The Inner Work Program · For licensed and pre-licensed therapists
Who holds the therapist?
Join the waitlist and stay informed
For once, the chair is yours. Four days where you are not the clinician, not the supervisor, not the one everyone is waiting on. You are the woman being held.
Peace on the Pond
The chair is yours
Why this exists
You are the one everybody leans on.
You hold the grief. The panic. The marriage that is coming apart. The mother who is losing her son. You hold all of it, and you hold it well, and that is exactly the problem.
Nobody puts you on their calendar. Nobody asks what you carried home at 6:15. Your own work gets moved to the season after this one, and then to the season after that, and the years go by while you keep being excellent.
Four days is not going to fix a career of that. Four days is where you find out what it costs you, and what you want to do about it.
A practice cannot grow past the places its owner has not gone herself.
Every therapist knows this in theory. We say it to supervisees. We say it in consultation. Then we build a caseload, a group practice, a second offering, and we route around our own material the way you route around a bad knee, quietly, for years, until the limp is just how you walk.
This is the program for the part of you that has been waiting. Not your license, not your billing, not your niche. You.
Slow mornings
What the four days are
Eight women. One circle. Nobody performing.
Small on purpose. Eight therapists, licensed and pre-licensed, one facilitator, and a piece of land quiet enough that you can hear your own thinking. Everyone in the room is doing the same work. Nobody is observing you.
What we do
- Breath work and meditation before the day gets loud
- Guided inner work on what you inherited and what you are still carrying
- Somatic and experiential sessions, including sound and water
- Honest conversation about where your own history shows up in your work
- Real unscheduled hours, on the schedule, not squeezed around it
- A closing circle where each woman says what she is taking home
What we do not do
- No continuing education credits, on purpose
- No case consultation and no clinical supervision
- No slide decks and no worksheets to take back to the office
- No going around the circle making anyone speak
- No recording, no cameras, no content captured from the room
- No therapy. This is experiential and educational work in a group
The training with CE credit comes later. This one is not about your license. It is about the woman who holds it.
The shape of it
Four days, and only two of them ask much of you.
Wednesday
Arrive and put it down
Come in by late afternoon. Walk the property, find your room, eat together. The only thing on the schedule is the opening circle, where you say out loud what you brought with you. Then the evening is yours.
Thursday
Go in
Breath work and meditation to start, then space to say what came up in the quiet. The first full block of inner work takes the morning and asks the most. Afternoon moves to the body and outdoors. The evening ends in sound rather than in conversation.
Friday
Stay with it
The second block goes where the first one opened. Water release in the afternoon, then long open hours, because what moves on the second day needs room to settle before anybody talks about it.
Saturday
Carry it home
Closing circle, then a plain conversation about what actually changes on Monday. Lunch before you drive. You leave with something you can name, not a binder you will never open.
The full agenda goes to everyone who holds a seat. Times move with the group. The container does not.
Who is in this room
It is for you if you recognize yourself here.
You are licensed, or you are working toward it, and you are already tired in a way that time off has not touched.
You have told a client to slow down and go inward, and you have not done it yourself in years.
You are building something, a practice or a second offering, and you can feel where your own history is in the way.
You want a room of peers who are not going to ask you for anything.
It is not the right season for this if you are in an acute crisis, a fresh loss, or anything that needs your own clinician first. This is deep work in a group, and it is not treatment. Say so when you reach out and we will talk honestly about timing.
Morning, before anyone needs you
Who holds the room
I have been the one everyone leans on.
I have been a therapist for more than twenty years. I own a group practice. I supervise clinicians. I am the one people call when a case comes apart on a Friday afternoon.
For most of those years I had nowhere to set my own weight down. I told clients to slow down and go inward, and I did not do it myself, and I built a practice around places in me I had never been.
When I finally did my own work, the surprise was not what it did for me. It was what it added to my emotional availability in the room. I stopped flinching. I could stay with grief that used to send me reaching for a technique. I stopped rescuing, because I was no longer quietly managing my own material while I listened to somebody else's. The work went deeper, and it took less out of me.
