THE CORE

Complete Prep for The Next Phase of Life

Our concierge one-stop-shop for a crash course in mindfulness, character, adulthood, life skills and adulthood preparation. The Core is 10 sessions of core mental health, personhood, life strategy and skills for the kid that doesn’t need therapy but would benefit from a constellation of curriculum designed to improve outlook, resilience, character, insight and life skills. Participants can move through The Core at a gradual pace (one session a week for 10 weeks), or we can customize the curriculum into a tight couple weeks.

  • In this session, an expert facilitator guides and teaches the participant about mindfulness, mediation, and embodiment. The facilitator will impart the science and practice of mindfulness and meditation as phenomena that can help the young man self-soothe, equalize and mature. Participants acquire skills and experiment with techniques to support physiological and psychological regulation in times of distress, uncertainty or anxiety.

    MENTOR: Josh Fingerhut LMFT

  • Along with providing context to the foundations of breath, respiration and their interaction with our nervous system, participants in this session will acquire and practice a range of breathing exercises that can enhance academic performance, athletic performance, reduce social anxiety, increase distress tolerance and provide customizable self-soothing skills for a lifetime.

    MENTOR: Josh Fingerhut LMFT

  • Working alongside a psychodynamic psychotherapist, participants will investigate their values, virtues, ideologies and inner worlds to bring greater clarity to whole self concept. The goal of this session is for the participant to synthesize various aspects of their character and identity into a clear and definable picture of themselves that they can be proud of and carry forward into their next phase of life.

    MENTOR: Zach Resnick LMFT

  • Facilitated by an addiction expert, this session focuses on education and awareness about substance use and misuse (cannabis, alcohol, etc) and process addiction (gambling, shopping, pornography, etc). Additionally, participants will be offered a set of tools for self-identification of addictive patterns and tools to support peers in active addictive patterns. Participants will also leave with foundational awareness to detect and combat addictive behaviors/patterns that may arise in their next phase of life.

    MENTOR: Doug Rosen LMFT

  • Working with a therapist with a specialization in sexuality and identity, participants will be offered a chance to discuss and process their sexual self-concept, discuss safe sex practices and the concept of consent within social and romantic relationships.

    MENTOR: Andrew Merrell LMFT

  • In this session, participants will work directly with a CPA with a concentration in young adult financial education and they will work on IRL budgets, money mindset, financial responsibility, the dangers of debt, conservation of resources and the concepts of liabilities and assets.

    MENTOR: Christopher L. Stroup, MBA, EA, CFP

  • Autonomy, independence and agency will be the focus of this session. Understanding free will, choice and personal accountability — especially while on the bridge between boyhood and manhood — will lead the participant to explore, own and promote integrity in all corners of his world.

    MENTOR: Doug Rosen LMFT

  • DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) is a potent modality that offers young men a chance to integrate their experiences with mindfulness, mediation and breath work into a new series of skills and tactics that are evidence-based distress reduction tools. Participants will learn to assess their distress and match acquired skills to the disturbance to achieve a reduction in stress and achievement of mind-body regulation.

    MENTOR: Dr Christopher Hawkey

  • In this session, participants will learn and refine their skills with organization, time management, deadline accountability, academic responsibility and pride in their accomplishments.

    MENTOR: Shauna Greene

  • The graduation from The Core is a meeting with the participant, his family and members of his curriculum team. This is a time to reflect on the growth, key learnings and take-aways from his experience. This is also a chance for family member(s) to ask questions about the experience with members of the team present. The process of integration is the aggregation and utility of the experiences from across the previous nine sessions. The goal is for the young man to articulate and activate his experiences into the present and carry them with him into the future.