Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
Cultivating Integrity, Safety, Empowerment, and Transformation in Coaching & Bodywork Practices
References to “client” in these Codes of Ethics and Professional Conduct should be assumed to include individual clients, workshop participants, online course participants, and mentees. References to “session” in the Codes should also be assumed to include workshops, where it would be sensible and ethical to make that assumption.
Overview
This Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct is a comprehensive guide designed to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct, professionalism, and integrity within Dennis Hull, (Coach / Body Worker) virtual coaching and in-person bodywork sessions. It is dedicated to fostering trust, safety, and empowerment for every client and ensuring respectful, transformative, and growth-centered experiences.
Ethical Values
- Empowerment through Embodiment: Providing experiences and education that foster self-awareness, confidence, and connection.
- Holistic Well-Being & Transformation: Guiding clients on their path to emotional, physical, and spiritual wholeness with care and integrity.
- Respect for Autonomy, Safety & Boundaries: Placing client agency and boundaries at the forefront of every session, while fostering safety and mutual respect.
- Radical Self-Compassion & Authentic Connection: Encouraging self-compassion, vulnerability, and authenticity for deep, meaningful connections.
- Commitment to Ethical Growth & Social Responsibility: Upholding ethical principles, contributing positively to the broader community, and promoting respectful inclusion.
Client's Bill of Rights
As a client of Dennis Hull, you have the right to:
- Informed Consent & Understanding: Know the full nature, potential benefits, and boundaries of coaching or bodywork sessions prior to engagement.
- Confidentiality & Privacy: Trust that your personal information, experiences, and sessions are kept confidential, with clear exceptions only under legal or safety obligations.
- Boundaries & Personal Agency: Have your boundaries respected at all times and choose what you wish to explore in any session, knowing you can pause, stop, or decline any part of the process without judgment.
- Safety & Empowerment: Be in a safe, supportive environment where your well-being is the top priority, and you are encouraged to take an active role in your own process.
- Professional Transparency & Integrity: Receive clear communication on all aspects of your sessions, including fees, expectations, and the practitioner's qualifications, training, and expertise.
- Respect for Autonomy & Self-Expression: Explore your authentic self, emotions, and body without fear of shame, coercion, or discrimination, with full respect for your unique background, values, and cultural practices.
- Collaborative Agreements & Ongoing Consent: Participate in collaborative agreements outlining the structure and intention of each session, with the understanding that consent is ongoing and can be withdrawn at any time.
- Referrals & Support: Be offered appropriate referrals to other professionals if your needs fall outside the scope of the services provided by The Tantric Champion, or if it is in your best interest to explore additional resources.
- Self-Determined Transformation: Guide the pace and depth of your transformational journey according to your own readiness, goals, and comfort level, supported by guidance tailored to your growth.
- Ethical Accountability & Complaint Resolution: Have access to a clear process for addressing any ethical concerns or grievances, ensuring a fair and respectful resolution.
Section I: Coach & Body Worker Responsibility to Clients
1. Creating a Safe & Informed Environment
- Prior to sessions, provide a clear explanation of the session’s nature, objectives, potential benefits, financial arrangements, and boundaries.
- Obtain explicit and informed consent, making sure the client understands the scope and limits of confidentiality, and any terms for information sharing.
2. Client Empowerment & Self-Agency
- Foster an atmosphere that encourages clients to express their needs, set personal boundaries, and practice self-agency. Empower clients to make decisions about the flow, depth, and content of their experience.
- Regularly reaffirm consent throughout each session and create space for clients to voice any discomfort, feedback, or desired changes in the approach.
3. Privacy & Confidentiality Standards
- Protect the confidentiality of all client communications, records, and session details, ensuring secure storage and adherence to privacy laws.
- Explicitly outline any conditions where confidentiality may need to be broken (e.g., safety risks, legal obligations). If required, communicate with transparency and care before taking any action.
4. Maintaining Ethical Boundaries & Integrity
- Establish clear session boundaries and uphold them consistently, maintaining the highest standards of professionalism and respect.
