Your Daily Agenda

Each retreat day opens with a three hour couples session from 9:00 to 12:00, followed by a lunch break until 1:30. On the first three days, each partner then has a private individual session, one from 1:30 to 2:30 and one from 2:30 to 3:30, before the day closes with an afternoon couples session from 4:00 to 5:30 that integrates everything that surfaced.

Roughly six hours of structured work each day: a three hour couples session every morning, two hours of individual sessions on days one through three, and a closing afternoon couples session, with a full lunch break from 12:00 to 1:30 and other breaks whenever you need them. Across 3 to 5 days that adds up to about 30 hours of focused therapy.

Day one is about attunement, alignment, and the cycle. The morning covers getting acquainted and history taking, personal, family, and couple, including the legacy of family dynamics; you define the problem, set goals, and are introduced to your personal and interpersonal emotion and action cycles. In the afternoon, individual sessions review each partner's history form and worst things list.

Day two goes deeper into your personal styles of engagement: what triggers you, your raw spots and rocky moments, and your relationship's dance of disconnection, with the fear and longing that go with it. Day three is about trust and vulnerability: you begin to catch yourself going into your cycle and start the difficult process of putting your wants, needs, and fears on external speaker.

Days four and five shift the afternoons entirely to couples work. Day four focuses on the longing versus fear continuum and the 'Please hold me, be there for me' conversation, and if you are ready, you begin looking at past hurts we call relationship injuries. Day five is forgiving injuries and trusting again: sharing pain, apologizing, accepting apology, and consolidating your new connection.

Using methodology from EMDR and ImTT, two powerful trauma resolution therapies, your therapist reviews your history form and worst things list: Mom and Dad trauma clusters, attachment injuries, and relationship injuries. The sessions target the driven behaviors and feelings that personal and family history, especially trauma, can lock into a relationship, and their insights are woven back into the afternoon couples work.

No, individual sessions run on the first three days only, one private hour for each partner every afternoon. They address the personal trauma, old programming, and trust issues that may be keeping you disconnected from one another. On days four and five the afternoons shift to extended couples sessions that heal relationship injuries and carry the work to completion.

No, a retreat is not a vacation. Your time is filled with activities designed to help you go deeper into your emotions and learn how unconscious thoughts and habits affect your ability to connect with your partner. When challenging and uncomfortable feelings come up, you are gently guided through working with them. The pace is structured but humane, with a real lunch break and breaks whenever you need them.

Neither. The sessions are experiential investigations, including dialogues, interactions, and enactments, so new patterns are practiced in the room rather than talked about in the abstract. The work is oriented around feelings, emotions, and behavior, and the internal dialogues we hold about ourselves, each other, and the world.

Every block of the day has a job, and the order matters: connection first, individual trauma work inside it, and integration before each day ends. The morning couples session builds depth, the lunch break gives that work room to settle, the individual sessions process what each partner carries in, and the afternoon session makes sense of it together. A clear agenda also means you always know what comes next.

Every day closes with the two of you together. The afternoon couples session integrates and makes sense of your personal and interpersonal cycles, weaving insights from the individual sessions back into the couples work so nothing from the day is left hanging. On days four and five, a closing session carries the day's work to completion.

The goal is to have you de-escalated, regulated, talking to, and trusting each other, with a clear awareness of your cycles and triggers: what Emotionally Focused Therapy calls the beginning of stage two. By day five your trust and bond are strong enough to begin healing old relationship injuries, and the final afternoon puts it all together and consolidates the work before the intensive completes.