A Holistic Mini-Retreat · Live & Online

End the war
with yourself.

Three days to discover the freedom on the other side of self-acceptance — where you stop fighting the parts of you that keep you stuck, and finally feel what becomes possible when you're no longer your own enemy.

Not a promise to reinvent your life in a weekend. An invitation into one small, embodied shift you can actually carry with you.

A golden-hour path winding through grassy hills toward open mountains
DatesOct 30 – Nov 1
Time12:00-2:00 PM ET
WhereLive on Zoom
Reserve your place — $111All three days · 90 Day Replay Access Included

Created by the Narrative Crafting Co. & the Open Consciousness Institute

The parts of yourself you can't stand

You've spent years trying to fix, suppress, or outgrow it.

The procrastination that shows up right before it matters. The anger you swore you were done with. The avoidance, the numbing, the harsh inner voice — the same pattern, returning no matter how hard you push against it.

You've read the books and done the work. And still, some part of you pulls the brake at the worst possible moment — and then you turn on yourself for it. The fighting has become its own exhausting loop.

Self-sabotageProcrastinationThe inner criticAvoidanceOld reactionsNumbing out“Why do I keep doing this?”
One pattern, three days

Come with one pattern you're exhausted from fighting. We'll work with that same pattern across all three days.

A reaction, a saboteur, a part of yourself you're tired of being at odds with. You won't scatter across a dozen problems — you'll stay with one, gently, and let your relationship to it change.

The reframe

What if the fight itself is part of what keeps you stuck?

This isn't “love every behavior.” It isn't “give up on change.” It's something quieter and far more powerful: discovering what becomes possible when you stop treating the part behind the pattern as an enemy.

The saboteur is likely not out to ruin you — more often it's a part of you doing its clumsy best to protect you. Met with acceptance instead of war, a grip that felt permanent can begin, on its own, to loosen.

Two young fox kits playfully wrestling in a sunlit meadow
What this retreat actually is

An embodied shift — not another set of concepts.

Three days, two hours each day. Deeply experiential, gently guided, and permission-based throughout. You won't be handed a framework to memorize; you'll be led through a felt experience of relating to yourself differently — one you can actually carry with you.

Experiential, not theoretical

Guided practice you feel in your body — not slides, homework, or another concept to master.

Permission-based

Nothing is forced. Cameras optional, always. You go only as far as feels right for you, each day.

Designed for integration

Designed to help the change take root in your body and travel home with you, rather than creating a glow that fades by the weekend.

Reserve your place — $111
Portrait of Brian
Brian
The two of us

You'll be held by real people.

This is a live, relational experience — not a course you click through alone. For three days you'll be in the room with us, guided at a human pace. Here we are before you arrive.

Portrait of Mirjam
Mirjam
The 3-day journey

Three sessions, one gradual turning-toward.

Each day is built on the one before it. You start somewhere gentle enough to hold with curiosity, and move — at your own pace — toward the pattern that has felt hardest to accept, then past it into what opens up on the other side.

01Oct 30

Befriend Your Pet Peeve

You don't begin with your hardest material. We start instead with a simple pet peeve — an everyday irritation that's far easier to hold with curiosity and compassion. Working there first, you access Self-energy: that calm, curious, spacious quality already within you, and you actually feel the difference it makes in how you relate to the irritation. Only from that steadier state do you begin, gently, to turn toward the more hated saboteur or pattern you came with.

02Oct 31

Soften Toward Your Saboteur

We stay with the very same pattern you brought, deepening the self-compassion that began on Day 1. This day makes room for the objections — the resistance, the doubt, the parts of you that don't want to accept the saboteur at all. Those are welcome too. Nothing gets pushed away; the parts that disagree get a seat at the table, and the relationship keeps softening from there.

03Nov 1

Liberate Your True Nature

Once the relationship has genuinely shifted, the final day moves more deeply into liberation — surrender, willingness, nonattachment, resilience. From there you begin to access the well-being and energy that were already there underneath the struggle all along. Not something added, but something uncovered once your strength is no longer spent fighting yourself.

How we'll work together

What the six hours actually look like.

Less watching, more experiencing. Each session is a guided, felt practice you move through with us — here's the shape of it.

Expand Nervous System Capacity

Using the S.H.I.F.T. Model, we combine EFT and parts work to soften reactivity and create more room to respond from choice rather than reflex.

