What if a relationship is not a problem to be solved? What if instead, a relationship is a space between two people in which deep intimate connection can naturally occur; a space in which both members of a couple learn and grow together?

This description is very different from the “survival mode” of relating to one another that often drives people to seek couples’ therapy. It is about much more than ending conflict.

I guide couples to free themselves from reactive patterns that interfere with growth and aliveness and to facilitate their evolution. I introduce couples to specific techniques for accessing the deep connected space that exists between them. Practicing these techniques under my guidance rewires the brain, laying down new neural pathways.

Consider that you and your partner live in separate, multidimensional worlds. In this intimate experience, you will learn how to “cross the bridge” visiting your partner’s world without judgment or opinion. You will also learn how to be a generous and hospitable host, as you invite your partner to visit your world.

Using this method, you can safely visit areas of your relationship that are warm and welcoming as well as those areas that are daunting and difficult. When we are done, you will have learned a method of communication to take back with you into your lives forever.

I consider it an honor to be a guide, allowed into the sacred space that is a couple’s relationship.

The first session is a two-day session. (If that does not work for you, we can also meet for an initial three hours.)

The long first session gives you a chance to learn a new language of connection and to begin to integrate that new language into the space that is your relationship. The work includes a physical process of sitting across from one another, holding hands, making eye contact and visiting one another’s worlds. In the two-day session, I am with you on two consecutive days. I coach you in the method and guide you in visiting a series of different neighborhoods in one another’s worlds, including some of the “toughest neighborhoods” that you live with.

Should you choose an initial three-hour session, I will introduce you to the basic method of communication and guide you in visiting a “neighborhood” in one another’s worlds.

Follow up sessions can be scheduled as you want or need them. In these sessions I work in a variety of ways, not only using the Encounter Method, but also Internal Family Systems and more traditional talk-based couples’ therapy.

The words of a couple six months after the two-day intensive:

“We entered the work with Paul to find a way to connect even more deeply. It was more intimate and powerful than anything we have done. He created a container that allowed us to be more vulnerable than we have ever been with one another.

His teachings are not something you can read about in a book or pick up watching a video – to experience the wisdom he shares requires his gentle yet strong guidance and your full presence. It is transformational. The way we connect as a couple has forever changed by the work with Paul…”

Brad and Andrew Lande-Shannon, San Francisco