Certified Cuddlist and trained Surrogate Partner.

  • Consent-based touch therapy is a professional, non-sexual modality in which a trained practitioner offers structured, boundaried physical contact as part of relational healing work. Every form of touch is explicitly agreed upon before it happens, can be modified or withdrawn at any time, and is always the client's choice.

    It is for people who:

    • Want to rebuild trust with their own body and with physical connection

    • Are healing from trauma, neglect, abuse, or chronic touch deprivation

    • Want to practice consent, boundaries, and relational skills in a safe environment

    • Are curious about their own responses to closeness and want to understand them better

    • Have found that talk therapy alone has not reached the part that needs healing

    Touch is not required in sessions. Many clients spend their first several sessions in conversation, building the foundation of trust before any physical contact is introduced. The consent framework is the product, not the touch itself.

    Michelle Renee is a Holistic Intimacy Coach and co-owner of Cuddlist at Human Connection Lab in San Diego, California.

  • A sex therapist is a licensed mental health professional (therapist, psychologist, or counselor) with additional specialized training in sexual health. Sessions are talk-based and take place in a clinical office setting. Sex therapists are regulated by licensing boards and do not typically include touch in their work.

    An intimacy coach is not a licensed therapist. As I practice, the work is experiential and relational rather than clinical. Sessions can include structured, consent-based touch, relational exercises, and real-time skill practice: things that cannot happen in a licensed therapy office.

    The two approaches are often complementary. Many clients work with both a talk therapist and an intimacy coach simultaneously, with the practitioners coordinating care. That collaborative model is something I actively encourage and support.

    If you are in crisis or need diagnosis, medication, or clinical mental health treatment, a licensed therapist or psychiatrist is the right first step. If you have done the talk therapy work and are ready to embody it, experiential intimacy coaching may be what is missing.

  • Absolutely, and this is one of the most important things to understand about this work.

    Sessions at Human Connection Lab are always non-sexual. Touch, when it happens at all, is always consent-based, and always chosen by you. Many clients never include touch at all. The work is about building your capacity for connection: feeling safe in your body, learning to name what you need, and experiencing what genuine relational care feels like.

    Many clients come specifically because they are tired of intimacy being conflated with sex. They want closeness, warmth, attunement, and presence. They want to learn how to access those things in their own lives. That is exactly what this work is designed for.

    This space is explicitly welcoming to asexual and ace-spectrum individuals. You do not have to want sex, explain your sexuality, or justify your needs.

  • No, definitely not. Touch is never required. I meet my clients where they are. Many people spend their first several sessions in conversation (or all of their sessions), building the relational foundation that makes everything else possible. We move at your pace, always.

  • No. I am not a licensed mental health therapist. I have not gone to school for talk therapy training, and I am not a licensed therapist or counselor. My training is entirely outside the collegiate system. You can view my full training history on my About page.

    I describe myself as a touch practitioner with excellent listening skills. My work is experiential and relational, not clinical. It is most powerful when used alongside talk therapy, not instead of it.

SECTION 2: Who This Is For

  • I work with all genders. Everyone is welcome.

    I tend to attract clients across many types of neurodivergence, likely because I live there too.

    I have built a specialty in working with survivors of childhood sexual assault and clients with "mother hunger" and other early-childhood attachment wounds. I also regularly work with people healing from coercive or abusive relationships, people navigating touch anxiety and long-term isolation, and LGBTQIA+ individuals seeking a judgment-free, identity-affirming space.

    Are you looking to connect more deeply with yourself and others? I can meet you where you are.

  • Yes. I am a San Diego-based Holistic Intimacy Coach with a focused background in trauma-informed, consent-based relational work.

    I have built a specialty in working with:

    • Survivors of childhood sexual abuse and assault

    • People with "mother hunger" and early attachment wounds

    • Adults healing from coercive, abusive, or neglectful relationships

    • People whose nervous system has learned that closeness equals danger

    Sessions take place in San Diego, with regular travel to Los Angeles, Baltimore/DC, and Pittsburgh. Remote support sessions are also available by phone or Zoom.

    I work collaboratively with your existing therapist when possible, and can help connect you with one if you do not have one yet. That triadic model (client, practitioner, and therapist working together) is my preferred approach for trauma survivors.

  • Yes, and more people need this than most people realize.

