Our Intensives

Experiential therapy is a method of treating a human as a human. We have anger, sadness, joy, and grief running through us. We struggle with physical ailments, mental challenges, anxiety, etc. This is an opportunity to address all of these feelings. We will laugh, we will scream, we will move our bodies, and we will cry. The intensives are 4 days long. The intensive experience is an opportunity to take a deep look into yourself, your coupleship, team, or a situation that has been problematic or traumatic. We will learn about your goals for this particular experience and create the plan together. Each intensive is unique and the sole focus is not teaching you coping skills, but to heal you. Coping is not healing.

An individual or group intensive is an exceptional opportunity to work with an expert clinician to focus on your unique and specific roadblocks in a private and personalized setting curated specifically for you, your family, or your team. We will address past traumas, unspoken needs, fear, and patterns of conflict. There will be exploration to help work through individually, or with others, to find ways to communicate freely, work creatively together, and create harmony amongst yourself and those around you.

This is surgery for your personal growth journey that utilizes laser focus. Going to weekly therapy has benefits, much like getting a weekly massage. However, if you need a tumor removed, then no matter how many massages you get, your tumor will never be removed unless we remove it. Talk therapy is designed to impact the 20% of the brain that is known as conscious awareness. The bottom 80% is outside of conscious awareness. This top 20% is controlled by the bottom 80%, which is out of reach from the impact of talk therapy. You cannot talk yourself out of trauma and tell yourself to be different. The bottom 80% of your brain, which is outside our conscious awareness (including your central nervous system), controls our thoughts, feelings, reactions, perceptions, sensations, and how we move in the world. Experiential therapy impacts the bottom 80% of our brain, where you live, as well as the top 20%, where you think. This even has the ability to impact muscle memory and how the body holds our experiences. By engaging the 80%, you eliminate ongoing influence from troubling past events, blocked energy is released, healing takes place, negative habits and pain are replaced by positive actions. The change is AUTOMATIC!

Experiential therapy is for anyone and everyone who feels the need for support and especially for those that feel traditional therapy just isn’t working. We aim to change the mental health institution through HEALING, not COPING. We are here to serve a purpose that enables you to live yours.

We have a toolbox that utilizes two decades of experience. We will go through a wide range of methods such as Psychodrama, RRT, Brain Spotting, Adventure Therapy, Expressive Arts, Sound Healing, Yoga, and Meditation.

Experiential Therapy is the umbrella term used for any action-oriented, multi-level co-created therapeutic intervention. This definition covers a wide range of methods and techniques. An experiential activity can include art, music, games, horses, scarves, props, or none of these items. It can take place in a therapy office, workshop, classroom, boardroom, ropes course, forest, or field. It can be done individually, as a couple, group, family, team, class, corporation, community, or a workshop with over 5,000 people.

Let’s unpack our definition of Experiential being any action-oriented, multi-level, co-created therapeutic intervention. The action-oriented aspect means that the participant and/or the facilitator is doing something. The action can include the whole body in the case of dance and yoga or the action can include just the eye such as with brain spotting. The action might include something being made such as the case with art and music therapy. The action might be working on a challenge such as with an adventure initiative. The action might be dramatic such as the case with psychodrama. The action can be with an individual, as a couple, family, team, or community. Action-oriented means something is being done by somebody.

The second component of the definition is the multi-level nature of any experiential approach. The brain can be separated into 2 simplified parts; aspects that are inside our conscious awareness and aspects that are outside our conscious awareness. Dr. Jon Connelly says, the level that we are aware of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations are not the same level that they are created. The metaphor that we use with our clients is the difference between a Bluetooth speaker and the phone playing the song. Our conscious awareness is the level of the Bluetooth speaker and the unconscious is the level that the song is being played. We all know that if you don’t like what is being played the change needs to happen at the level that the song is being played rather than the Bluetooth speaker.

Thoughts, feelings, and sensations are created way below the level of consciousness or the level that we are aware of them. Experiential methods work at both the aspects of mind that we are aware of as well as the aspects of mind that are outside of our conscious awareness. Trauma, shame, and addiction are all experiences, thus we cannot talk our way into a new experience; however, we can have a new corrective experience. In neurological terms, this is referred to as the difference between top-down processing versus bottom-up processing.

A co-created therapeutic experience means that the participant(s) and facilitator work in conjunction with each other to bring the experience to fruition. The facilitator acts as the midwife for the participant’s experience. The facilitator follows the participant and helps create a container optimized for growth, healing, or whatever else the target might be. Marc often refers to this as the experiential feedback loop. The facilitator puts something out there such as a suggested activity or concept to try on. The participant(s) receive this and it has an impact on them. The facilitator must then be tuned in to the impact on the participant(s) in order to inform the next step on behalf of the facilitator.

The therapeutic aspect is that there is a level of change that occurs. The change can be the resolution of trauma, increased skills, emotional regulation, increased cohesion, decreased conflict, increased awareness, or thousands of other targets. The experience itself becomes the encounter for change. The encounter was famously discussed and written about in a poem by Jacob Moreno, in which he says an encounter is “A meeting of two: eye-to-eye, face-to-face”.