The 4-D Model
“We are the luminous ones - the light-keepers - and we have the power to spread this to the east, the west, the north, and the south.”
Catherine de Sauvage
We are a network of licensed therapists, psychologists, sex therapists, counselors, educators, coaches, and other healers who utilize the engaging and innovative 4-Dimensional Wheel of Sexual Experience as an interactive map to guide their clients in exploring the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of their relationships and lives.
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We are a global community of professionals dedicated to helping our clients access the healing and power they need to experience new depths of positive relationships, self-esteem, pleasure, and erotic connection.
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Step into a supportive community of like-minded healers.
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The Wheel has now blossomed into the full-blown 4-D approach to sex therapy and network for professionals, with a growing international consortium of certified practitioners.
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What if you had access to an internal GPS you could activate whenever you feel lost in the paradoxical dynamics of intimate partnership or find yourself derailed by pain, miscommunication, or the “shoulds” and “oughts” in our culture?goes here
The 4-D Network can now be found at The Healing Group Institute.
The 4-D Network Practices DiversityOur practitioners include and/or welcome heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, questioning, and transgender people of all ages and from diverse races, cultures, and belief systems. Several of our practitioners are fluent in languages other than English.
The 4-D Network is deeply grateful to the indigenous peoples of our land. Native Lands Map is here to help to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges and improves the way people see the history of their countries and peoples. Native Land Map hopes to strengthen the spiritual bonds that people have with the land, its people, and its meaning.
In Memory of Gina Ogden
August 9, 1935 – November 2, 2018
Gina was a trailblazing sexologist, author of 13 books, international lecturer, and Oprah guest, best known for founding the 4-Dimensional Wheel approach and the 4-D Network, which integrate physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of well-being. Honored with AASECT’s Distinguished Service Award, she was beloved by colleagues for her visionary work. Deeply rooted in her Peruvian heritage, Gina wove nature, spirit, and shamanic practice into her life and scholarship. While researching sexuality and spirituality at Radcliffe College, she immersed herself nightly in ritual and began studying with Oscar Miro Quesada, eventually spending 30 years exploring Indigenous traditions, cosmologies, and sacred geometries—including the Native American Medicine Wheel—infusing her therapeutic work with profound spiritual depth.
We are a global community of professionals dedicated to helping our clients access the healing and power they need to experience new depths of positive relationships, self-esteem, pleasure, and erotic connection. We are dedicated to supporting each other on a path of professional mastery through training, collaboration, and the promotion of each others’ work. The 4-D Wheel can be incorporated into any kind of work you are already doing with clients. Practitioners who have successfully incorporated this approach into their practices include therapists, psychologists, counselors, coaches, teachers, physicians, nurses, and other health providers.
FAQs
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There is no fee for becoming Certified as a 4-D Wheel Practitioner/Educator, or for annual re-certification.
Certification is maintained through annual demonstration of ongoing collegial contribution to the 4-D Network. If you cannot contribute in the ways we suggest and still want to remain part of the 4-D Network, there will be an annual fee and fewer benefits. Annual certification begins on date of signature (renewal notice will be sent 30 days before expiry)
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“Yes. I use the Wheel in conjunction with CBT. By doing so, I can help clients to enter into a more holistic healing process. Instead of consciously changing thoughts, with the Wheel, we explore alternative states of body, heart and spirit, and then we experience the corresponding difference in the mind.” -Lindsay Jernigan, PhD
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“Yes. Like many therapists and medical providers in the field of sex therapy, I work with clients with histories of trauma. When clients are dissociative and/or emotionally flooded, I’ve found that just identifying past trauma and talking about it does not engage the rich potential of the brain’s neuroplasticity. Using the Wheel has been a breakthrough in my practice because it offers a practical and efficient way to help clients literally move the new connections they create in their brains directly into their life experience.” -Keesha Ewers, PhD
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“Yes. I have found the Wheel to be one of the most helpful, adaptable, world-opening tools in my clinical kit. In settings where couples or co-workers are struggling to cooperate or understand one another, the 4-D Wheel brings their unconscious debilitating scripts to awareness and opens up the possibility of rewriting them. It invites the freedom to explore a sexuality where the body is a sacred vessel, the heart can open, and a journey of self-discovery and mutual self-revelation can take place between partners.” -Chelsea Wakefield, PhD
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“Yes. As a therapist working with a religiously conservative population, I find a sadly common scenario: men of all ages are self-diagnosed as pornography addicts and diagnosed by those they love and trust as well. The Wheel has offered me an opportunity to create a space where these men can explore their sexuality without negative judgments and without having to perform (or stop performing) in some specified way. Using the Wheel, I can invite them to examine their internal world and inhabit it in ways they had never been able to before.” -Kristin Hodson, LCSW
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“Yes. I focus on issues that arise with many kinds of partnerships and often very intense situations. The Wheel offers an enlightening and efficient way to help clients speak about otherwise impossible subject matter–to express feelings about queerness or manhood or parenting for the first time ever.” -Elliott Kronenfeld, LCSW
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“Yes. For example, I use the Wheel as part of my pelvic exam protocol for women with histories of pain and trauma. I place the Wheel on my desk and ask her to create one-word descriptors for how she experiences her own vulva- physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually- so that she creates both negative and hoped-for positive words for each. The pelvic exam is greatly enhanced by providing a common language we can use during the exam to locate areas of pain and of the release and pleasure she anticipates in the future.” -Debra Wickman, MD
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“Working with the Wheel, clients start to rely on their self-knowledge and intuition rather than asking the therapist for explanations, answers, and suggestions. I am continuously surprised at how smoothly catharsis emerges and solutions develop that I could never have dreamed of myself. The process enables a depth of story and meaning beyond any theoretical approach I had learned in my 15 years as a therapist.” -Kamara McAndrews, LMFT