The Light Dark Experience for Couples
Imagine if you and your partner had the opportunity to learn relationship superpowers. What if you could learn how to take every area of disconnection, power struggle, and resentment that comes up between you, and magically convert them into sources of connection, hotness, vulnerability, and play? What if you could use these learnings to not only radically transform your relationship with your partner, but also to arise in your full power and freedom in all other areas of your life as well?
Well that opportunity exists, and we call it the Light Dark Experience…
What is the Light Dark Experience?
The Light Dark Experience is the deepest level of work available through the Light Dark Institute. The Light Dark Experience is not a group workshop. It is a personalized intensive that is completely tailor-made for you and your partner, designed 100% around your specific relationship challenges, and your unique intentions and desires for crafting the most powerful, fun, vulnerable, hot and connected version of your relationship that you can imagine.
For three days and two nights at a private in-person retreat, plus numerous coaching calls before and after, you have the undivided attention of Light Dark Institute founders Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers, completely to yourselves, completely in service to helping you create the lives and relationship of your dreams.
As we all know, relationships are complicated. We want to be able to be our full selves with our partners, and in theory at least we want the same for them. And yet there are inevitably parts of them that frustrate or frighten us, and parts of ourselves and our desires that we feel we need to keep under wraps so we don’t drive them away. We feel that we or they shouldn’t be so controlling, so needy, so resentful, so aloof, so angry, so emotional, so selfish, so withdrawn.
Yet by denying ourselves and asking them to deny themselves, by striving to avoid anger, hunger, and fear, we wind up falling into ruts of disconnection and missing so many opportunities for deeper intimacy.
But it is actually possible to take those very places where the darkest and most uncomfortable things happen under the surface of your relationship, and instead of just “healing them” or making them “go away”, use them to get closer to your partner while simultaneously freeing yourself to stand in your power in all areas of your life.
The Light Dark Experience is designed to support you in doing exactly that. Our founders Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers are masters at creating a safe and permissive environment for exploration of the places we don’t normally let ourselves go in our lives and relationships, and they will be with you at every step of the way. Through a combination of in-depth coaching and embodied play, they will guide you and your partner through the unknown as you go deep in exploring and reclaiming the parts of yourselves and each other that you have long been rejecting. You will have the opportunity to fully touch the dark scary emotions that bubble under the surface, such as rage, desperation, and contempt, and learn how to use them to get more connected, rather than less connected with your partner. You will be guided through explorations in domination and submission as well as sadism and masochism, to give expression to the hidden parts of you that desire to control (or be controlled by) each other, and the parts that want to torture (or be tortured by) each other. For every area of darkness that normally plays out unconsciously between you and causes disconnection, you will have an opportunity to play it out in fully supported and fully conscious ways, and discover the incredible levels of freedom, vitality, power and connection available on the other side. Your relationship, and each of your lives as individuals, will never be the same.
What's included:
-A personalized 3-day, 2-night intensive with meals and lodging at a private kink-themed retreat near Monterey, California.
-The full undivided attention of the two founders of the Light Dark Institute, Leslie Rogers and Tani Thole. This is NOT a group experience. You have both LDI founders bringing all of their vision and mastery to the table - through coaching and direct embodied play - 100% to yourselves and 100% in service to your intentions for your lives and your relationship, for the full duration.
-An extensive intake process with multiple coaching calls that deeply explore you and your partner’s life histories, the areas of disconnection in your relationship, each of your desires and intentions for your own life, and your desires and intentions for your relationship together.
-Several follow-up coaching sessions that help you integrate everything you’ve learned back into your day-to-day lives and relationship.
Between lead-up and follow-up coaching calls, punctuated by the powerful in-person intensive, the container of the Light Dark Experience typically unfolds over the course of 2-3 months. This is rapid and deep transformation, that will radically shift the ways you relate to your partner, yourself and the world around you, for the rest of your life.
Are you ready to take the plunge into a new reality, in which your darkness is not only welcome, but is the very key to your power, freedom and intimacy with your partner and in all areas of your life?
Due to the deep nature of the Light Dark Experience, we are selective about the clients we invite to do this work. Upon review of your application we will schedule a free call to explore further with you.
This offering, and all others by the Light Dark Institute, are for participants 18 years of age and older.
