Radical Honesty 8-Day Intensive

An 8-day intensive Radical Honesty retreat in ZEGG – an intentional community near Berlin, founded on principles of authentic community, shared responsibility, and sustainable living.

Authentic Connection
The key to intimacy is honesty. Learn the core honesty skills as a way to transform yourself and your relationships.

Transformational Communication
Clear and direct communication is a game-changer. Learn the tools to resolve conflict both within yourself and with others.

Self-expression & Self-compassion
Discover what wants to be expressed moment-to-moment while cultivating the tools for self-compassion.

A Supportive Environment
There are so few places where you can be your FULL self. Use this supportive environment to discover who you really are in the moment and emerge a changed person.

The Immersive Experience
There’s nothing like the full-time, communal experience of a Radical Honesty immersive workshop.

To really see yourself anew, notice how you’ve held yourself back, and relearn how to connect authentically with others, you need time, community, and great facilitators.

Throughout your 9 days at the workshop, Tuulia, Pete and Eivind will lead the group through a series of learnings in Radical Honesty, including honesty skills training, lectures, paired and group exercises, hot seat work, couple’s work, meditation and movement, naked work, and life stories.

This is an advanced workshop and we will co-create the program based on the themes and topics important to the group.

The retreat takes place at the peaceful and welcoming community ZEGG - the Center for Experimental Social Design. This over 30-year old living experiment in Bad Belzig less than an hour from Berlin, has 120 people living and exploring the personal and cultural conditions for trust, connection and cooperation on a daily basis.

In the breaks, you may explore the community area and go for walks in the surrounding nature. We are invited to spend breaks in ZEGG’s village pub with delicious warm and cold drinks and a cozy cuddle corner. The pool area invites you for a cold swim in the morning, and we have already booked the sauna for one evening, with the option of more for an additional price.

We will be served breakfast and two warm meals per day (vegetarian with vegan options), prepared from the community’s own permaculture acres and local ecological sources.

Connect in a deep way with others.

Talk about the things that are shameful or embarrassing or difficult for you to talk about. Experience compassion. Learn to express whatever arises in you in the moment: excitement, fear, anger, attraction, appreciation, embarrassment, happiness. Experience the sensations in your body as they arise. Learn and practice being present in the here and now.

Content of the training:

This workshop includes lectures, directed conversations, paired exercises, small group exercises, hot seat work, meditation and much more to help you learn how to relax into intimacy based on being open and honest. All this is geared toward having you learn and practice the distinction between thinking and noticing; the difference between interpreting reality and actually noticing it through direct experience. Then you learn to share what we notice about the reality of your own experience with others, and have it be the basis for true intimacy—learning to love being and love other beings. In this workshop, you can express yourself by laughing, shouting, crying, smiling, sharing and by asking for what you want.

This workshop is for you if:
・you want to experience more freedom in your life
・you want to let go of shame, fear and attachment to approval
・you are looking for using conflict creatively and want to go beyond blame
・you desire to learn the art of asking for what you want
・you want to heal your relationships and find forgiveness
・you yearn deeper love, connection & intimacy

Workshop on How to Live, Love, Laugh & Be Happy & Completely Ruin Life as You Know It

Radical Honesty is direct communication that leads to intimacy. It is the difference between making a performance and laughing and playing with friends. Honesty is kind of scary fun that turns out better than you thought it would. Lying is work and a pain in the ass and makes you lonesome as hell.

We claim that lying is the major source of all human stress. It wears us out and eventually kills us. When people engage honestly, energy that was wasted maintaining a performance to make an impression is suddenly available for real creativity in playing together. When we admit our pretenses we can refresh our relationships and powerfully create new ways of living together. That is the not so secret of Radical Honesty.

Leaders:

The workshop leaders will be certified Radical Honesty trainers—and married couple—Tuulia Syvänen and Pete Jordan - assisted by Radical Honesty Trainer Candidate Eivind Liland.

