THE 8-Day intensive workshop
The Powerful, Transformative Deep-Dive into Radical Honesty
The 8-Day Intensive Residential Workshop is our flagship offering and is the most powerful way to experience the benefits of Radical Honesty in a supportive environment.
Connecting & Sharing with Others
Through this direct sharing guided by Radical Honesty Trainers, you’ll quickly see how you are often your own worst enemy, holding yourself back, blocking intimacy, and using your mind to make yourself stressed, unhappy, and disconnected. Your constant worrying, carefulness, and fear of saying the wrong thing, turns out to be just a waste of time!
You will discover not only a deeper love and appreciation for your whole self—wounds and all—you’ll also find you have so much in common with others, and you’ll ultimately fall in love with your fellow workshop participants.
A profoundly transformative experience.
The 8-Day Intensive is a full-time, communal experience designed to bring you profound personal benefits*. Previous participants report decreases in anxiety and depression, better sleep and better sex, more intimacy and connection, and more fun in their lives.
You’ll live together and experiment with telling the truth out loud, sharing what you notice about others, about your body, and about the thoughts going through your mind. You’ll get to experience your experience and express yourself fully in our “brave-space” workshop setting.
Honesty is the Basis for Intimacy
The 8-Day Intensive Workshop is geared toward learning and practicing the distinction between noticing and thinking. You'll learn that interpreting reality first is often a mistake, and actually noticing and reporting it through direct experience, will ground you in the moment and create connection.
When you learn to share with others honestly about what you notice, you co-create the basis for intimacy—learning to love being and love other beings for the shared experience of being here together.
*Even though some Radical Honesty Trainers may be licensed clinical psychologists, Radical Honesty workshops are not psychotherapy but a training in personal growth and development.
What We Actually Do
The 8-Day Intensive Workshop is packed with activities, including unstructured time each day to connect and experiment with your fellow workshop participants.
Conceptual Models
Hot Seat Work
Couples Work
Directed Conversations
Autogenic Relaxation
Naked Work
Paired Exercises
Movement + Stretching
Life Purpose Work
Group Exercises
Life Stories
Post-Workshop Community
Is the 8-Day Intensive for me?
What’s it like being at an 8-Day Intensive? What could you get out of the workshop?
Watch this video to hear participants talk about their experiences at the 8-Day Intensive Workshop in Costa Rica:
(video by Carlos Buneder)
Watch this video clip to hear our Trainers Marvin Schulz and Michael Alan Kolb discuss the 8-Day Intensive and how we work with participants, with footage from our recent workshop at the Cascada Elysiana Ecolodge in Costa Rica:
(video by Carlos Buneder)
In this video, Trainers Tuulia and Pete discuss our daily rhythm and the activities we do during the 8-Day Intensive.
You’ll also hear from participants sharing how the week was for them and just how transformational the workshop was in their own words.
“The best part of the workshop for me was the community that was there. I loved the people that were there, and it’s so nice—there’s so much relief, and fun, and it’s really juicy to be with people telling the truth to one another. It’s really relieving and freeing.” - Brian
The 8-Day Intensive Daily Schedule
Morning
We start each day by stretching, deeply relaxing, goofing off, and eating breakfast together. We check in with our friends and ourselves and see how we’re all doing. Then, we begin our morning session which includes paired and group exercises, discussing life stories, and some teaching.
Afternoon
After lunch, we’ll have a couple hours of break time to relax, exercise outside, play and connect with others in the group. Then we meet for a later afternoon session that includes hot seat work, communication skills building, discussions, and we’ll take care of whatever bubbles up in the group. We also might watch a movie or film that illustrates the principles of the day’s topic.
Evening
We’ll have dinner together and reflect on our day. After dinner, we all gather to hear two workshop participants tell their life story. Each person will be given about an hour to tell the story of their life while being filmed. We may have some free time after life stories to socialize or play music before quiet time. On the last evening of the workshop, we’ll have a party!
What makes the 8-Day Intensive different from our other workshops and retreats?
Telling your Life Story
During an evening session, you will be given about an hour to tell your life story to the rest of the group, uninterrupted. Each person’s life story telling will be video recorded, and you will get a copy of your story to take home and show to others. We ask you to show your life story video to important people in your life, which will aid you in doing completion work. The next day, we’ll all reflect on the previous evening’s life stories.
Naked Work
Around the fifth day, we all get naked. One at a time, we stand in front of the group and talk about what we like and don’t like about our body and tell our sexual histories. We video each person’s work individually, and then watch the videos as a group the next day, where each person experiences themselves on the big screen. The naked work is generally anything but sexy; rather, this is powerful work of going through and getting over the shame, embarrassment and suffering around our bodies and sexuality.
Life Purpose Work
Toward the end of the workshop after a week of self-discovery, we’ll reflect on our work, our life’s purpose(s) and our plans for the future. You will craft your Life Purpose Statement, read it to the group, and receive feedback. You’ll also begin creating a project outline in all the domains of your life for future planning. We will all stay in touch after the workshop, updating each other on our progress.
What happens during the 8-Day Intensive?
