“Don’t be so fucking serious.”
- Gina Ogden
Gina was a pioneer in the field of sexology and a tireless advocate for everyone’s right to sexual well-being. She wrote 13 books and published countless articles, conducted retreats and trainings internationally, lectured widely, and even appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. One of her more significant contributions was founding both the 4-Dimensional Wheel approach to therapy and sex therapy and the community that supports its teaching and growth, the 4-D Network. This approach takes into consideration not only the physical, psychological, and emotional aspects of a person’s well-being, but also the spiritual. Beloved by her colleagues, she was awarded the highest honors from the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists—the Distinguished Service to AASECT Award.
The History of the Wheel
Due to her Peruvian roots, nature and spirit were integral to her being and part of her shamanic studies and practice. While Gina was in the midst of her research from her integrating sexuality and spirituality survey at Radcliffe College, at night she was in deep ritual discovering her Paruvian roots and her own spirituality. She began studying with Oscar Miro Quesada https://heartofthehealer.org/ where she journeyed at her pachakuti mesa every night. For 30 years she studied and lived the ways of all native traditions and cosmologies to include the sacred geometry of the Native American Medicine Wheel and the four directions and elements. Meanwhile, during the day she recieved more and more sexuality surveys by mail and she was puzzled by trying to fit respondants sexual experiences into the linear sex therapy models that existed. She then had an epiphany while at her Pachakuti mesa: What was missing was a spiritual explanation of sexuality! Before her, on her floor, was her mesa - the sacred template of mind, body, heart and spirit.
In the sunshine and the starlight, I will always be with you.
She then created the 4-D Wheel - the only sexuality model that is holistic, integrative, and includes spirituality. She then with great honor and respect to all native cultures and traditions, continued to study shamanic healing and discovered the depths and layers of how she could use her indigenous roots and rituals to access layers of healing for sexual trauma. Over the years, she refined the 4-D Wheel to expand or contract it to help people of all cultures, religions and diverse backgrounds heal their sexual wounds. She trained other therapist, healers and practitioners find their own way to understand the four quadrants of mind, body, heart, and spirit and incorporate it into how they ask their sex therapy clients non-pathologizing or shaming questions that expanded into the client's spirituality. The 4-D Wheel model is now a theoretical model to do a client intake, assessment and also treatment all guided by the wisdom of the client with the practitioner as their guide to healing. This is why people saw her collecting heart-shaped rocks and other stones wherever she traveled, or thanked the earth mother when picking a flower to awaken a group wheel and brought in ancestors and guides for help and always stopped for a good sunset.
She lived with spirit and anyone lucky enough to meet her found her to be grounded and magical at the same time. Once she began traveling the world to run women’s sexual trauma workshops, she got a reputation that “15 minutes with Dr. Gina Ogden in the 4-D Wheel was worth 15 years of therapy”. To watch her run a 5-day retreat was like watching a spiritual healing artist heal 25 people in profound, lasting ways.
Our 4-D Network takes Dr. Ogden’s combination of Western sexology and indigenous roots and practices into our global need to discuss trauma, sexuality, and healing with all people in our diverse world of needs. In this non-pathologizing approach, we teach practitioners to learn the 4-D Wheel and integrate it with the other theoretical approaches as a tool for any concern a patient or client comes to see them for. The 4-D Wheel can treat virtually any problem or issue to include but not limited to: anxiety, addictions, trauma, affairs, depression, life crisis, grief, infertility, pain, gender questioning, ancestral, racial, and institutional trauma, erectile dysfunction, lack of desire, and so much more.