Watch this video to hear us (and others) talking about the RH 8-day intensive workshop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q28T5-cEkK4

ARE YOU READY TO TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE?
Learn to:
* Let go of shame, fear and attachment to approval
* Be completely and compassionately honest
* Get out of your comfort zone
* Share with others – laugh out loud, cry and yell, smile and dance
* Ask for everything you want; expand your ability to give & receive
* Heal relationships with full-body forgiveness

9 days and 8 nights
We will be held within the unique container of ZEGG, a vibrant intentional community in Bad Belzig just outside Berlin, set on roughly 16 hectares of sprawling grounds. It’s a place built for connection, with unique architecture, lush permaculture gardens, quiet corners for reflection, and a beautifully designed natural swimming pond that uses biological filtration. This provides the perfect backdrop to let go completely, with ample space and privacy to dance, laugh, yell, and cry to our heart’s content. It’s an environment that offers both the comfort to feel safe and the gentle push to transform. During the breaks, you’re free to take a dip in the pond, lounge in the gardens, stroll through the surrounding nature, or connect with others in the cozy village pub.

Brad Blanton—Radical Honesty founder—says this about the 8-day intensive workshop:
“The 8-Day workshop is an experiential course in living out loud, increasing your capacity for intimacy and creativity, and living your life on purpose, instead of residing in the jail of your mind and reacting to life’s circumstances while believing you’re in control.
“In our workshops, we get together to make some agreements about what we will do together for the next nine days. One of the most important agreements is that we will tell the truth to each other completely for the next nine days. If that was all that occurred, and there were no other agenda whatsoever, the course would be powerful because the power of that agreement alone is incredible.”

What is the program?
We have more flexibility in this 8-Day Intensive program. We will plan the program based on the key topics and themes from the groups. We will skip many of the basic exercises.

We will begin each day with about 20 minutes of conscious movement and 20 minutes of meditation, followed by breakfast and a morning session of teaching, group conversations and paired exercises. We will then have a healthy lunch and an afternoon siesta. After the break, we will continue working with “hot seat” work, teaching, meditation, movement or dancing, and more paired and small group exercises. At around 19:00, we’ll eat dinner.

After dinner, one by one, each person will spend about 30 minutes telling the whole story of his or her life. By the time the workshop has ended, each participant will have told their own life story and will have heard the telling of everyone else’s. Each person will also receive a copy of the video recording of them telling their story. They can later watch their video with their parents, (ex-)spouses, siblings, lovers and friends with whom they have unfinished business in life and use the video-watching as a way to start honest conversations.

We will also do naked work and that will be more focused than on “regular” 8-Day intensive. You can dive into the topics key for you in your body image, sexuality and sexual shame.
One at a time we’ll stand in front of the group and talk about our body. The workshop leader will ask you questions depending on your core area of work.
Though the work you will probably get embarrassed, with good coaching and complete sharing of the truth and support from the group you will face your shame/fears/taboos—and get over them.

People often presume this will be some sort of “sexy” experience. Usually, the experience is anything but sexy. Mostly the naked work is about embarrassment and shame and suffering—and about how our avoidance of those aspects of ourselves often controls our lives. Quite often, the participants who, beforehand, scare themselves the most about doing this exercise are the very ones who benefit the most from it!

Each participant will receive a copy of their naked work video to watch again at home and share with others in his or her life. (And the original files of those recordings will then be deleted.)

As you can imagine, by the sixth or seventh day, people will have gotten to know themselves and each other pretty well. What happens—and it happens again and again with very diverse groups of people—is pretty much the same each time: Everyone falls in love with everyone else. Now, isn’t that a hell of a thing? Imagine all the time and energy we have wasted putting on acts and pretending who we are in hopes that others would love us for our performance, when actually what we needed all along was to drop the act and tell the truth—and be ourselves!

Brad Blanton says this about the lead trainers:
“If you do a workshop with Tuulia, it’ll change your life. […] Pete is a calm, level-headed and compassionate trainer. He’s a good listener and has a great ability to stay present and focused.”

