One Year Training 2025

Align your life, sexuality and relationships with your values and needs. Connect to what’s essential.
Dare to be present, truthful and alive. Dare to love!

In diesem 5-module Training over the course of one year, you have the opportunity to go through a transformative process in the safe environment of a group of GBTQ+ men*. Shared aspects of our identity like sexual orientation and gayness can be a powerful reason to join a group committed to healing and expression from a place of self-validation.

The training is designed to help you accept what belongs to you and what makes you unique: embracing your wholeness via all the different parts that make up who you are. You can use it also as a container to rekindle your passion and your own agency affecting a sense of who you want to be – in your relationships and in the world.

By anchoring in your body and the people around you, you can identify personal topics that you want to develop and use the training as a testing ground for your ‘real’ life. You might also get impulses for changes or new directions in your life. As a side effect, you are likely to also grow more resilient and calm in regards to the social and collective changes we are facing today.

In each module we highlight a different focus. Yet, common to all modules are also 5 themes that arc across the whole year. Throughout the year these arcs are: we support and encourage personal development and transformation, enhance relationship and communication skills, use embodiment and touch tools, explore community and belonging as well as welcome the role of spiritual and existential insights in our lives.

We give each other support so that there is enough space for you to go at your own pace – with the topics that become most relevant to you.

Aside from those personal benefits, the training also encourages you to explore your social roles; it invites you to find your place in your communities or become active in them. In the past, we have asked society to accept us. Now it is time to take our seats at the table.

If you are looking for a community and group-based process where you can develop yourself further, this just may be the training for you.

• Engage in a profound transformation process over a longer period of time
• Connect with and trust your inner resources
• Accept and embrace yourself more
• Explore what is holding you back from what you want
• Develop communication skills to make relationships intentional and fulfilling
• Be less in your head and more in your body
• Neue, verkörperte Bewusstseinszustände erfahren
• Recognize safety structures that have become personal obstacles
• Support a regular practice of self-care
• Respect your own limits and follow your own pace
• Use the experience of being in a group as a resource for personal healing and growth.
• And much more…

This immersive training lasts 28 days with three 6-day modules and two 5-day modules. There are 2 facilitators and 3 assistants working full time.

1. Personal Development and Transformation
Become more connected to your body, your emotions and your needs. Gain practices that help you stay present and grounded, reducing anxiety and overthinking. Engage in inner work that leads to increased self-awareness, and a stronger sense of purpose. Embrace and honour the experiences that shaped you. Recognise safety structures that have become personal obstacles. Welcome your history as a valuable foundation for growth while gently releasing the patterns that no longer serve the person you are becoming.

We use tools like:

• Journaling
  writing practice to integrate experiences and uncover insights
• Reflective sharing
  speak about topics and your learning gained in experiential exercises
• Creative assignments to tap the sub-conscious
  unlocking imagination and expression difficult to access via the rational mind

• Movement, embodiment and breath awareness exercises
  enhance body-mind integration and somatic presence through sensation

• Working with triggers
  learn to navigate and own your emotional activation in mindful ways
• Identifying your personal topics
  and work with them in embodied ways to gain support, growth or change
• Daily individual practice time
  nurture self-connection and attention in a way that aligns with your preferences

2. Enhanced Relationships and Communication Skills
Learn how to communicate more openly and effectively with others. Develop the ability to set healthy boundaries while maintaining intimacy and connection. Understand how your needs are linked with conflicts and defences. Learn about the connection between shame, vulnerability and intimacy. Discover more – and perhaps less obvious – functions of your sexuality, beyond pleasure and pro-creation. Explore your attachment styles and how your relationship dynamics are informed by your early childhood. Explore the complexity of other forces informing and shaping your identity and sexuality: from family to culture, from consumerism to digital media. We use tools like:

• Short lectures and reflection
  help identify and understand personal topics or challenges

• Verbal communication exercises
  build clarity, honesty and connection through dialogue
• Listening and feedback exercises
  foster empathy and presence for deeper understanding

3. Embodiment and Touch
In modern society, we often live “in our heads,” disconnected from physical sensations and bodily awareness. Embodiment—the practice of fully inhabiting our bodies—restores this missing link. By attuning to our senses and internal signals, we cultivate emotional regulation, resilience, and a more authentic relationship with ourselves.
Similarly, touch provides a profound gateway to connection. Safe, consensual physical contact not only fosters trust and emotional warmth but also triggers the release of beneficial hormones that enhance well-being. In a culture that sometimes overlooks the power of human contact, reclaiming touch as an integral part of personal growth can rekindle a sense of belonging and self-acceptance. When combined, embodiment and touch offer a holistic foundation for healing, presence, and deeper intimacy with ourselves and others. We use tools like:

• Somatic Movement Exercises using Continuum and breath
  enhance body awareness and the fluidity of movement
• Consensual partnering & touch exercises
  restore a sense of embodied healing, acknowledging the entire body in a disembodying society – *clothed or naked, using massage tables – *with or without genital touch
• Non-verbal communication exercices
  recognize and engage with another person’s cues, breath and body language through observation, touch and contact

4. Community and Belonging
Build authentic connections with like-minded individuals. Feel a sense of belonging and support from a temporary community that gradually learns to see, understand and accept you as you are. Let the experiences gleaned in this module inform the social contexts of your life. We use tools like:

• Open Space Format for self-generative
  participants co-create topics and shape their experiences

• Creativity Opportunities
  unleashing your imagination for joy, inspiration and personal expression
• Intimacy and Healing Rituals
  cultivating shared vulnerability, collective support, and communal healing dynamics

5. Spiritual and Existential Insight
Deepen your understanding of Eros as a life force beyond sexuality, connect to creativity, purpose, and love. Explore existential questions about life, death, and your place in the world in a safe and supportive environment.