That is the part I want for you. Not four days of rest. A different clinician walking back into the room on Monday.
This is the room I went looking for and could not find. For four days I am not your supervisor, your consultant, or your therapist. I am the one creating the space. For you to process. For you to set it down. For you to be held instead of holding.
Cyd McDaniel-McGee, LCSW. Licensed in North Carolina and South Carolina. MSW, Howard University. Founder of Essential Journey Counseling and Essential Journey Wellness.
Cyd McDaniel-McGee, LCSW
Your own room
Where you will be
Peace on the Pond.
Private land in Georgia, built for exactly this. Water, quiet, room to walk, and nobody else booked while we are there.
You get your own bed in a house, not a hotel corridor. Meals are made for you and served together, so nobody in the group is thinking about dinner. Your phone will work. Whether you use it is up to you.
Nearest airports are Atlanta and Macon. Travel and ground transportation are on you. Once your seat is held, you get the arrival packet with the drive and a rideshare list.
The circle
The investment
One price. Everything but your flight.
What your seat covers
- Three nights of lodging on the property
- All meals, Wednesday dinner through Saturday lunch
- Every session and every on-site modality
- Materials and your pre-program intake conversation
What it does not cover
- Travel to Georgia and ground transportation
- Anything you add on the property outside the program
- Continuing education credit, which this program does not carry
$3,297
Per therapist, all inclusive. The first three seats are $2,797. After those are claimed the price is $3,297 for everyone.
Pay us directly
$500 holds your seat
The hold comes off the total. Split the balance into monthly payments across the months before the program, with everything paid three weeks before arrival.
No interest, no application, no credit check. Your invoice lists room and board separately from the program.
Or spread it further
CareCredit is available
If you would rather pay over a longer stretch, we accept CareCredit. Say so when you reach out and we will walk you through what your seat looks like month to month before you commit to anything.
Subject to credit approval.
Apply with CareCreditOr tell us on the waitlist form and we will walk you through it first.
Whichever way you go, we will walk you through what a monthly number actually looks like before you commit to anything.
Eight seats, and the waitlist gets first look at every one of them.
Straight answers
Questions therapists actually ask.
Is this therapy?
No. This is educational and experiential work in a group. Cyd is the facilitator, not your therapist, and attending does not create a clinical relationship. Keep your own therapist. If something surfaces that needs clinical care, we will help you find it.
Do I get CE credit?
No, and that is deliberate. The moment it becomes continuing education it becomes about your license instead of about you. A separate training that carries CE credit is coming, and the women in this room hear about it first.
Will I have to share things I do not want to share?
Never. You choose what you say and what stays yours. There is no round robin where the group sits waiting on you. Some of the deepest work here happens without a word.
Who else will be in the room?
Seven other therapists, some licensed and some working toward it, each one screened through a short conversation first. Everyone agrees in writing that what is said on the property stays there. If you know someone who is applying and it would keep you from being honest, tell us and we will work out the dates.
I have never done breath work or a sound bath.
Most women arrive that way, some of them with a healthy amount of skepticism. Nothing is required. You can sit out any piece of it and nobody will make it a thing.
Can my practice pay for it?
Many therapists treat this as a business expense. We are not your accountant, so check with yours. You get a proper invoice from Essential Journey Wellness with room and board listed separately from the program.
What is the cancellation policy?
There are no refunds. What there is instead is a transfer. If you cannot come, everything you have paid, the seat hold included, moves to any Essential Journey Wellness program that starts within twelve months. Tell us as soon as you know, so your seat can go to someone on the waitlist.
What if I am the one who never takes the time?
Then you are exactly who this was built for, and you will be the hardest to convince. Get on the list first. The reasons not to come will still be there when the dates land, and they will still be good reasons.
Something here that is not answered? Ask it directly
Interest
Join the waitlist.
This does not hold a seat and it costs nothing. It puts you first in line for the dates, the early price, and the conversation, before any of it goes public.
We reply by email, usually within two business days. No newsletter. You will hear from Cyd about this program and nothing else.
April 2027
You have held the room for twenty years. Let somebody hold it for you.