A three-day exploration into the essence of being human

Chronic, internalized shame is often invisible—not just to others but to ourselves. It’s a hidden, intimate relationship of self-rejection that permeates our whole being. This deeply rooted shame keeps us distanced from our Soul and our truest selves. It fuels an endless cycle of hiding—hiding from our core and from the vulnerability of being truly seen by others. But internalized shame goes beyond a mere “social” feeling; it anchors itself as a persistent sense of self-devaluation, exposure, and self-hatred, forming the very foundation of painful self-alienation.

In this state, we feel trapped, unable to break free from the inner psychophysiological grip of shame. Shame doesn’t have words—it begins in a place beyond language, beyond what can easily be named or described. Yet, to free ourselves, we need what we often fear most: the sensitive, gentle, and often intimate connection with others.

Living in the isolation of shame keeps us from expressing other emotions and prevents the genuine human contact we need to feel whole. In hiding, we conceal not only from others but from ourselves. Like children who stumble upon a skeleton in a game of hide and seek, we sometimes find that the ultimate hiding place has kept us isolated from life itself.

Only through meaningful connection can chronic self-rejection be transformed into a deeper sense of self. Our desire for closeness and intimacy arises from a fundamental need to be truly felt by another. This longing to experience our own “I am”—pure being—stems from our deepest inner health. But to be our true selves requires a profound connection with our Soul, our inner self, and a felt connection with others.

Over these three days, we’ll dive into the nature of shame, exploring how developing sensitivity, gentleness, and interactional attunement can gradually break the cycle of shame.

Please Note: This seminar is primarily a teaching experience. While we’ll engage in deep personal work to uncover our unique shame dynamics, it’s important to remember that this process alone won’t heal all forms of shame permanently. Instead, it’s the beginning of an ongoing journey toward self-acceptance and connection.

January 8-10, 2025

A three-day seminar on Attachment and Dissociation – unlocking wholeness, vitality, and personal power

Attachment shapes how we connect to others, beginning from our very first day on this planet. When secure attachment is lacking, we may find ourselves dissociating from our true Self. Dissociation is a complex and sensitive terrain—intangible, subtle, yet deeply impactful. It disrupts our inner experience, affecting the continuity between our consciousness, memory, identity, and perception. This disruption can be barely noticeable, or it can manifest as a profound and restrictive influence on our lives.

Often, structural dissociations in personality become organized around particular inner reactions: certain feelings, thoughts, flashbacks, self-images, or internal parts. These patterns can transform the routine of daily life into a unique hero’s journey, as if every day is a struggle to hold oneself together. Managing the emotions and disjointed experiences of daily life consumes our energy, depleting us and diverting our creative potential into the task of coordinating our fragmented inner world. Over time, this experience of fragmentation can start to feel like the very core of “who I am.”

This lifestyle often gives rise to intense attempts at self-regulation, which may appear as substance misuse, self-harming behavior, emotional numbness, or even a rigid, whole-body tension. These patterns often prevent real encounters with others from taking root. As structural dissociation persists, these inner parts become increasingly automatic and rigid, inhibiting the development of a stable, integrated sense of self that remains consistent across life’s different situations.

For therapists and healers, reaching into this inner world—or sometimes, inner absence—requires a finely tuned sensitivity. The absence of contact can leave us feeling perplexed and helpless, but it calls for exploratory, inviting, and occasionally challenging interactions that demand perceptiveness and practice. Various models can help us visualize and understand these elusive inner worlds, appreciating them in their uniqueness. It’s a delicate dance, where we learn to communicate with multiple parts on multiple levels, finding rhythm and flow even amid inner fragmentation.

Please Note: This is a teaching seminar. While we will engage in profound self-discovery to uncover personal patterns of attachment and dissociation, this process alone will not fully heal the trauma associated with these dynamics. It is, however, a powerful step on the journey toward integration and resilience.

April 2-4, 2025

A three-day seminar to explore and heal our earliest relationship imprints, uncovering the roots of fear, trust, and the coping mechanisms that shape how we perceive the world.

Our deepest yearning is to belong, to feel truly connected. We crave the experience of being “felt” by others, of being held, and of engaging in meaningful connections when we are deeply touched. Our ability to form lasting, fulfilling relationships is one of life’s most essential experiences; it sustains us as fundamentally as daily bread or the air we breathe. In every aspect of life, we rely on genuine encounters to experience integrity, wholeness, and a true sense of being.

However, our capacity for contact and bonding forms long before we have the awareness to understand it consciously. This is why we can’t alter deep-rooted patterns, imprints, and habits through sheer willpower. Within us, an unconscious body memory shapes our emotions, perception, and relationship behavior, coloring our interactions with others. It feels as if it’s simply “who I am,” a part of us that resists conscious control—and, in many ways, it is.

To move beyond these patterns, we are more interconnected than our independent selves may want to admit. In a profound way, we need each other to become ourselves. It is through encounters with others that we find a deeper connection to ourselves, allowing us to truly be with ourselves, even when we are with someone else. The paradox is clear: our independence and self-reliance can only grow from strong, supportive bonds. To feel nourished in relationship, we must engage our whole being, turn inward, and cultivate an awareness of our own and others’ internal states. Only then can we trust and fully experience meaning and fulfillment within relationships.

This seminar offers a space to experience and transform relationship imprints within a supportive and intentional framework. Here, we can reach into the places that often feel untouchable, bringing a renewed sense of vitality where rigidity once prevailed. In a safe, protected environment, we allow ourselves to experience deeper dimensions of connection, both within and with others. It is a long-awaited seminar for those who yearn to feel fully themselves in the context of a shared community.