- Use touch consciously, with clear intention and for the client’s benefit, never for the practitioner’s self-interest. Check in regularly to ensure comfort and ongoing consent, pausing or stopping immediately if requested by the client.
5. Transparency, Fairness & Right to Terminate
- Respect the client’s right to terminate services or sessions at any time. Provide clients with options to change the nature of their engagement if their goals or needs evolve.
- Be transparent about any fees, changes in agreements, or potential conflicts of interest, and provide referrals or support for clients seeking alternative services or additional resources.
Section II: Coach’s Professional Conduct & Practice
1. Ongoing Self-Improvement & Professional Growth
- Engage in regular personal and professional development, including training, supervision, peer review, and self-care. Seek continuous improvement in ethical standards and coaching techniques.
- Address any personal challenges or limitations that may impair coaching effectiveness, seeking external support when needed, and transparently managing any conflicts of interest.
2. Scope of Practice & Responsible Communication
- Communicate qualifications, training, and areas of expertise honestly and accurately, ensuring that clients have a realistic understanding of the practitioner's skills and services.
- Avoid making exaggerated claims about the outcomes of coaching or bodywork services and refrain from stating or implying any guarantees regarding results.
3. Honoring Diversity & Inclusivity
- Cultivate an environment of inclusivity, free from discrimination based on age, race, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, disability, or any other status.
- Respect cultural differences and be sensitive to diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences, fostering an environment of acceptance and mutual understanding.
4. Ethical Use of Technology & Records
- Ensure the secure use of technology for virtual coaching sessions, with appropriate measures for privacy, confidentiality, and data protection.
- Obtain written, informed consent for any audio or video recordings, explaining their intended use and the client's right to revoke consent at any time.
5. Power Dynamics & Professional Boundaries
- Be aware of and responsibly manage the inherent power dynamic between coach and client, ensuring it is used only to support the client’s growth and empowerment.
- Do not engage in any romantic or sexual relationship with current clients and maintain a minimum of one year after the end of the coaching or bodywork relationship before considering any such engagement other than where existing relationships are addressed below by Section III, paragraph 2, regarding dual relationships.
Section III: Relationship Integrity in Coaching & Bodywork
1. Responsible Touch & Somatic Practices
- Use touch only as a tool for client empowerment and growth, ensuring it aligns with the client’s boundaries and learning objectives. Ensure touch is consensual, non-exploitative, and focused on the client's self-discovery.
- Clearly describe and explain the techniques to be used and reasons for any and all forms of sensual and sexual touch, ensuring a professional boundary is maintained at all times, with appropriate attire and hygienic practices observed.
2. Dual Relationships & Managing Client Connections
- Exercise caution and consistent, clear, and honest communication in situations where dual relationships exist, ensuring transparency and clear role differentiation (e.g., practitioner and friend, community member, romantic partner or lover).
- Actively seek supervision and support to navigate complex relational dynamics, providing the client with choices about how to proceed and protecting the integrity of the professional relationship.
3. Consent, Communication & Sexuality in Sessions
- Approach all explorations of sexuality, sensuality, and intimacy with sensitivity, respect, and a clear educational framework. Use direct and clear communication to discuss any touch, boundaries, or exercises that involve sexual energy.
- Practice and model healthy, open dialogue about consent, ensuring clients are free to voice preferences, limitations, or changes throughout the session.
4. Transparency in Financial Arrangements & Agreements
- Clearly outline all fees, payment structures, and financial agreements before services are rendered. Honor all contractual agreements with fairness and uphold the client's right to negotiate or understand all terms.
- If receiving any third-party benefits (e.g., referrals, collaborations), disclose this to the client transparently, ensuring no conflict of interest exists.
Section IV: Responsibility to Professionalism & the Community
1. Integrity & Public Representation
- Represent Dennis Hull, tantra, coaching, and bodywork accurately, ethically, and with respect. Ensure all public communications—verbal, written, or online—are honest, accurate, and foster a positive perception of the profession.