We will begin each day with conscious movement and meditation, followed by breakfast and a morning session of teaching, group conversations and paired exercises. We will then have a healthy lunch and an afternoon break. After the break, we will continue with a late afternoon session consisting of “hot seat” work, teaching, coaching, and more paired and small group exercises. Then we’ll break for dinner.
Life Stories
After dinner, one by one, each person will spend about 45-50 minutes telling the whole story of their life in front of the group; this will be video recorded. By the time the workshop has ended, each participant will have told their own life story and will have heard the telling of everyone else’s. Each person will also receive a copy of their Life Story video recording to later watch with their parents, siblings, lovers and friends with whom they have unfinished business in life and use the video-watching as a way to start honest conversations and create connection.
Naked Work
On about the fifth day, we’ll all get naked. This work is video recorded. One at a time, we’ll stand in front of the group and talk about what we like and don’t like about our body. We will also tell our sexual histories: when we first discovered we were a sexual being, when we first masturbated, how and with whom we like to have sex, how many sexual partners we’ve had, our favorite and least favorite sexual experiences, and so on. Though we’ll probably get embarrassed, with good coaching and complete sharing of the truth and support from the group we will face our shame/fears/taboos—and get over them.
Then, together, we’ll review the videos of our naked work. For some people, the process of watching oneself on a television screen, naked, while talking about their sex life can be a more confrontational process than the original experience of standing naked before the group. Again, the willingness to face the experience and live through it can provide a decrease in the intensity of the sensations related to shame/embarrassment and a change in perspective on one’s own life in the direction of compassion for oneself as well as compassion for others. And then, most likely, we’ll appreciate ourselves and others for doing this work and live more fulfilling lives with less shame about ourselves and our bodies.
People often presume this will be some sort of “sexy” experience. Usually, the experience is not all that sexy. Mostly it’s about embarrassment and shame and suffering—and about how our avoidance of those aspects of ourselves often controls our lives. Quite often, the participants who scare themselves the most about doing this exercise are the very ones who benefit the most from it (and the ones we have to tell, “put your damn clothes back on!” for the remainder of the workshop).
The video recording of your naked work will be deleted after the review.
Life Purpose Work
At the end of the workshop, we’ll spend some time focusing on how we’d like to integrate what we’ve learned in our day-to-day lives, and begin the process of creating a life of meaning for ourselves, by breaking the reactive patterns that are driving our choices (and therefor our lives) at an unconscious level. What we’re after is a life of co-creative connection, informed by our wants and desires, rather than lives of relative oppression, driven by reactivity from unfinished business with important people in our lives.
Falling in Love
As you can imagine, by the sixth or seventh day, people will have gotten to know themselves and each other pretty well. What happens—and it happens again and again with very diverse groups of people—is pretty much the same each time: everyone falls in love with everyone else. Now, isn’t that a hell of a thing? Imagine all the time and energy we have wasted putting on acts and pretending to be someone we’re not in hopes that others will love us for our performance, when actually what we needed all along was to drop the act and tell the truth—and be ourselves!
What Participants Are Saying
"Before I took the 8-Day Radical Honesty workshops I was a fucking mess, depressed and hiding behind an everything-is-going-fine mask.
Now I'm just a mess! More happily exposed and open, I enjoy my life more now, no longer thinking the world will end if people see the real me, and it's just beginning."
- Brad Mackey, Vancouver, B.C.
"The workshop was absolutely phenomenal. What I got was clarity on how to be honest and tools on how to be honest in a completely different way than I’ve ever been before.
What I know that I’m going to do going forward is being able to have more connection and more honest relationships in my life whether it’s with my partner or even a friend or a stranger.
I’m excited!"
- Vernice Armour, USA
Other Workshops + Retreats
Aside from our 8-Day Intensive Workshops, we also offer Weekend Workshops in major cities and Residential Retreats in beautiful and remote settings around the world.
Our Residential Retreats usually last 4-7 days and are quite different from the 8-Day Intensive. Retreats are typically part-workshop and part-vacation, with shorter sessions and more time off to explore, relax and socialize with your fellow participants. Retreats do not include telling Life Stories or Naked Work.
Some retreats are Advanced Retreats, open to those who have already been to a Weekend Workshop or another Radical Honesty Workshop. They may have a specialized focus (such as couples work), and will be a deeper dive into the practice of Radical Honesty, with more time for processing and hot seat work than our Weekend Workshops.
If you’d like to start with the basics, then a Weekend Workshop is a great place to begin experimenting with fellow truth-tellers. These workshops, which consist of three sessions (Friday evening, and Saturday + Sunday all day), are non-residential and cover the fundamentals of the practice with group and paired exercises.
Important: Even though some Radical Honesty trainers may be licensed clinical psychologists, Radical Honesty workshops are not psychotherapy, but are a training in personal growth and development. You will be asked to agree that you are completely responsible for your own well-being during the course of the workshop and thereafter, and hold the Radical Honesty Institute and its sponsors and trainers harmless.
Questions about the 8-Day Intensive?
Talk to us! We will help you decide if you are ready for this or not: support@radicalhonesty.com
Weekend Workshops
Residential Retreats