We use tools like:

• Intimacy and Healing rituals 1-on-1
  facilitate emotional and somatic healing experiences for each other
• Ouroborus – a Continuum depths process
  explore the cyclical nature of life and death – facilitate the shedding of identities through a movement-based inquiry
• Gain insights from your relationship to death and dying
  embrace impermanence in order to deepen appreciation for life and connection

• Module 1 EROS – initiate – 10/15 June 2025
• Module 2 RELATIONSHIPS – communicate – 24/28 September 2025
• Module 3 COMMUNITY – share – 9/14 December 2025
• Module 4 POTENTIAL – expand – 27 January/1 February 2026
• Module 5 LOVE – surrender – 24/29 March 2026

Module 1 explores Eros as a core energy that shapes your life and relationships. In a group immersion, you engage in creative, embodied learning and connection exercises to build trust and emotional safety. Through the continued exchange with others you gain more access to yourself, your resources and how to navigate them. We work with expressing needs and desires, practice the setting of boundaries, giving consent, acknowledge concerns, establish group agreements, equip you with practical tools for honest self-expression and a respectful, supportive group dynamic. The module also helps you to develop a regular practice through which the connection to yourself and your environment can be regulated, strengthened and expanded.

OUTCOME:
My confidence and self-esteem grow. I have an intimate relationship with the fullness of my experiences, including discomfort. I am in contact with my inner resources, which give orientation and direction. I am in contact with my inner resources, which give me orientation and direction.

Module 2 explores the conditions that relationships require to relate from a set of shared values and to serve the growth of the people involved. We focus on clear communication and on identifying our personal topics that require a relational and experiential context to be addressed. You can explore and further understand patterns from your past using the frameworks of the Core Erotic Theme and Attachment Styles. We also explore working with triggers and giving feedback.

OUTCOME: I communicate clearly and honestly. Knowing that obstacles create opportunities for growth, my life becomes richer. I recognize myself more and can therefore choose more consciously. I know how to support the integration of rejected or compartmentalized parts of myself.

Our social bodies have a huge impact on our development. The negotiation between “I” and “we” is at the center of this Module, with opportunities to practice everything that we covered before in modules 1 and 2. Stepping into the experience of a supportive community can be immensely enriching in and of itself. Imagine a place where your individual expression can flourish, where it’s okay to be who you really are, with your longings, talents and tears, and with your joys, frustrations or fears.

OUTCOME: I can give and receive support to and from the group without sacrificing my autonomy. I see opportunities to engage in the collective and be fed by it. I trust my inherent gifts and creativity.

From the support of the group in module 3 we turn to recognize the uniqueness of each person making up the collective. Module 4
shifts the focus from the experiences and cultures that shaped us to that which we want to become and yet expand into. The experience of our bodies and their embeddedness in a moving world serves as an experiential starting point. We may also play with experiences of restriction and contraction as tools to access our capacity to expand. Here, for instance, our own breath can become a teacher. You can gain further clarity about what propels you forward and how to use the context of the training as a playground to support you in what you want.

OUTCOME: I can respect and appreciate other perspectives and opinions. I embrace the spectrum of everything that makes me and others unique. By connecting to my body, I can expand further into the world.

In the final Module 5 we will experiment further with attitudes and techniques of “Sacred Intimacy”. It involves an attitude that brings a sense of service, healing and acceptance into our intimate relationships. We will also initiate a depths-process that connects us in a fundamental way to being alive. The primary tool here is a somatic movement approach called Continuum. It can evoke a new understanding and humility towards the intelligence that orchestrates the web of life. This resonant and fluid connection can express subtly, become quietly empowering, even ecstatic. It enhances your empathic capacities while providing you with a somatic movement medicine best suited for you now. Death and dying are natural companions in this module – also to say good bye to each other.

OUTCOME: By surrendering to life, I stand fearlessly in its unpredictable unfolding. I have a place to go when I feel alone or confused, need connection, guidance or healing.

This training is for gay, bi trans and queer men*. All are welcome, regardless of background or age. You can use the training not only for yourself, but also to deepen existing relationships and to give them a new spark.
Pre-requisites
Participants should have taken at least one introductory course at Authentic Eros, the Stretch Festival, Body Electric School or have had comparable experiences in a group context. Structurally at Village.Berlin, and in regards to many activities, we can not lend any physical assistance or support to people affected by a number of disabilities. Please contact us to discuss options on the basis of possible individual needs.

Questions or ready to sign-up?
Participating in the One-Year-Training is an important decision that should be well considered. Please contact us if you have questions or need a phone or video conversation to find out if this is the right program for you. The training is led by Kai and Michael. If you have already thought about it and would like to sign up, send us an email, in which you introduce yourself and describe where you are at in your life and what motivates you to participate.

Costs for the training in Berlin 2025/2026:
the early bird and concession price is 3000 €. It is valid for booking and single payment until March 10th, 2025.
The regular price after that is: 3400 €. For instalment payment options please contact us.

The costs for food and lodging are not included in the above price. Catering and sleeping at the space costs 55 € per day.

General schedule
The first day starts at 10:00 and ends at 22:00. The last day ends at 16:00.
All training days in between start at 8:00 am with a morning practice and end at 10:00 pm. There is a breakfast break of 1 hour, an afternoon break of 2 hours and an evening break of 90 min.