Some past participants have expressed this about our Radical Honesty 8-day workshops:
“I judge this workshop to be one of the best things I’ve done so far in the area of life improvement (and I’ve done some). I feel tempted to say ‘life changing’ as I now navigate through the world with a sense of freedom & expansion unknown to me before. I felt very safe & seen during the entire, very intense time. I judge Tuulia & Pete to be highly competent coaches and inspiringly authentic.” –Silke

“After having already done a few Radical Honesty workshops, the 8-day intensive went much deeper and showed me even more than before what stories I tell myself to make myself unhappy. By being in this environment for a longer amount of time and with the closeness created in the group, I took a big step in knowing who I really am and daring to show myself.” –-Arjen

“I attended two intensive 8-day retreats with Tuulia and Pete. Both have been very powerful experiences that changed my life profoundly. I cried, laughed, shook, danced, shouted, cuddled, whispered, sang. I told the story of my life and was naked with people I had met only a few days before. And I survived. And I fell in love with these strangers. And I fell in love with myself. Today, I breathe and live more freely. Thank you.” –Participant

Weather
We will be gathering at ZEGG in the early days of autumn. September here can bring warm, golden late‑summer days perfect for walks, as well as cooler, crisper weather that invites coziness—so please come prepared for variety. We recommend packing in layers—T‑shirts, a warm pullover or fleece, and a waterproof jacket—so you’re comfortable whatever the weather brings.

Typical temperatures are around 16–21°C by day and 8–12°C at night.

Lodging

The guest house has single- and double rooms, as well as shared rooms if you like communal sleeping. You may also choose a cabin, or to camp in your own tent or camper (limited!), or find external lodging nearby on your own.

When does the workshop begin and end?
We recommend you arrive in the afternoon, with enough time to check in before dinner, served at 18.30 on the first day. The workshop starts after dinner, and will finish with lunch at 13:00 on the last day. You may book an extra night – and we recommend to do so to have some time to relax and integrate before heading back home.

Who can participate?
No prior experience with Radical Honesty is required, however it is useful. You will, though, have to agree to the workshop’s commitments: to keep confidentiality, to tell the truth, to support others in telling the truth, to be on time and present, to allow the trainers to coach you and to ask for what you want. We also recommend you read Brad Blanton’s books Radical Honesty and/or Practicing Radical Honesty before the workshop.

Commitment
Everyone at the workshop will be expected to commit to participate in every session, including the naked work, body movement, meditation and telling of life stories. If you have any concerns with any of the program, we are happy to discuss those concerns with you.

How does one register?
We expect this workshop to be fully booked (as have the other 8-day workshops we’ve organized and/or led in Finland, Germany, Italy and Spain).

So, if you want to attend, we suggest that you book your spot sooner rather than later. You can register via ZEGG at https://www.zegg.de/en/events. For questions about booking, please write . For other ZEGG-related questions, write Eivind at . For information about the retreat contents, write .

How does one get there?

Travel
ZEGG is located a good hour from Berlin by public transport. Please see the ZEGG website for information about travel options: https://www.zegg.de/en/about-us/arrival

We recommend travelling by land. If you choose to fly, we propose you compensate for your CO2 emissions.

Staying later
You can stay one more night at extra cost, including booking additional meals. You can relax and enjoy the peaceful nature and the complete ZEGG community infrastructure. The option is available during the booking process, or you may decide during your stay.

Community
Participants will be asked to assist in washing dishes as a way to help create a community during our nine days together. This is commonly done in Honesty Europe’s retreats (and to help get shit done).

Team
The workshop leaders will be certified Radical Honesty Trainers—and married couple—Tuulia Syvänen and Pete Jordan, assisted by Trainer Candidate Eivind Liland.

Discounted Spots
Note! We have one discounted spot for low-income earners / students in exchange for some helping.

The fee covers the workshop, healthy vegetarian / vegan meals, teaching, sauna, shared room accommodation, follow up & integration call and ongoing support of the group to live out loud.

