Cultivating Joy: A Ketamine-Assisted Therapy Retreat for Couples

Consider this extraordinary opportunity!

Partnerships can be hard work, but they can also be the source of the greatest joy and emotional fulfillment in our lives. Poor communication, distrust, relationship conflicts, and struggles with intimacy can make it difficult to access the love, connectedness, and joy we might have once experienced with our partner. Cultivating Joy: a Ketamine-Assisted Retreat for Couples is a structured retreat lead by a staff of highly-experienced therapists and physicians that utilizes Mindfulness-based techniques paired with exercises and skill building from Imago Relationship Therapy, creative arts, movement and other healing modalities. This retreat also utilizes a powerful healing medicine, ketamine, in supervised, guided sessions to help couples reduce defensiveness, open their heart space to each other, and tap into the transformative power of pleasure. 

This retreat is a 3-day immersive experience for 18 couples in the beautiful Catskill Mountains. We welcome committed couples of diverse racial, religious, and ethnic identities, all sexual orientations (LGBTQIA+), relationship structures, and ages. The experience is designed to help you work through troubling stuck patterns, problems with sexual or romantic connection, and deepening trust and communication. This retreat is not designed to be a solution for a crisis or to avoid immediate divorce. If you and your partner are looking to learn practical tools and strategies to help restore or deepen the love and commitment in your relationship, then this retreat is for you. Each couple is required to have a free screening call with one of our staff psychotherapists to determine if this is the best environment for you to heal and grow. Each couple is required to have a medical intake interview prior to the retreat. We will be happy to offer you other referrals if it is determined that this retreat is not the right fit. Pre-retreat orientation sessions are offered through Zoom and will prepare you for this experience.  

All couples admitted into this retreat must commit to the full program. 

Why ketamine? Our retreat staff is drawn from the Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) Team at the Woodstock Therapy Center. www.woodstocktherapycenter.com. At least six licensed clinical professionals will host this retreat. The purpose of using sublingual ketamine lozenges and intranasal ketamine spray is to facilitate an environment to go deeper in the relational work. We have seen first-hand how ketamine can gently bring someone into a non-ordinary state of consciousness and help them to reconnect with their heart, feel pleasure, and increase the willingness to be vulnerable in communication. Our experience has been that ketamine can provide a more optimal psycho-spiritual-mental space to work within for individuals and couples. Some experts have described Ketamine as a ‘lubricant’ for process work as defenses and anxiety can be reduced.

Ketamine is an extremely safe, legal medicine that not only facilitates the experience described above, but helps to rewire the neural networks in the brain to decrease depressed feelings and increase openness to new positive thoughts and ideas. This retreat offers three opportunities to use ketamine as an aid to communication and connection with clinical supervision. Each individual participating in this retreat will receive a full medical evaluation  prior to the retreat by a licensed physician who will be onsite during the entire retreat experience to ensure your medical safety. 

Why Ketamine assisted couples’ therapy? (benefits)

The purpose of using sublingual ketamine lozenges and intranasal ketamine spray is to facilitate an environment to go deeper in the relational work. Our experience has been that ketamine can provide a more optimal psycho-spiritual-mental space to work within for individuals and couples.

SOLD OUT! “we are now enrolling for the April Retreat” call 914-924-1509

STEPS REQUIRED For Program Entry:

• Free zoom interview:  “Is this a retreat for us? “
  • Email Jayne at groupworks@aol.com
  • Call or text 914 924 1509
  • You must complete step one before registration or medical interview
  • Once you are cleared for the program we will schedule a required medical intake interview and a pre-retreat orientation (included in rate) on zoom.
    • Dr, Seema Desai and Dr, Matthias Von Reusner are the retreat physicians. These 60 minute medical intake interviews are required zoom calls and the fee is $400.
• Tuition: $1650 per person. Housing is separate. Medical interview and screening, one hour, is $400 per couple for the medicine.  %50 deposit now balance due August 1, 2022. Please text Jayne 914 924 1509 or visit www.relationshipresources.info.
• Register for housing with provided password once your deposit has been paid. Book spa appointments at Dewa Spa.
• We will send you a consent form to review and sign prior to arrival.

Schedule 

Please be certain you can attend the full retreat from Friday no later than 1 PM through Sunday at 5pm. Preparation and integration are essential components to this retreat as well as the beautiful “Relationship Re-Vision” at closing. All couples will be invited to a post retreat zoom call. All couples will be offered resources to continue the journey.

Friday, November 11th

• 11 – 1 pm Arrival and Check-in Please arrive no later than noon.
  • You will be met by one of the facilitators upon arrival. Lunch will not be offered. We suggest you have lunch.
  •  Meet the facilitators, review agreements; pick your ‘SPOT” in the Great Hall Conference Center. Enjoy the beautiful grounds.
• 12:30 – 1:15 Lunch (For purchase at Menla’s front desk)
• 1:15 pm Welcome program prompt start
  • “To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” Rilke
  • Introductions, review agreements, agenda, and schedule. Meet MENLA
  • Meet the Team
  • Nobel Communication.
• 4 pm Meet the medicine. Individuals
• 6 – 7:30 pm Dinner at Conference Center
• 7:30 pm Evening Program

Saturday, November 12th

•  7:15 am Meditation and Yoga (optional) at Conference Center 
•  8 – 9 am Breakfast at Lhasa 
•  9:15 am – 12:15 pm Accessing  Resources
• 12:15 Silent Walk 
• 1 – 3 pm Ketamine Session
• 3-3:30 Snacks at Conference Center
• 4:30-6 Free Time for Relaxation and Spa
• 6 – 7 pm Dinner at Lhasa
• 7:15 – 9 pm Intimacy and Sexuality
• 9:00 pm Bonfire  *weather permitting 

Sunday, November 13th

• 7:15 am Meditation, yoga, morning nature walk (optional)
• 8:30 am Morning Program; Integration and Optional Dosing
• 11:30 am Light Snack at Conference Center
•  12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch at Lhasa 
• 1:30 – 2:30 pm Free Time for Relaxation and Spa
• 2- 5 pm Values Sort and Relationship Vision. All participants MUST ATTEND
• 5 pm Closing Session
• Departure

* Additional nights can be booked. If you would like to extend your stay please email frontdesk@menla.org

*Please note that the schedule is subject to change.