Sex in the Windy City

Conference

Join us for the Sex in the Windy City Conference, where clinical insight meets bold, inclusive conversation. This one-of-a-kind professional gathering in the Chicago area invites therapists, counselors, and mental health professionals to deepen their knowledge around sexuality, relationships, gender, and embodied healing.

Featuring expert speakers, cutting-edge workshops, and a vibrant community of colleagues, this conference is your chance to grow, connect, and challenge the norms. Whether you're looking to expand your sex-positive clinical skills, explore intersectional approaches to intimacy and identity, or simply re-energize your practice—this is where you want to be.

Toys, Taboos & Transformation:

Playful Practice in Intersectional Sex Therapy

Date: Friday, October 17, 2025

Time: 9:00am - 5:00pm 

Location: NEIU, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave. Chicago, IL 60625

Room: Student Union Building, SU-214

Parking: Parking Lot D

Presenters: Kayla Harris, MA, LMFT & Helen Wyatt, MA, LMFT

  • Kayla Harris, MA, LMFT

    Keynote Speaker

  • Helen Wyatt, MA, LMFT

    Keynote Speaker

  • Kayla Harris, MA, LMFT (she/her) is a white, disabled, cisgender, firstborn, woman, and veteran from Rockford, IL. She has lived in Chicago since she began her Masters in Couple and Family Therapy at Adler University in 2018. Since then, Kayla has become more specialized in her clinical work, playfully serving Queer, neurodiverse, military-impacted, and sex-focused clients in private practice. She holds a Certificate in Sex Therapy from Adler University and is accruing the supervision hours required for American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) Certified Sex Therapist (CST) designation. Currently, Kayla is a full-time Staff Therapist at The Expansive Group as well as a full-time fourth-year PhD student in the Couple and Family Therapy program at Adler University.

  • Helen Wyatt, MA, LMFT (she/hers), is a dynamic sex and relationship therapist, educator, researcher, and artist. In addition to seeing clients at her therapy practice AE Collective, she is a supervisor and adjunct professor of topics on human sexuality, the life span, and group therapy at Adler University and Northwestern University. Helen is also a professional musician and actor, and is completing her AAMFT Approved Supervisor designation, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist designation and Intimacy Coordinator certification through IDC. She works clinically with relational repair and individual treatment of out-of-control sexual behavior and breaches of trust, discrepant desire and disinterest in sex, and religious sexual trauma. She also works with creatives and professional performers around reconnecting to artistry, repairing shame responses, managing performance anxiety, and building confidence and artistic integrity.

Join Us!

Hello everyone! We are delighted and honored to receive an invitation from IAMFT to present as this year’s keynote speakers for the Sex in the Windy City Conference. It is clear from both therapy research literature and the feedback from our previous workshop attendees for the 2024 and 2025 IAMFT conferences that the subject of play as intersecting with sexuality and sexual health is a resonant and salient topic for systemic clinicians.

Play is crucial in the development of all humans; it is an essential practice that we learn in childhood which supports and stays with us throughout life. It is also essential to healing sexuality and helping clients create sex and relationship contexts that make them feel alive. We want to invite participants - whether you’ve engaged in our workshops previously or are learning from us for the first time - to come experience play in all its benefits as you do work in sex and relationship therapy. Further, we want therapists who encounter to know how to masterfully engage clients in experiential play-based healing both inside and outside of the therapy room. 

- Kayla Harris, MA, LMFT & Helen Wyatt, MA, LMFT

What Will You Learn?

In this workshop, you will learn about the fundamentals of play: what it is, why it’s essential to all humans, how it intersects with sexuality and sexual health, identify the barriers to access and safety to play that exist, and explore how you can incorporate play into your life personally and professionally. You will also learn how to utilize play in the therapy room: how to craft interventions that holistically treat relational and sexual problems; how to craft culturally responsive, useful interventions; how to utilize your tried and true interventions more playfully while maintaining a relational & theory-grounded practice. We’ll guide you to discover what self-of-the-therapist themes arise for you as you think about how to incorporate more experiential play into your clinical practice. 

Finally, you will hear from more than just Kayla and Helen. While we deeply believe that play and sexuality are sites of liberation and social justice, we recognize the limits of our perspectives as two White, cisgender, queer women. To honor this, we are uplifting and inviting the voices, research, experiences and expertise of our fellow clinicians — colleagues whose wisdom is rooted in diverse cultural, racial, gendered, and embodied identities— to guide participants through breakout workshop opportunities and add to our discussion of play fundamentals, intervention, and self-exploration. Exploring diverse ways of working with play and pleasure deepen and expand this communal learning experience for all of us.

This day-long workshop includes didactic, experiential, and break-out components, and will rely heavily on audience participation and (we hope FUN!) risk-taking. Please let us know if you anticipate having access needs that may impede your ability to participate. We can work with IAMFT and NEIU to coordinate accommodations and will design this workshop with pluriversality in mind. See you all on Oct. 17th!

Schedule