Some of the hardest work between partners is hard to reach in a standard session. A couple's intensive is a focused, extended session for partners working through the way trauma has shaped, or still strains, their connection. It makes room for the kind of relational repair that a regular hour rarely allows, designed and facilitated by Malachi Gillihan, a trauma specialist.
This is for couples ready to give their relationship concentrated, undistracted attention. Instead of returning to the same tender places week after week, you set aside one extended block to do the deeper work together, in and around Berkeley, CA.
Couples Intensives, an Extended Session for Reconnection
What Is a Couple's Intensive?
A couple's intensive gathers your relational work into one extended session, lasting around half a day. Where a standard appointment ends just as something important opens up, an intensive gives you the time to stay with it, move through it, and come out the other side together.
The focus is reconnection. Trauma can leave partners stuck in the same painful loops, or distant in ways neither of you wanted. An intensive creates the space and the pace to work through what's between you, with room to reach somewhere together by the end.
Who Is a Couples Intensive For?
This is for couples where trauma has shaped or impacted the connection, whether one or both of you carry a trauma history. Maybe old wounds keep surfacing in the relationship. Maybe closeness has become hard, or conflict keeps landing in the same place. You don't need to have it figured out. You just need to be two people willing to show up for the work.
It asks something of both partners. An intensive works when you're both in, ready to be honest and to stay present with each other. If what you want is steady support over time rather than a single concentrated session, ongoing couples work is a better fit, and there's a link to it below.
What Happens During a Couple's Intensive?
An intensive is more than a long conversation. Across the session, talk-based relational work is woven together with movement and guided practices that help you both settle, soften, and reconnect. It also includes exploring and better understanding how the nervous system works in general, and specific patterns each of you have developed. This leads to better understanding of stress cycles from the inside out, providing insights and tools into disrupting conflict before it gets out of hand, repairing ruptures and betrayals, better understanding the roles and rhythms of space and closeness, the influence of natural introversion and extroversion, how you approach getting shit done, and what turns you on (and off).
The work also includes a partnered yoga element, gentle and accessible, that brings the body in rather than keeping everything in the head. Trauma lives in the body, and so does safety. Moving and breathing together, with guidance, can open a kind of reconnection that words alone struggle to reach.
The shape shifts with what you need on the day. Some of the sessions are direct and focused. Some of it is quieter and restorative. All of it points toward the same thing, finding your way back to each other.
How Is the Intensive Shaped Around You as a Couple?
Nothing here is a script. The session is designed around where your relationship is now and what trauma has touched, paced to both of your nervous systems, so neither of you gets left behind.
Malachi facilitates the whole session, holding the structure and the safety so the two of you can stay with each other rather than manage the process. You show up together, and the rest is built to hold you.
Who Facilitates Your Intensive?
Your intensive is led by Malachi Gillihan, a trauma specialist whose work centers on the nervous system and the body. He holds a Master of Arts in East-West Psychology and a Spiritual Counselor certification from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he is now a PhD Candidate. He has trained under respected figures in interpersonal neurobiology and trauma, including Dr. Dan Siegel and Deb Dana.
Holding relational work for two people at once takes a steady hand. That nervous-system grounding is what lets the session go deep while staying safe for both partners.
Looking for Ongoing Couples Support?
An intensive isn't the only way to work on your relationship. If steady sessions over time work better for you, or you'd like to start there, ongoing couples and family support is a strong place to begin.
Book a Free Consultation Today
Every intensive starts with a conversation. You'll talk through where your relationship stands, what you're hoping to work toward, and whether this format fits both of you. From there, you plan the intensive together. Reach out when you're both ready.