About TOCA

What’s TOCA?

TOCA (Sp. for Touch) is a plant-based, gender-fluid, freaky, nature-loving product line that was founded on the desire to bring pleasure and eros to the forefront of our well-being and self-expression. TOCA believes that when we increase our desire we do everything better.

TOCA developed out of a collaborative, artistic and therapeutic dream of making products that sink into our natural systems and explode our senses. We want to make you tingle.

TOCA is a one-of-kind project fusing clinical herbalism, sex education, nutrition, sexual health, and trauma healing into dance routines and multiple orgasms.

 

Our People

We are plant-lovers, sex-lovers, and ultimately passionate about enthusiastic consent, authentic desire, and all the tools that make us more connective, fulfilled, and generous- to ourselves, our environment and each other. Our team is made up of experienced clinical herbalists, farmers, medicine makers, nutritionists, sex educators, formulators, and teachers. We believe that plant medicine acts in subtle and complex ways that provide meaningful shifts in the body so that you may facilitate your own healing and well being. 

We create organic plant extracts from high quality ingredients, using infused oils, essential oils, flower essences, stone essences, saltwater and wind. We trust the elements, the plants, and the ecologies that we live in and are designed for. We create high potency, low-dose products that are formulated to create a lasting and penetrating effect on the body.

STAFF

  • Avital Benedek

    Growth Strategist + Creative Director


    Avital Benedek has been creatively engaging communities through culture, dance, and art. She’s a communicator, collaborator, and bold empath —always looking for ways to connect people and build strong relationships through curiosity, sincerity, and vulnerability. Avital is a creative storyteller who looks to highlight the things beneath the surface of everyday movement. Recently, she has come to understand the power and importance of personal creative practice and believes we should learn how to foster a personal relationship with our erotic selves.

  • Manue Zapata

    Social Media Manager + Content Creator + Photographer

    Manuela Zapata is above all a queer soul and a photographer who loves to make portraits! She is a storyteller made by nature. Manuela likes when people call her Manu or Manue and her goal is to be “a safe space” for the ones she loves. Through her impeccable curation of our social feeds, featuring photography art and pop media, Manu is working with TOCA to create a social media presence that represents our products, our ethics, and our views on human sexuality. Manu has a degree in Arts and a drone called Macarena. Manue loves to explore her own desire and her spirit animal is a lioness.

    IG: @manuezapatz

  • Mauricio Abascal

    Marketing + Creative Director


    Mauricio Abascal creates luminescent photographs and video, cooks magnificent and nourishing food and makes dance music. He is a believer in listening to the quieter voices and taking the time to create the necessary space for them. He is a certified nutritionist, mushroom enthusiast, birdwatcher and improvisational dancer and does not believe in binaries. Mauricio teaches young people, is a designer and botanist, and moves through the world like the trees in the wind. He has been working with plants, and food as medicine for many years and is deeply committed to these relationships.

  • Tara Rodriguez Besosa

    TOCA Collaborator

    Tara she/they/ellx lives and loves on a small queer land sanctuary called OtraCosa in the mountains of Borikén (so-called Puerto Rico). If not found exploring in the forest, building DIY setups, or hosting a food sovereignty event, you can mostly find them on the road… visiting other queer and agroecological land projects, exchanging seeds and plants, cooking, and eating! Tara is a designer, architect, and entrepreneur, as well as activist. She is currently part of the collective of El Departamento de la Comida de Puerto Rico, where she focuses on resource sharing, tools and knowledge exchange for food projects, as well as weaving the relationships between queer land practices, queer community, healthy food, plant medicine and agroecology. Tara is a huge fan of TOCA, her favorite product being QUL(*). She takes it everywhere she goes and shares it with others, using TOCA as the one of the body’s caretakers after a long day’s work with land.

    IG: @bitchimmanolo