Private Couples Intensives

The Art of Intimacy: Cultivating Presence, Healing, and Relational Wisdom

Couples seeking a high-impact, focused way to make an immediate improvement in their relationship will benefit from a private intensive.

The Art of Intimacy is a couples intensive (private workshop) based on the teachings of Hedy Schleifer, creator of Encounter Centered Couples Transformation. It is a 2 or 3 day journey with me and you, just one couple. The days are long but go by quickly…the way that time goes by quickly when one is in flow. Below is a description of the plan, but the path we travel is the one the two of you create together with me as your guide. The path may be different from the plan, depending on what shows up.

2 or 3-day Intensive

A 2 or 3-day private intensive is right for you if:

You are committed to making your relationship as healthy as possible
You are considering ending your relationship
There has been a trauma in the relationship such as an affair
One or both of you had traumatic childhood experiences that is making it difficult to make your relationship work
You’re a serial monogamist and really want to make it last this time
You’re engaged and just have a few issues you want to resolve before tying the knot

Why Consider Couples Intensives

These longer sessions support our healing because our physiology thrives in these settings. Here’s what I mean: our brain needs time to relax and engage in order to gain insights and make changes that last. During an intensive session, the changes have time to “take hold” in the brain and break old patterns. Having a deeper experience is more likely to translate to everyday life.

What to Expect

The intensive benefits from being scheduled as two or three days back to back. However, day long sessions can also be scheduled a week or so apart. If scheduling is particularly challenging, it can be broken down into four 4 hour sessions.

Whether two or three days is chosen is a decision we will come to together based on your goals and desires as well as my assessment of your relationship, current level of skills, history of trauma, etc.

Day long sessions include a lunch break on your own. They’re typically scheduled for 9am to 5pm but there is some flexibility. We will meet at my home office in the Mission.

Schedule Your Free Consultation Now

To get started and find out if a private couples intensive is right for you and your partner, schedule a free introductory session using the form below. It is recommended but not required that both members of the couple attend.

I will not live an unlived life. I will not live in fear Of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, To allow my living to open me, To make me less afraid, More accessible; To loosen my heart until it becomes a wing a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance To live so that which came to me as Seed Goes to the next as blossom, And that which came to me as blossom, Goes on as fruit.

—Dawna Markova

To pretend that we know what a client needs, what the client should do, what choice the client must make, is to deny mystery and to betray the client. Any thorough-going therapy needs to help the client accept and confront the mystery which enfolds us all…

—James BugentalThe Art of the Psychotherapist

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life,
whom you ignored
for another,
who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image
from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

—Derek WalcottLove after Love

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
they’re in each other all along.

—Rumi