    Touch starvation (sometimes called skin hunger) is a real physiological and psychological state. After extended periods without meaningful physical connection, people can experience heightened anxiety, depression, difficulty sleeping, and a deepened sense of disconnection from their own bodies and from others. This became significantly more widespread during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Professional support exists in the form of therapeutic touch practitioners: trained, certified practitioners who provide structured, consent-based, non-sexual touch in a professional context. This is not massage, and it is not therapy. It is relational healing through human contact.

    I have worked with many clients who describe themselves as touch-starved. People who have gone months or years without a meaningful hug, who have withdrawn from social contact, or who feel a kind of unnamed longing they could not place until they found this work.

    Sessions are available in San Diego and other cities, as well as remotely for support and preparation work.

  • This is one of the most common experiences that brings people to this work, and it makes complete sense. Your nervous system learned, through experience, that closeness equals danger. It is doing its job by protecting you. The goal is not to override that signal, but to slowly give your nervous system enough new evidence that it can begin to update.

    Some things that help:

    • A structured, predictable environment where nothing happens without explicit agreement

    • Gradual, incremental exposure: starting with what feels manageable, not what feels like a stretch

    • A practitioner who is genuinely unbothered by your no, your hesitation, or your limits

    • Language practice: learning to name what you are feeling in real time

    • Time. There is no rushing this.

    My session space is designed specifically for people whose nervous system does not trust closeness yet. I describe it as a laboratory: a place to run small experiments in safety, without the stakes of a real relationship.

  • Healing your relationship with touch after abuse or coercion is possible, and it happens slowly, in relationship, with someone you can trust.

    Trauma lives in the body. It shows up as flinching, freezing, going numb, going somewhere else mentally, or feeling like touch is something that happens to you rather than something you participate in. Talk therapy can help you understand what happened. Somatic, relational work helps your nervous system learn that things are different now.

    At Human Connection Lab, this work looks like:

    • Moving at a pace that is entirely yours

    • Building a foundation of consent and predictability before anything else

    • Practicing the language of yes, no, and not yet in a space where all three are genuinely welcome

    • Letting your nervous system accumulate evidence that closeness can be safe

    • Working in coordination with your talk therapist when appropriate

    Many clients describe the early work as simply learning what they actually want, not what they were taught to tolerate. That alone can be transformative.

  • The nervous system develops in relationship, and it heals in relationship too. That is both the difficulty and the hope.

    Years of emotional neglect (especially in childhood) can leave the nervous system in a state of chronic low-level threat, or chronic shutdown. You may feel vaguely numb, perpetually anxious, unable to receive care without deflecting it, or convinced at some level that you are not worth being helped or held.

    Healing this takes repeated experiences of genuine attunement: someone who notices what you need, responds to it, and stays. Cognitive understanding helps. Body-based, relational experience is often what makes the difference.

    I work with clients on nervous system regulation through relational connection, using trauma-informed approaches and collaborating with talk therapists using modalities like EMDR. I describe this work as physical therapy for your emotional health.

  • Human Connection Lab is a queer-owned, values-driven practice. I am queer myself, and I bring a lived, inside understanding of queer, asexual, and ENM experiences to this work.

    I regularly work with LGBTQIA+ individuals navigating intimacy, touch, and connection, asexual and ace-spectrum clients exploring relational closeness without sexual pressure, people in ethically non-monogamous relationships, and gender-diverse and nonbinary clients seeking a judgment-free space. I have been part of local kink, non-monogamy, and queer communities since 2014. Your weird is not weird to me.

    Human Connection Lab is based in San Diego, with regular travel throughout Southern California and beyond.

  • Yes. Human Connection Lab is explicitly welcoming to asexual and ace-spectrum individuals, and to people in ethically non-monogamous relationship structures.

    For asexual clients, this work is not about changing your sexuality. It is about exploring what connection, closeness, and relational safety mean to you, on your terms. Many ace clients come because they want warmth, attunement, and platonic intimacy, and have struggled to find a space where that is genuinely the whole picture and not a stepping stone to something else.

    For ENM clients, the work often focuses on untangling intimacy from specific relationship dynamics, building communication skills, or working through attachment patterns that show up across multiple relationships.

    I am queer and ENM-adjacent myself. I bring lived experience to this work, not just professional knowledge.

