Urban Tantra

Professional Training Program

This program is designed for coaches, therapists, counselors, bodyworkers, yogis, educators, sex workers, and facilitators who have an existing practice and feel called to engage sexuality, intimacy, and embodiment with greater skill and confidence. We also welcome those who are in the early stages of building a practice, or transitioning out of one career and beginning a new one related to sexuality.

Our philosophy can be applied to sex work, sex therapy, any body-based work (such as dance, yoga, massage, or breathwork), art & writing, healing, coaching, organizing & activism, entertainment, and all aspects of sexuality in all fields. We welcome those searching for creative and unique applications beyond these modalities.

Participants typically have some prior training in somatic work, sexuality education, BDSM/kink, therapeutic modalities, coaching, or healing arts, and are ready for a program that is nuanced, ethically grounded, and professionally relevant. If you are seeking depth, community, and practical application, this training will meet you there.

Our Community is a supportive association of like-minded creative professionals. Mutual support is a foundational principle of our program. The Urban Tantra Professional Training Program provides a unique opportunity to network with other professionals from around the world.

Barbara Carrellas is the founder and lead facilitator of the Urban Tantra® Professional Training Program, a globally respected approach to conscious sexuality and embodied practice. An award-winning author and educator, Barbara’s work blends deep somatic insight with inclusive, client-centered communication, and is rooted in decades of teaching, healing circles, and community leadership that began in the crucible of the AIDS crisis. Her books, including Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century, and pioneering workshops have expanded the landscape of sacred sexuality, earning recognition as some of the most transformative offerings in the field. With a warm, practical, and gender-expansive style, Barbara shows practitioners how to integrate pleasure, presence, and professional integrity into their work, empowering them to meet clients with authenticity, skill, and expansive understanding.

Diversity, equity, and belonging are foundational to this program. The Urban Tantra® Professional Training Program is committed to creating a learning environment where BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ practitioners are respected and supported in their full identities. Our approach honors the intersections of culture, gender, sexuality, and power, and invites participants to engage in conscious sexuality work with humility, awareness, and care. We actively cultivate a community where difference is not simply included, but valued as essential to meaningful learning, ethical practice, and collective growth.

Consent is the cornerstone of conscious sexuality. Consent, as we understand and practice it, is an ongoing agreement which can be modified or withdrawn at any point throughout our work or play.

We promote and practice safer sex. While each individual’s safer sex practices and protocols may vary in private practice, all graduates are trained in and knowledgeable about safer sex. All UTPTP events and workshops follow safer sex protocols.

We value collaboration over competition. We are unique, creative, individuals who choose to use our talents in support of each others’ successes. When one of us prospers, we all prosper.

We acknowledge and give credit to our teachers, collaborators, supporters—all those for whom we have received information and inspiration. We teach what others have taught us with their permission. We respect each others intellectual property.

We value inclusion and accessibility. We welcome people of all genders, sexual orientations and sexual preferences. We seek to find language which encourages people of all bodies, abilities, and racial and cultural backgrounds to find their place in the sacred sexuality community.