The price does not include travel to the location.

Kindly bring your own sheets & towels. Additionally, you can rent sheet and towels at the location, paid in cash on arrival.

Cancellation insurance
We advice you to have an insurance covering the fee in case of a cancellation due to sickness.

Support Available
If paying for this retreat is a financial challenge to you, then please be aware of the existence of the Honesty Europe Support Fund, which offers financial support to those who otherwise could not afford to attend Honesty Europe’s workshops and retreats. Read more about the Support fund here.

Support for BIPOC
If you are low income and are black, indigenous or a person of color (BIPOC), you can request a discount from us.
Message your request to us at:
Note: we might take a few days to answer your request.

Is this workshop for me?
Radical Honesty workshop often have therapeutic impacts, however workshops are not therapy and are not meant to replace personal therapy.This workshop is not for you if you have major untreated traumas.

Radical Honesty workshops and retreats can be physically and psychologically stressful. If you have an acute mental health challenge, please first discuss with your therapist / doctor and then with us before registering.

You can reach us at:

Workshop Agreements
(required for participation)

In this workshop, we will strive to create an environment and space where everyone feels safe to express their emotions, share their thoughts and experiment with each other. Therefore, we require all workshop participants and workshop leaders to agree to the below agreements.
On the first evening of the workshop, we will devote time to discussing each of the agreements and addressing any questions anyone has about them before we actually agree to them.

If you have questions or concerns about any of this, please contact us at: .

1. I agree to tell my truth.
(You decide how much you want to share and we do invite you to explore going a bit outside your comfort zone in sharing.)

2. I agree to support others in telling their truth.
(Being willing to remain present and willing to hear others sharing.)

3. I agree to keep confidentiality.
(No sharing things about workshop participants to people outside the workshop without the participant’s consent.)

4. I agree to be on time and present.
(You’ll be on time for the workshop sessions and stay until the end of them. You’ll be physically present and do your best to also be mentally present (e.g. by leaving your phone outside the workshop space, etc.).)

5. I agree to ask for what I want.
(An invitation for you to voice and ask for everything you want. We do not guarantee, though, that you will get everything you ask for.)

6. I agree to take more than I give.
(Keep the focus on yourself rather than on others. You are allowed to speak, take time, take space and take care of yourself. We invite the others to do so as well.)

7. I agree to only consensual touch.
(No touching others without their permission; no physical violence.)

8. I agree to be led by the workshop leaders.
(Being willing to try out the proposed language in coaching situations and join the exercises during the workshop.)

Ready to live out loud and be happy?

You are warmly welcome to join us on the journey to an honest life!

Sincerely,
Tuulia & Pete
www.HonestyEurope.com
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Learn more about our work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q13BMVK4uOw

Testimonials

“These two really know what they are doing. And the commitment and love that they put into work is amazing and helps the participants to transform themselves.”
–Luis, Portugal

“Tuulia and Pete are a formidable duo, solid workshop leaders, authentic, talented, respectful and a good laugh, too. After the workshop I feel more confident, a better communicator. I can be true to myself and to others with more ease now. Radical Honesty is in my life all the time since this workshop. The more honest I am with myself the more vibrant I feel.”
–Gabi, Romania

“I really like Pete and Tuulia’s way of leading the workshops and judge that each of them complements the other in a wonderful way – personally, as well as in coaching. I made myself feel safe and supported when being coached by the two of them and I imagine I’ve personally grown a lot throughout their workshops. I have learned a lot about myself and worked through many topics, supported by what I judge to be on-point comments and loving empathy.”
–Laura, Germany

“Tuulia and Pete are amazing hosts who attract really interesting adventurous people and manage to create an atmosphere of honest investigation, reflection, introspection and trust. Their workshops are warmly recommended.”
–Michael, Denmark

“Pete and Tuulia are great Radical Honesty facilitators. Experiencing them facilitate together is a gift. I judge they complete each other with their strengths. I felt accepted and loved and, at the same time, challenged and pushed out of my comfort zone. I’ve grown a lot by this experience. Thank you both.”
–Nathalie, Germany