  • Yes. I have been part of local kink and non-monogamy communities since 2014. I am comfortable working with people across a wide range of identities and communities, including ABDL, cross-dressing and expanded gender expression, foot fetish, and furries, as well as expanded relationship configurations of all kinds. I often say that your weird is not weird to me.

    Note: I do not engage in kink with clients. You are welcomed in your truest form, but kink play is not part of the session work.

  • Yes, and this is one of the most accurate ways to describe what happens in sessions. You are exposing your nervous system to intimacy and connection with a trained professional, in a structured environment where you have full control over pace and boundaries. You can feel confident that I am sturdy and capable of holding that space for you.

SECTION 3: Working Together

  • Our work together is most powerful when used alongside talk therapy, but not having one is not a barrier to us working together.

    If you would like the support of a therapist, support in finding a therapist who is a good fit, I am happy to help connect you with someone from my network of trusted colleagues.

  • I love working in collaboration with clinicians. Please reach out to me first so I can get a feel for your client and we can assess whether we are a good fit for collaboration. Potential clients should ask their therapist to contact me directly. You can also find additional resources for clinicians on my For Clinicians page.

  • No. Insurance does not cover this type of work. However, insurance may cover your talk therapist's sessions when we are working in collaboration. I ask my clients to either choose my standard rate or make a choice to slide-up or slide-down by choosing their own rate. You can learn more about my rates here.

  • I use a self-determining sliding scale model so that this work is accessible to as many people as possible. Head over to the Rates page for the full breakdown, including how to determine your tier.

  • I offer sessions ranging from 60 minutes to 3 hours, and even longer immersive sessions. Most clients prefer at least 90 minutes, and many prefer 2 hours. Session frequency depends on where you are located. If you are in San Diego or another city I visit regularly, weekly or biweekly sessions may be possible. If I visit your city less frequently, scheduling two sessions on consecutive days is a great option. We will figure out what works best for you together.

  • New clients begin fully clothed, and that is the default for as long as it serves you. As trust develops over time, some clients find that modifying that agreement supports deeper work around body image, early childhood wounds, or other areas of focus. Nothing changes without your explicit request and our mutual agreement. There is never any sexual contact.

SECTION 4: Logistics

  • My home base is San Diego, California, where I have a home studio in Rancho Bernardo. I see clients in Los Angeles and Anaheim monthly, and in the Baltimore/DC area and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania quarterly. Remote support sessions are also available by phone or Zoom.

  • It depends on where you are.

    For my standard locations (San Diego, Baltimore/DC, and Pittsburgh), there is no travel fee.

    For the Los Angeles and Orange County area, I occasionally need to cover hotel or office space. If I'm not working in your home, those costs may need to be factored in. If I only have one client scheduled during a trip, I may need to pass some of those costs along depending on the session length and rate tier selected. In some cases this may affect whether I'm able to say yes to a shorter session or a lower-tier rate for that visit. I'll always be upfront with you before we confirm anything.

    For cities outside my regular rotation, travel expenses are passed along in full and sessions are billed at my standard rate. If you're interested in bringing this work to your community, reach out and let's talk through what that could look like.

  • For any travel intensive, we'll do some virtual work together before we meet in person. This helps us build enough foundation that our time together is as meaningful and efficient as possible. It's not a hurdle. It's part of the work.

    If I'm traveling to a city outside my regular rotation, sessions are billed at my standard rate and all travel expenses are passed along in full. We'll work all of that out together before anything is confirmed.

  • Surrogate Partner Therapy is a hands-on supplemental modality to talk therapy that models and practices healthy relationship, communication, and intimacy skills. The client, the surrogate partner, and the clinician work together in what is called the triadic model, meaning a clinician is required to be part of the team. SPT is generally for non-partnered clients with a history that has disrupted their ability to date and find a partner.

    While SPT used to commonly be referred to as sex surrogacy, the field has moved away from that term because the work is not about sex. It is focused on relationship skill-building, which can have a significant impact on one's sexual experiences.

    I no longer offer traditional surrogate partner therapy, but I am open to an intensive model of hands-on intimacy coaching. Let's talk. Are you a clinician looking for more information on SPT? Visit my clinician resources page.

  • I get this question occasionally. The short answer is no. I am not connected to Tantra in any way.

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