Step into a space designed for couples and individuals who are ready to grow. In this small, welcoming workshop, you’ll explore how to shift out of old patterns and into more balanced, joyful, and authentic ways of relating—through playful activities, meaningful rituals, light-hearted conversation, and creative role-plays.

We’ll look at three kinds of change:

• First-order change involves learning practical tools, such as better ways to express needs or listen more openly.
• Second-order change is that “aha” moment when you suddenly understand your partner’s behavior, or your own, in a whole new light.
• Third-order change goes even deeper: it’s about breaking free from silent, inherited rules about who you’re supposed to be so that you can show up more honestly and fully.

If you feel stuck in frustrating patterns, carrying responsibilities that leave you drained, have a sense of being “too much” or “not enough,” or sensing a quiet loneliness—even in close relationships—this workshop offers a path toward relief, reconnection, and renewal. 

This workshop is open to mental health professionals and their loved ones, including partners, family members, and friends. No background in therapy is needed—just curiosity, openness, and a willingness to try something new. 

Daily Flow:
Each day offers a relaxed, half-day group session filled with guided exploration and connection. Afternoons are yours to enjoy the colors, flavors, and spirit of Oaxaca—on your own or with new friends. In the evenings, we’ll gather optionally for shared meals, storytelling, and casual reflection under the warm Oaxacan sky.

No certified education credits are available for this workshop. 

A Guided Exploration in Eight Steps

Step 1: Awareness and Connection

• Cultural burdens: What happened to us?
• Gendered conditioning and the ways we protect
• Exercises: Identifying protective energies and patterns

Step 2: Appreciating Left-Brain Strategies

• Blame, defense, justification, distraction, and directing
• Caretaking and accommodation
• Exercises: Welcoming and witnessing our mental strategies

Step 3: Reaching and Responding

• Recognizing burdened demands and accommodations
• Becoming direct and imaginative in communication
• Exercises: Interactive practice with boundaries and consent

Step 4: Welcoming Detachment and Emptiness

• “This is too much,” and “I don’t want this.”
• Arriving at informed consent: Appreciating what it takes to heal and not to heal
• Exercises: Hiding with gentleness and curiosity

Step 5: Where Are You?

• Withdrawal as protection
• The wisdom of trapped places
• Exercises: Relational tracking of disconnection and return

Step 6: Honoring Freeze and Collapse

• Understanding overwhelm as a signal, not a failure
• Wellness as resistance
• Exercises: Co-regulated rest and easing into supported stillness

Step 7: Reimagining Conflict

• Finding the victim, perpetrator, rescuer, and bystander within
• Meeting anger with connection
• Exercises: Structured, creative conflict to transform old fights

Step 8: Mutual Transformation

• Building equitable, supportive, and joyful relationships
• Creating rituals of daily support
• Being lost: by accident or on purpose, and accompanying a partner who’s lost in the wilderness
• Exercises: Sacred witnessing and shared intentions