- Recognize and honor the intellectual property of others, ensuring fair use and appropriate credit for resources, teachings, and contributions.
2. Social Responsibility & Positive Impact
- Promote a holistic philosophy of “doing good” and contributing to individual and societal well-being. Engage in activities that uphold fairness, ethical standards, and respect for the dignity of all people.
- Stay mindful of the broader impact of coaching, bodywork, and related teachings on the community and society, ensuring practices align with values of respect, compassion, and empowerment.
3. Collaboration & Collegial Support
- Foster positive and supportive relationships with colleagues, other practitioners, and healthcare professionals. Where appropriate, work in a team model, providing cross-support and referrals that are in the best interest of the client’s well-being.
- Should ethical concerns arise, address them openly, respectfully, and constructively. Participate fully in conflict-resolution processes, including mediation and restorative practices, to uphold the profession’s standards and integrity.
Section V: Commitment to Excellence
1. Excellence in Ethical Practice & Professional Development
- Regularly engage in personal reflection, peer support, and professional supervision to enhance ethical practice and refine skills. Utilize feedback as a tool for growth and ensure continuous alignment with the highest professional standards.
- Honor the principles of this Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct as a living document, returning to its guidance whenever faced with ethical dilemmas, new scenarios, or challenging situations.
2. Feedback & Grievance Process
- Coach agrees to be proactive in acknowledging and resolving any potential breaches of this Code, upholding a standard of excellence in both individual practice and the wider Tantric Champion and tantra community.
- Third party feedback process is coming soon.
3. Continuous Transformation & Embodied Integrity
- Live as a model of tantra’s principles of self-awareness, balance, confidence, and connection. Embody these values in personal practice, client interactions, and public representation.
- Foster a lifelong journey of personal development, ethical reflection, and transformation, aspiring to serve as a guide and inspiration for all clients to live in alignment with their truest selves.
Section VI: Client Responsibilities
- You understand that this session is a spiritual/sexual experience and is not the same as or a replacement for therapy, psychology, psychiatry, medical and mental health support and further agree to alert me to issues in those areas and seek out licensed medical or mental health professionals when you need them.
- You understand that a session can include any or all of the following: coaching, breath work, energy work, meditation, tantric massage, and sacred spot massage, intimate touch and genital massage, and other sexual/sensual/intimate acts and experiences.
- You understand that you always have a choice and nothing specific is required or needed in this session for it to be powerful and impactful.
- You agree that you are making this choice to do this session on your own free will and agree to be responsible and accountable for your own experience.
- You consent to the experience that we will create together through in-depth, honest discussions of your boundaries and desires.
- You agree to communicate and provide feedback openly and honestly with Dennis Hull about your experience.
- You agree that you will NOT arrive under the influence of or to use any mood-altering substances including but not limited to drugs, alcohol, marijuana, sleeping pills, or psychedelics for at least 24 hours before or after the session. (It is recommended to also not drink coffee or caffeinated beverages for 6 hours prior to the session).
- You agree to give yourself ample time after a bodywork session to breathe, feel, enjoy and integrate. Oftentimes, clients emerge from the session in a space of silence, meditation, and quiet contemplation. It is highly recommended to allow space for that.
- You agree to abide by Dennis Hull’s boundaries set forth in this document and as articulated via discussion in each individual session.
- You agree to attempt non-public mediation with Dennis Hull first and with the third-party independent feedback provider (linked here soon) should any issues or concerns arise.
- You agree to arrive, start, and complete each session on time per the coaching or bodywork agreement.
- You agree to attend body-work sessions physically clean and hygienic.
- You agree to pay timely per the coaching or body work agreement.
Conclusion
This Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct is a dynamic commitment to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and respect for all clients and community members. It is intended to support the journey of transformation through safe, ethical, and authentic engagement, fostering a space where clients can explore their fullest potential, confidence, and connection.
Dennis Hull holds these standards with the highest regard, ensuring that all practices align with the empowerment, growth, and well-being of every individual who chooses to embark on this path.