Applications open · Cohort one
Nobody taught us this part.
Seven months, six weekends, twelve men and two facilitators in a room in Melbourne. Where your ideas about being a man came from, what they have cost you, and what to do differently.
Apply for cohort oneIt starts with a conversation. No payment is taken in it, or because of it.
Why this exists
Most of us learned how to be a man before we were old enough to question any of it.
Then it stops working. Sometimes that arrives as a separation. Sometimes as the slow realisation that you keep ending up in the same argument with a different person. Sometimes it is quieter than that, and you are functioning perfectly well and you are not right, and you could not say exactly why.
What almost none of us were taught is the practical part. How to tell a safe person from an unsafe one, early, before you have built a life with them. What a boundary actually is, as distinct from a wall or an ultimatum. How to recognise manipulation while it is happening rather than three years later. How to tell a difficult relationship from a damaging one.
These are learnable. They are just not taught, and most of the rooms where men gather do not cover them either.
This program is seven months long because the short version does not hold. Most men arriving here have already had an insight, in therapy or on a weekend, that changed something for six weeks and then faded. That is not a personal failure. Insight without repetition decays, and nothing on offer runs long enough to give you the repetitions.
The shape of it
Six weekends, working from the outside in
We do not start with you. We start with the water you have been swimming in, because it is much easier to look at your own part once you can see what shaped it.
Ground
How we will work, what you want out of the seven months, and getting twelve strangers to the point where the real conversation is possible. You leave with something usable, not just an orientation.
The world you were handed
The ideas about men you absorbed before you could evaluate them, where they came from, and which ones you are still running. We look at this honestly and without telling you what to conclude.
The family you came from
What was modelled, what you swore you would never repeat, and what you carried out anyway. This is usually the hardest weekend and it is the one most men later say changed the most.
What happens with other people
The patterns you can watch yourself running and still cannot stop. Safe and unsafe people. Boundaries as something you hold rather than announce. What manipulation looks like early, when it is still cheap to act on.
Under pressure
What you do in the thirty seconds before it goes wrong, and practising something else often enough that it starts to go differently. This is the weekend with the most repetition and the least theory.
Forward
What you are taking out, in your own words rather than ours. What holds it after September, and what the group does next.
Between the weekends
The month in between is part of the program, not a gap in it
A weekend on its own resets. This is the part that stops that happening, and it is the thing men who have done other programs tell us was missing.
A small group
Three or four men from the cohort who meet at least once between each weekend. You report back on what you tried and what actually happened.
One other man
A single person who checks in on you, and who you check in on. Not a mentor. Someone in the same seven months as you.
A daily practice
Two or three minutes, once or twice a day. You get a handful to try and you keep the ones that work. Practical, not mystical.
Optional reading
Exercises, questions, film and reading suggestions. Take what speaks to you and leave the rest. It is not school and nothing is marked.
Who is in the room
Two facilitators, a man and a woman, present the whole way through
Rudi Doku
Co-facilitator
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and a teaching assistant with Somatic Experiencing International, IFS Level 1, ICF Professional Certified Coach, Certified Integral Coach through New Ventures West. Finishing a Masters of Counselling and Psychotherapy at Ikon Institute.
He started Reclaim because of what he learned going through his own marriage, separation and divorce, and because the skills he needed were ones nobody had taught him.
Caroline
Co-facilitator
Clinical psychologist by training, with a long career in organisational transformation and leadership development before returning to private practice. She works from a Jungian analytic and psychodynamic perspective and runs her own twelve-session program, Transforming Relationships.
She brings the wide lens: how what happens between two people connects to the family, and to the culture around both of them.
Why a woman is co-facilitating a men's group
Because a room with only men in it lets you rehearse a version of yourself that stops working the moment a woman is present, and it is usually that version causing the trouble. Having both of us there means what you practise here is closer to what you will need outside it.
She is not there to represent anyone in your life, and she is not there to judge you. She is a practitioner doing the same job as the other facilitator.
