---

Just a note: I’ve shifted the “rules” for post­ing com­ments on this blog. You will now see your com­ment appear directly, with­out a delay for approval. I really want to hear from all of you, so click on the post title, above, and leave a comment!

---

---

Dar­bella and I just fin­ished up lead­ing another of our Week­end Res­i­den­tials, and I thought I’d men­tion the process. We’ve been doing these, (as well as Day-Long Inten­sives) for some years now, and peo­ple have arrived from all over the con­ti­nent, by plane, train, bus, and car. I’m not hold­ing out much hope for arrival by boat, unless it’s by canoe down the Grand River…

Our ini­tial think­ing was that this would be a good way to help peo­ple who were at a dis­tance from us. They’d be able to do a large block of work in a short period of time, while also hav­ing a bit of down time, and also enjoy­ing our admit­tedly excel­lent cook­ing. I’ve been sur­prised, then, of the pop­u­lar­ity of the Week­end Res­i­den­tial with peo­ple who are quite local.

We tackle pretty much any topic, and work with indi­vid­u­als or couples.

The cou­ple work tends to be focused either on com­mu­ni­ca­tion—as in improv­ing and deep­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills—or on dis­cov­er­ing exactly where the rela­tion­ship stands. In addi­tion to teaching/reviewing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion model, we look at things like breath and Body­work, aspects of con­flict res­o­lu­tion, and issues of affec­tion, inti­macy, and sex.

For indi­vid­u­als, we’ve worked with writer’s block, with med­i­ta­tion and east­ern approaches to fully liv­ing life, and have spent the week­end train­ing par­tic­i­pantss in the clin­i­cal use of Body­work. We’ve dis­cussed sex­u­al­ity, and spent the week­end doing var­i­ous and sundry Body­work tech­niques designed to open the client’s body to more pas­sion, focus, and release.

I sus­pect that these week­ends have great poten­tial sim­ply because they are time and focus intense. In a way, there is no escape. By this, I mean that the sched­ule focus heavy. We do some form of work, from talk ther­apy through breath and Body­work, for 10 hours dur­ing the week­end, and pro­vide sug­ges­tions and exer­cises for the par­tic­i­pants to exper­i­ment with dur­ing the downtime.

Com­pare this to weekly, biweekly, or monthly ther­apy ses­sions. Clients tend to work hard for the hour or two of the ses­sion, and then go right back into “nor­mal” life. While this stan­dard model (and admit­tedly, 90% of my clients fol­low this path) is effec­tive, it’s easy enough to “for­get to practice.”

With a Res­i­den­tial, it’s sort of right there, in front of you, and you have a con­tin­ual flow of feed­back from Dar and me.

Which is the other nice thing about this. Dar is an ele­gant and suc­cinct coun­ter­point to me and my of-times wordi­ness. I amuse myself at how I might take sev­eral min­utes to make a point, and then Dar tosses in one or two sen­tences that really nail the point. She make the point from her per­spec­tive, and her skill is fun to watch.

The two on one or two on two focus of the time is a real gift. It’s a time to engage deeply and fully, and any­thing and every­thing can be explored in depth. This is pos­si­ble, I sus­pect, because there is such a flex­i­ble block of time, and absolutely noth­ing else is going on—there are no distractions.

We’re work­ing with that one per­son or one cou­ple, and that’s it.

I sus­pect that liv­ing together under the same roof for this period of time causes some sense of shared pur­pose and effort. I feel a sense of focused com­mit­ment that leads to much more clar­ity for clients and us alike.

The other thing I’ve noticed is how side issues or undis­cov­ered issues pop to the surface.

It’s as if this process opens the door to the pos­si­bil­ity of deal­ing with essen­tial stuff that has either been ignored or per­haps not even noticed. It’s as if in the spa­cious­ness of the time and free­dom, the body and mind are freed to go in new direc­tions. And given that we com­bine talk­ing with breath and Body­work of any type or descrip­tion, there’s the pos­si­bil­ity of deep exper­i­men­ta­tion, the push­ing of lim­its, and the let­ting go of decades of accu­mu­lated cruft. (I’ve always wanted to use that word…)

We’re also pleased to note a build­ing trend of peo­ple request­ing a week­end to work on med­i­ta­tion and what we call “depth work.” We’re delighted to offer peo­ple a week­end getaway—time to “sit,” to dis­cuss the big­ger pic­ture, or to be in silence. We pro­vide a safe har­bour for explo­ration of the mean­ing of life and the mean­ing of the per­son. It’s a pow­er­ful thing to have the details-room, food, dis­trac­tion elimination-taken care of for you.

Any­way, after some 10 years or so of this process, we remain impressed with the results, and also amuse our­selves over how much we enjoy the process—as we notice how much we learn about each other as we work together.

If this sounds like some­thing you’d like to exper­i­ment with, check out the two pages on our site, (links are week­end and day-long) and drop us an e-mail. We’d be delighted to work with you—intensively!

---

Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

---

Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

---

No related posts.

---

Tagged with: Bodywork • Communication • conflict • intensive • residential

---