Hello everyone, this is Dave writing.
After many years of running events, and being involved in large multi-day gatherings I’m instituting a policy that might seem out of the ordinary, so I’d like to take some time to explain my thought process, for anyone who is interested.
Our refund policy is that a full refund is available for anyone who is dissatisfied with their IntimacyFest experience, and it’s available up to 6 months after the event is complete.
While a significant amount of work has gone into having IntimacyFest be a safe, nurturing container for everyone involved, the nature of these types of events is such that we often don’t fully understand our experience until weeks, often months after we get back home. I call events like this “Ecstatic Group Experiences”, because they can sometimes result in people experiencing heightened states of joy or self-transcendence. In other words, they often get us “high” without the use of any substances. This altered state isn’t necessarily the intention of IntimacyFest, but it can be a byproduct. Given that fact, I believe participants should be given time and space to “come down” from the experience before fully understanding it’s impact.
To get a bit more philosophical, this refund policy shifts the power back to the participants, by acknowledging the responsibility we have as facilitators and space holders. We (the facilitators) are creating powerful containers and inviting people in who, by the nature of it, don’t fully understand what they are getting themselves into. I don’t say that to scare people or attempt to sound “edgy”, I say it to acknowledge the fact that as facilitators, we have a much better sense of what kind of journey people are in for, and it’s on us to make that a journey people are glad they went on.
Frequently Anticipated Questions
When you say “Ecstatic Group Experience” that sounds a bit culty… how is that different than events that use these heightened states to coerce or manipulate people?
This is a really important question. One of the hallmarks of an organization that ends up coercing or manipulating participants is downplaying the potential effects, which also makes way for facilitators to shirk responsibility for the risks associated with that impact.
While it may seem questionable that an event would warn you that you might get high from a group experience, it’s an attempt to create as much informed consent as possible, so that participants can assess the level of risk they can choose to take or not take.
For an in-depth understanding of how “Ecstatic Group Experiences” can lead to harm, there is a lot of great research on something academics and psychologists call “Large Group Awareness Trainings”. These are seminars and trainings similar to the Landmark Forum, ISTA (International School of Temple Arts) and many others like it. I wrote about ISTA and the harms that LGATs do in an essay called “My Thoughts on ISTA” and at the end of the essay there are links for further research on Large Group Awareness Trainings.
How do I request a refund or ask questions about this?
Email me (Dave) and we can set up a conversation.