Meet the Parts Beneath the Pattern

Through IFS-informed exploration, you'll get curious about the part behind the sabotage, resistance, or reaction — and begin relating to it with less fear and more compassion.

Write What Wants to Be Known

Gentle expressive-writing prompts help you notice what's hard to say out loud, give shape to what you're carrying, and let new meaning emerge without forcing a breakthrough.

Practice the Feeling of Freedom

Guided visualization helps you practice what acceptance, safety, and self-trust can actually feel like — so the shift becomes more than an idea.

Cameras stay optional and nothing is forced — you take part at the depth that feels right for you each day.

In their words

What participants have experienced with us.

“

Your last retreat was so healing and powerful for me. It was definitely further, deep healing and ILLUMINATION on a part that has been "keeping me safe" by hiding me from the world. Now that part has been recognized and loved and appreciated, so it allowed me to put more fun things on my calendar. Huge!!

— Kat S., returning participant
“

Sunday I was very chill and in the zone. Monday afternoon some residual anger and frustration came up and I just got curious. Eventually I reframed a couple past situations that seemed like obstacles. By the next day I realized I was in my own way. This work has inspired me to reprioritize what’s on my plate and update my website.

— Nicole H., first-time attendee
“

At the beginning of the workshop I wasn't even aware that I had two parts who were at total odds with each other, causing so much inner conflict and turmoil. After the workshop the two parts had made themselves known to me (shocking) and then shook hands and even agreed to start collaborating on my behalf after 70 years of conflict. 

— Hanna R., past participant
Reserve your place — $111
What you'll walk away with

Concrete. And yours to keep.

A felt experience of self-acceptance

Not the idea of it — the actual, embodied sense of no longer being at war with yourself.

A new way to respond to a recurring pattern

A different move to make in the moment your saboteur shows up — one that doesn't start a fight.

Greater internal resilience

More steadiness when things get hard, because less of your energy is spent bracing against yourself.

A repeatable way back to Self-energy

A practice you can return to on your own — long after the three days are over.

Reserve your place — $111
One shift that can last

We're not promising to change your whole life in three days.

We're offering something more durable: one genuine, embodied change in how you relate to yourself, the kind designed to support you long after the retreat ends.

Because a real change in that relationship doesn't stay contained. It quietly alters the trajectory of everything that comes after it — how you meet the next hard moment, the next old pattern, the next version of yourself you were about to go to war with. That's where the depth is: not in doing more, but in fighting yourself less.

Acceptance is not resignation

Let's name the worry underneath.

“If I accept this, won't I just stay stuck?”

Often it works the other way around. Fighting a part of yourself can keep the struggle alive, while acceptance can create the conditions for that grip to begin to loosen — and change, when it comes, tends to come from that ease rather than force.

“Doesn't compassion mean letting myself off the hook?”

Not as we mean it here. Compassion isn't permission to keep hurting yourself — it's the steadiness that can make real change possible. In our experience, compassion tends to make more room for change than shame or force.

“Why would I accept something I actually want to change?”

Because acceptance and change need not be opposites. You accept the part behind the behavior — understand what it's protecting — and from that place, the behavior itself can find room to change.

Who this is for

Come if this sounds like where you are.

This is for you if…

  • You're tired of fighting the same pattern and ready for a different relationship with it.
  • You're interested in experiencing this work directly — whether you're new to it or have done inner work before.
  • You're open to a gentle, experiential, permission-based process.
  • You suspect the harshness toward yourself is part of what keeps you stuck.

Maybe not right now if…

  • You're looking for a quick fix or a guaranteed total life overhaul in three days.
  • You want purely conceptual teaching with no inner, experiential work.
  • You're in acute crisis that needs dedicated one-on-one clinical support first.
What makes this different

Less promise. More depth.

Experiential, not conceptual

You leave having felt the change in your body, not just understood the theory behind it.

Built for integration

Structured so the change takes root and stays with you long after the three days — not a weekend high.

A steadier self-relationship

Centered on how you relate to yourself — and the resilience that grows when the internal fighting softens.

Reserve your place — $111
Your guides

About Brian & Mirjam

Two facilitators who've done this work in their own lives — and who care deeply about holding it gently for yours.