”I’ve been able to trust Tuulia and Pete in their experience and training and this has allowed me to express myself in a safe environment. And I respect the way Tuulia and Pete have challenged me each time. The workshops are not easy or comfortable. But that’s when my real shadows are seen and I can start to work with them. The workshops have been a playground for skills I was unable or not allowed to learn as a kid.”
–Katriina, Finland

“I trust more and more Tuulia and Pete’s facilitation and ability to deal with what arises in them in a way that I imagine I never really have experienced in a workshop, therapy or a situation where there is some kind of authority/leader.”
–Johanna, Finland

“I keep coming back to Radical Honesty events because I judge them to bring me alive. Tuulia and Pete expertly open a space where I can explore my inner world, share it with others, and become aware of my patterns.”
–Annie, Austria

“I attended several Radical Honesty workshops led by Tuulia & Pete and in each of them I had deep experiences which changed my life significantly.”
–Albrecht, UK

“Tuulia & Pete are great facilitators for deep transformational processes. Again and again, I am amazed by how they hold space and coach people into experiences. They are direct, very attentive and fun. I love the mix of really deep work, friendship, silliness and warmness. They are both very good at holding space and guiding people with trauma reactions. I imagine they are doing a really great job. I am very grateful for the way they facilitate and how they are as just human beings. They are open, vulnerable and they don’t pretend to know everything or be all in control. I trust them. Thank you!”
–Michael, Germany

About the trainers

Tuulia Syvänen

I grew up in a dysfunctional family where expressing feelings of any kind (both positive or negative) was frowned upon. It has taken me a long time to learn how to express my joy and pride. I didn’t grow up with a healthy sense of positivity, one that acknowledges the difficult parts of life while still able to see the good in people and situations.
I’ve changed my life for the better by being honest and real.

My relationships — especially with my son, my parents, and my husband and business partner, Pete — have become more loving, honest and evolving. I strive to say what is important to me, even when I fear the other person’s reaction. I have learned to express anger in a healthy way, to forgive, and to get over stuff. Though I still struggle at times, I work to step out of the blame game as quickly as possible. Most of the time, I express my appreciation in the moment. And when I catch myself withholding, I try to meet myself with kindness rather than criticism. Unlike before, I rarely make others responsible for my feelings. Best of all, I have learned to ask for what I want — and, to my great joy, I often get it.

Before beginning this work, I spent two decades in leadership roles at international non-profit organisations focused on social and environmental justice. Originally from Finland, I have lived in Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada.

I am a graduate of the four-year Therapy Programme in Finland and a certified Divorce Seminar Leader in Dr Bruce Fisher’s Rebuilding method. I have completed additional training in trauma, as well as a one-year training in Mindful Somatic

Pete Jordan

I was born and raised in San Francisco and spent 12 years traveling around the U.S. in a quest to work dishwashing jobs in all 50 American states, which I documented in my book Dishwasher. In 2015, I nervously and reluctantly attended my first Radical Honesty workshop, which blew my mind. From there, I eagerly took part in dozens more workshops and transformed my life for the better by committing to live honestly, by expressing my resentments and appreciations in the moment and by asking for what I want.

A major breakthrough for me was having honest talks with my ex-partners and my family. I broke away from the traditions of my childhood and started talking about things I had once been too afraid or embarrassed to discuss.

Working alongside my (romantic and business) partner, Tuulia, I organise and co-lead Honesty Europe workshops across Europe. Participants have told me I have strong listening and observational skills, and I enjoy developing these further as I support others in living happier, freer lives.

In 2002, I moved to Amsterdam. I’m passionate about urban cycling and, for over a decade, I’ve contributed writing and photography to several Dutch cycling publications. When I’m not organising or co-leading workshops, I enjoy spending time with my adult son or meandering around Amsterdam on my bike. I am also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner..
Read more about Pete.

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