“Show me the way to me.” That is the essence. This seminar focuses on connection in an age that often lacks real encounters. For many, the fear of our own reality feels more tangible than anything else in life. Self-perceptions, aspirations, and beliefs often act as shields, keeping us from our wounds and preventing the healing, enlivening contact with ourselves that we need.

In a world where relationships can feel distant—whether due to physical separation, technology, or inner disconnection—our opportunities for genuine connection are often weakened. The hunger for contact, for touch, for being with others becomes a painful yearning. Many find themselves in compromised relationships, choosing a little connection over the emptiness of isolation. But without real response, we are never truly filled.

This seminar explores a fundamental question: Which comes first—my connection with myself, or my connection with you? Does my encounter with you help me meet myself, or must I first find myself before I can meet you? What’s clear is this: my lack of connection with myself calls out for you. Through your acknowledgment, I find the courage to honor parts of myself I’ve yet to see. I owe this encounter with myself to you, just as I offer myself to you in our shared journey. From this place, something emerges between us that defies words—yet the feeling of fulfillment is more real than real.

In this seminar, Suze will bring her presence, life experience, and layered expertise to guide participants in understanding their relationship dynamics. Together, Jakko and Suze will share their personal practices in relationships, opening themselves with the necessary intimacy to model real connection. Step-by-step, we will regulate the intensity of our experiences, allowing what needs to emerge to arise naturally from the silence. Realizing yourself—a profound, quiet endeavor.

Please Note: This is a teaching seminar. While we will engage in transformative self-discovery to uncover personal dynamics, this work alone is not meant to completely heal all forms of related trauma. It is, however, an essential step toward a more authentic, fulfilling self.

September 3-5, 2025

These three days are an invitation to pause, reflect, and rediscover what is essential in the relationship with ourselves and with others. All dissociation begins with a lost sense of connection—with our own self, and with the world around us. Yet, in reconnecting through conscious encounters, we find a profound opportunity to reintegrate these lost senses of self and restore a deep connection with our Soul.

Throughout the seminar, we will explore the delicate power of subtle encounters—with ourselves and with others—as the gateway to reconnecting with the essence of who we are.

In a world saturated with noise and fleeting attention spans, loneliness and a loss of true connection have become increasingly prevalent. Many of us suffer from this lack of connection: unable to fully feel, perceive, or reflect on our lives and relationships. Routine and stress take precedence over something far richer, while emotional abandonment and the endless hum of media push us farther away from what is uniquely ours, often out of sight and beyond our perceptual horizon.

As true connection fades, we lose the experience of being deeply “felt.” Feelings and sensory perceptions become suspect—perhaps even threatening—and symptoms may be our only signals back to ourselves.

Without these connections, we come to accept a diminished self as the norm. Yet numbness inevitably builds into anger and aggression over time, as Arno Gruen explores in The Betrayal of the Self.

Denying our perceptions and feelings makes us robotic, distorting the human experience at its core. It distances us from our deeper humanity and from the transcendent connection we have with God, our Soul, and the Universe. For some, dissociation even becomes a refuge, an ultimate hideaway that reinforces disconnection from the Self as if it were a solution.

In this seminar, we’ll turn to silence, simplicity, and gentleness, engaging in trauma-sensitive encounters to reorient ourselves in our perception of self and others. This isn’t about doing; it’s about the small, subtle moments that reach the essential. It’s about the few fundamental qualities that touch what some describe as the intimate source of our being. Sensitive receptivity—where thinking, talking, and understanding pause—opens us to a quality that defies words and allows us to reconnect.

Dissociative Parts and Attachment Work for Ego Integration

Building on the understanding of attachment and dissociation in attaching that we explored in Module 2 on Attachment & Connection, this seminar focuses on the therapeutic practice of integrating fragmented ego parts.

We draw upon parts work from various therapeutic models, including ego-state therapy, schema therapy (Young), transactional analysis (Berne), structural dissociation (van der Hart, Nijenhuis, Steele), and hypno and systemic approaches.

Dissociation, as a complex disorder, requires an intricate synthesis of attachment dynamics, a systemic understanding of relational interactions, and the resolution of affect-avoidance strategies. Context-sensitive parts work and a finely attuned perception of subtle state transitions are essential to the process.

We will engage in slow-motion work, integrating stillness, mindfulness, and specific attention-control techniques, alongside imaginative distancing, to help merge fragmented aspects of ego identity into a cohesive self-experience. This multi-modal approach requires mindful self-awareness, balancing subtle self-observation with the courage to encounter oneself deeply. The interplay of focused attention and physical processing will soften the rigidity of partial states, allowing for integration.

Overcoming situational unawareness of ego parts, addressing deep vulnerability, and loosening the tight grip of control mechanisms are just some of the challenges on the path to ego integration. Practice, patience, and perseverance are vital. Developing a deepened self-relationship and an integrated, resilient ego calls for a careful yet courageous approach, particularly in moments where fear must be faced.

This seminar will focus on practical treatment work, providing an applied framework for exploring and integrating dissociative parts. Supervision will be available to a limited extent, depending on time requirements.

Please Note: This is a teaching seminar. While we will engage in profound personal work to uncover and understand individual dynamics, this experience alone will not heal all trauma-related issues. It is, however, a meaningful step on the path toward self-integration and enduring wholeness.