Testimonials for The Light Dark Experience for Couples
“I did my LDE with my wife. As much as we love each other, we knew that we had to make some drastic changes if we were to really build a life together. I can say that what we discovered about ourselves left us feeling powerfully connected, vulnerable, and empowered to say EXACTLY what we want in a way that we never did. The darkness that Tani and Leslie pushed us to touch allowed us to love deeper in the light. Will always be grateful for you two!”
G.R.
Los Angeles, CA
“Up until my Light Dark Experience with my partner, I had faced anger and rage by shoving it away deep inside me. I had never found a group or setting in which the container felt strong enough for me to fully let out the intensity inside.
But in the Light Dark Experience, no matter how much I struggled and fought, the container held me. I felt safe, and I was finally able to touch into old wounds and deep, carnal, pent-up rage. When I finally really touched my rage, the catharsis was immense, and I felt so much space open up within me. Then the best part came: I got loved there and seen there, and I was able to feel my partner’s love fill me.
Since doing the Light Dark Experience with my partner, our relationship has transformed. We have learned to stay connected through whatever intensity arises. We are able to work through issues far more easily now, because we don’t have to hide our true underlying feelings anymore.”
Andrew Gabler
Mechanical Engineer
Seattle, WA
“Before our Light Dark Experience, I could not see how strongly I had prioritized everyone else over myself, and how deep into self-negation I had sunk. I knew the feeling that my desires didn’t really matter, or that I didn’t matter, was interfering with my partner’s ability to feel my Dominance and for her to submit to me. But I thought the answer was to hammer all those feelings down just power through it to show how dominant I was. Tani and Leslie helped me see I needed to embrace the parts keeping me from my desires before I could dive in fully to achieve them. Together with my partner discovering her pathways to the things she craves, we have been able to go places I never would have imagined in our relationship, and to build a depth of connection and a dynamic between us that is beyond my most optimistic aspirations. I am so grateful to you both for showing us entire new worlds of possibilities.”
Jeff B.
Denver, CO
“I do not consider myself a kink oriented person yet felt the shifts in my spouse after he worked in a group setting with Tani and Leslie. So when the couples experience was presented, I was reluctant but willing to begin the conversation that led to an immersion with them. Areas opened to flow in formerly very stuck areas within myself and my relationship. I feel more deeply connected to my partner, more rooted and grounded within myself with an opening in my erotic energy and sense of play that eases instead of escalates times of tension. This is a huge relief as I was feeling very much like a naggy bitchy wife and was hating it.
I have never felt so seen, held and understood as I did in the container held by Tani and Leslie. Their keen capacity to see through and into the deepest personal and relational patterns and craft experiences to support opening the flow that invited and never pushed, is impressive. I found the entire experience extraordinary and profoundly transformative. Plus we came home with a written record of the experience and ideas to draw from so when we get stuck, we have something to work with!”
J.M.
Connecticut
“I trust Tani and Leslie and the work they do.
Over a 5 month period I have participated in a weekend workshop, a personal LDE, and a couple's LDE. I have many takeaways. The deepest one is the growth and visibility of my love of myself ... honoring and allowing all parts of me to show up ... giving voice to my desires and vulnerabilities, allowing my creatures (like Needy Wretch and Wallowing Self-Pitier) to come out and play, connecting and moving from the power source of energy in my belly. Another takeaway is feeling the depth of the intimacy and love and compassion I have for my wife, and the tools we now have to share and experience each other more deeply.
Working with Darketypes and adapted concepts from the "BDSM world" allowed me to break through the edges of my own security blanket of control. I was able to surrender into deeper feelings of sadness, compassion, love, anger, desire. This was possible because of the safe containers created by Tani and Leslie which were held by boundaries and their love, compassion, and diligent presence with me and my well being. For the LDEs this included the thoroughness of the intake and intention process which guided and allowed my experiences to unfold.”
S.K.
San Carlos, CA
“This work blew the doors open, casting light on all of the ways I evade my own desires and hide from my deeper emotions and disown my power. It gave me a container to explore all the of parts of myself that I and society make wrong / taboo. The work allowed me to get access to potent energies lurking beneath my socialized personality. The level of embodiment and interpersonal relational practice allowed substantial integration of those openings in a way that seems far more efficient than the many "light" modalities I've tried. This is the fastrack to embodied growth and integration.”
W.S.
Puerto Rico