Portrait of Brian
Brian

IFS Therapist, EFT Practitioner & Licensed Clinician

Brian Hoganis a public speaker, award-winning filmmaker, licensed clinical therapist and life coach. Brian is the founder of The S.H.I.F.T. Model™—an integrated approach to working with complex trauma, and transcending the limits of identity and culture—rooted in Polyvagal Theory, Parts Work, and Tapping. S.H.I.F.T. stands for Somatic Holistic Internal Family Transcendence and at its heart the model embraces the paradox of transformation through radical self-acceptance..
Brian’s combination of passions in storytelling, spirituality, and mental health uniquely qualifies him to help clients master their own inner-narrative, see past it to their deeper intuition and then learn how to guide their life from that wiser, steadier and more benevolent place that includes, body, mind, heart and spirit.

Portrait of Mirjam
Mirjam

Director, Open Consciousness Institute, EFT Practitioner & Mentor

Mirjam Madhuri Paninskiis an EFT Master and Trainer, mystic, healer, intuitive guide, meditation teacher, writer, and researcher. She is the founder and CEO of the Open Consciousness Institute, where transformational healing is approached as both an art and a science. Rooted in a life of spiritual practice—growing up in ashrams and meditation centers around the world—and shaped by her own lived experience of complex trauma and profound healing, Mirjam brings a rare depth to her work. Her mastery in Clinical EFT is grounded in both rigorous research and somatic expertise, and yet, her true offering reaches far beyond technique. This work opens a portal into the places where thoughts can’t go—where science meets soul, and where transformation becomes a sacred return to self..

What brings us together in this work is a shared belief that lasting change does not have to begin with more force. Sometimes the most powerful shift begins when we learn to meet ourselves differently.

Practical details

Everything you need to plan for.

Dates
Oct 30 – Nov 1Three consecutive days
Time
12:00-2:00 PM ETSame time daily
Where
Live on ZoomJoin from anywhere
Investment
$111Total for all 3 days
A note for international participants
U.S. clocks change on November 1. The retreat remains 12:00-2:00 PM ET each day, so please double-check your local time for Sunday's session.
What to bring
A quiet, private space, a journal or notebook, headphones if you can, one everyday pet peeve and one pattern or “saboteur” you're tired of fighting, plus a willingness to be gently curious.
Replays
90-day replay access is included in your registration.
Show up as you like
Cameras are always optional, and the pace is yours — you're never made to share or go further than feels right.
Reserve your place — $111
Before you decide

Frequently asked questions

A few gentle answers to the things people wonder about most.

Do I need experience with EFT, IFS, or the S.H.I.F.T. Model?

Not at all. We'll guide you through everything you need in the moment. You don't need prior experience with tapping, parts work, or any particular healing framework to participate.

What if I don't know what part or pattern I want to work with yet?

That's okay. You don't need to arrive with perfect clarity. We'll help you begin with something simple and accessible, then gently notice what pattern or saboteur feels ready to be explored more deeply.

Will I have to share personal details with the group?

No. You're always in choice about what you share. The retreat is designed so you can participate meaningfully without disclosing anything you don't want to discuss publicly.

Do I need to have my camera on?

No. Cameras are always optional. You're welcome to participate in whatever way helps you feel most comfortable and present.

Is this therapy?

No. This is a guided experiential retreat for personal growth, self-reflection, and inner exploration. It may feel therapeutic, but it's not a substitute for individual psychotherapy, crisis support, or medical care.

What if difficult emotions come up?

You'll be encouraged to move at your own pace, pause when needed, and choose your level of participation throughout. Nothing is forced. If something feels too intense, you're always welcome to step back, observe, or return to grounding.

Do I need to attend all three days live?

The three sessions are designed to build on one another, so attending live will give you the fullest experience. If you can't attend every session live, you'll also have access to the recordings.

Will there be a replay?

Yes. You'll receive 90 days of replay access to all three sessions so you can revisit the practices and move through the material again at your own pace.

What if I don't want to “accept” the part of me that causes problems?

You don't have to force yourself to like, approve of, or keep any behavior that's causing difficulty. Here, acceptance means becoming willing to understand the part behind the pattern rather than automatically fighting it. Even resistance to acceptance is welcome and can become part of the work.

Still wondering something before you sign up?

Bring it with you — there's room for your questions in the room. You can also reach out to us at [email protected] for any reason, and we'll gladly answer anything before you join us.

“

Why isn’t this IFS/EFT combination already a thing? This is so powerful.

— L.M., past participant

That integration is the foundation of the S.H.I.F.T. Model — an original approach combining EFT, IFS and polyvagal theory into one embodied, parts-aware process.