What this program is not
It is not therapy or psychological treatment. Nothing here diagnoses or treats a mental health condition. If you are working with a therapist, stay with them, and we will say so at intake.
It is not a Men's Behaviour Change Program. It does not satisfy any court, Corrections or Child Protection requirement and we will not provide evidence of anything to any court or agency. If you have been directed to attend a program, contact the Men's Referral Service on 1300 766 491 for an accredited provider.
It is not legal or financial advice. Where those topics come up they are general information and you take your own advice.
It is not crisis support. It runs on six weekends and not outside them. The crisis numbers in the site footer are there for the rest of the time.
It is not a men's rights space, and it is not a room where men are the problem. We look honestly at the pressures on men, including the cultural ones, and we do that without it becoming a way to avoid what any individual man did. If you are looking for a room that will agree someone else was the whole problem, this will be an uncomfortable seven months.
Getting in
Not everyone who applies is accepted
Twelve men agreeing to be in a room together for seven months only works if the room is put together carefully. That is the least visible part of this and the part that matters most.
A short application
Where you are, what you have already tried, what you want out of it, and whether the six dates work against everything else in your life.
A ninety-minute conversation
Not a sales call. We work out together what has actually brought you, what you want to be different by September, and whether this is the right thing. Some men we will point somewhere better, and we will tell you where.
A place, and a deposit that holds it
Only if we both say yes. The deposit is refundable up to a stated date, the full cancellation terms are published, and you get the participant agreement before any money moves.
A review at the midpoint
An hour, one to one, around the middle of the seven months. You decide what the second half concentrates on, because by then you will know.
Investment
Founding cohort
This is the first time we are running it. The price reflects that, and you will be asked, repeatedly, what is working and what is not.
Paid in full
$2,700
AUD, one payment
$200 less than the payment plan, and it is the simplest for everyone.
Monthly
$2,900
AUD, over seven monthly payments
Roughly $414 a month across the program. No penalty built into the instalments.
Two fully funded places are held for cohort one, awarded on application. If cost is the thing stopping you, say so. It is a normal part of the conversation and it is handled quietly.
For scale: six weekends works out at under $500 a weekend, and roughly sixty-eight hours in the room across the seven months.
Questions
No. Therapy is one to one, with someone whose job is to attend to you, working out what happened. This is a group of men learning specific things and practising them, for long enough to repeat them. Most men here are still in therapy or have finished it. It is not a replacement and we do not treat anything.
Because six weeks was never going to do it. Almost everything available to men runs four to twenty weeks, and most men who come to us have already had the short version and watched it fade. Seven months is enough gaps between weekends for you to go and try things in your actual life, and come back and say what happened.
It is a lot, and that is rather the point. We publish all six dates as far ahead as we can so you can negotiate them into your arrangements. If the dates genuinely will not work, tell us at intake and we will talk about the next cohort rather than have you miss two of six.
Some of it is hard, particularly the third weekend. Two facilitators means one can step out of the room with you. We ask at intake who else is supporting you, we are clear about what we are and are not qualified to do, and if something needs more than we can offer we will say so and help you find it.
It stays there, with limits we set out in writing before you join: serious risk to anyone, and our legal obligations. There are also two conditions we issue rather than negotiate. You cannot use this group to build a case in any legal matter, and you cannot circulate identifying stories about a former partner outside it.
No, and the reason is the group. Twelve men who have committed to seven months is a different room from twelve men who might leave. But everyone has a ninety-minute conversation with both of us before joining, which is where you decide.
That is a common thing to say and it is not a good reason to stay out. The men who get the most from this are usually the ones who are managing. Have the conversation with us anyway, and if you are fine we will say so.
In person in Melbourne, in a room with floor space, because this work does not transfer well to a screen. Tea and coffee provided, lunch is your own. After the six weekends there is an ongoing group, either peer-run or a monthly meeting with us, and that gets designed with cohort one rather than for them.
Start with a conversation.
Thirty minutes, free, and no obligation. If this is not the right thing for you, we will say so and point you at what is.
Apply for cohort oneApplications are assessed individually. Not everyone is accepted.