The Light Dark Experience

Find Your Power, Surrender and Self-expression

What it is:

The Light Dark Experience (LDE) is the Light Dark Institute’s VIP offering: a 3-day, 2-night personalized intensive available for individuals and couples. For the full duration of the LDE, the two founders of the Light Dark Institute, Leslie Rogers and Tani Thole, put all of their attention on you and what is needed to set you free. Through a combination of in-depth coaching and powerful embodied play, Tani and Leslie will guide you through the unknown as you go deep in exploring the parts of yourself that you have long been rejecting. This is a chance to finally fully shed the light on all the darkness you've been fearing inside yourself, and find all your capacity for power, freedom, and intimacy that has been hiding there. This is a chance to step into yourself fully, as never before.

It may be for you if:

• You have a high level of self-awareness and have done personal growth work

• You’re longing to know and express your full self

• You’re open to sexual exploration

• Something is drawing you to explore your dark side, even if you’re also feeling judgment and fear

• You want deeper connections and you’re not sure what’s been holding you back

The Light Dark Experience can help you to:

• Stand fully in your personal power

• Relax into new levels of surrender and trust

• Be able to know what you want, go after it, and fully receive it when it arrives

• Learn to express yourself without fear of judgment

• Love and value yourself more deeply

• Be able to set strong boundaries while maintaining connection

• Get in touch with the parts of yourself that you judged and find out that they’re actually awesome!

What's included:

• A private 3-day, 2-night intensive with meals and lodging at a kink-themed bed-and-breakfast 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! We work with one individual or couple for the full 3 days.

• An extensive intake process that deeply explores your life history, the places you’re stuck, your dark desires, and your intentions for your life.

• Four follow-up coaching sessions that help you integrate your experience into your life.

Due to the deep nature of the Light Dark Experience, we are selective about the clients we accept for this work. We will review your application, and if it seems like a potential fit, we will schedule a free call to explore further. 

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

“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

“I have been on a pretty rigorous healing journey for the last 18 years, and I have to say that my Light Dark Experience was probably THE most profound healing experience I have ever had! Through the uniqueness of this incredible work I found myself accessing deep layers of grief that no other modality has ever been able to touch. Comically, this was only after I had given Leslie a serious flogging. I am also SUPER picky about how people hold space for me after 10 years as a healer, and I found Tani & Leslie to be absolutely impeccable. I hadn’t had any previous experience with BDSM, but loved exploring my power as a Domme and my surrender as a sub. I will definitely be back, and I trust them SO much I've recommended the LDE to all my friends!”

Chritina Morassi
Pleasure Coach
Oakland, 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

“The LDE is truly a transcendent experience. I feel that I received exactly what I intended and so much more! I recommend this process to anyone hoping to awaken and embrace the Power hidden within places of judgement, repressed emotion, self-criticism, and limitation.

After my LDE, I now see my own repressed areas of darkness and limitation as gold mines of awareness, growth, beauty, power, and freedom. I know that each experience is filled with treasures that I now know how to access.

I have learned through this LDE that I can be who I am, ask for and receive what I desire, and maintain intimate connection with those I love. I am grateful to Tani and Leslie for providing this gateway. What an AMAZING gift you have given to my life! I also appreciate myself for saying yes, embracing what I once feared, and taking the first steps that have led to this awakening through the Light Dark Experience.”

Lâmurülum A. Saï
Santa Clara, CA

“The Light Dark Experience with Tani and Leslie blew my mind. The combination of coaching (light work) and the play in the dungeon (dark work) was extremely effective.

In the coaching I got eye-opening insights into what my internal blocks are that often keep me from having what I want in life, sex, and relationships. But how to overcome them? I learned that in the dark part, the play, where Tani and Leslie purposefully triggered my emotions. Because of the intensity of the play there was no way for me to push them down any longer. These emotions came out with full force and, once unleashed, turned into power. My power! I still remember this feeling. My body remembers. Since I know that these emotions are where I get my power, I'm no longer afraid of them. Instead, they are my guide to having what I want.”

Andy Werner
Software Engineer
Munich, Germany

“Through the depth of Tani and Leslie's own commitment to this process, with each other, and in all aspects of their lives - I felt like I was in the presence of masters; humble, open and continuing to learn and evolve moment to moment with each other and with me.”

As a result of the LDE I am entering into a more authentic, colorful, powerful and intoxicating way of being. I'm seeing ways in which I have kept the lid on my primal wildness to avoid being ostracized or judged for being unworthy. And, now there is more interest and willingness to express my primal essence and this wildness that I call myself because when I can surrender into humiliation, judgment, failure and the fear of being too much, what I find is the sweetness of being the deliciousness of it all. I've discovered that my true home is inside of the fullest and most wild range of my human experiences. From the wounded animal that lashes out to hurt others to feel connection, the entitled bitch who has preferences that my good girl squashes to be 'acceptable', to the compassionate seer, sexy beast and receptive heart that I am. I've been deeply carved and softened by this experience with Tani and Leslie.

A.M.
Boulder, CO

“I did the LDE with Tani and Leslie over 18 months ago. They make such an incredible secure container. I felt like I had been seen from the height of my brightness to the depth of my darkness. Parts of mine that I had never seen became visible in the time that I spent with them.

The time that was spent crafting the intentions for the LDE was just so full of depth and care. An intention that was nearly there was not good enough, it had to really hold the fullness of the aspiration for myself.

This has been just such a powerful experience. I would thoroughly recommend that anyone who has an inkling to do something like this to do it with them and to really, really go for it. Thank you very much.”

Brigid Walsh-Byrne
Ireland

“The Light and Dark Experience was profoundly healing. The experience (finally!) silenced the chatter in my mind and allowed me to fully enter my body. Once in my body, I got a visceral feeling of me. I existed and I deserved to exist.

My body spoke to me of my darkest desires and showed me the places where I was wounded so that I could heal. I was able to heal an old and painful childhood wound around my mother, and my relationship to both my mother and myself have never been lighter. It is truly in the dark that I found the light, that I found myself.”

Alla Zollers
Business Coach
San Francisco, CA

“The Light Dark Experience was the perfect companion to the healing work I've been doing in the last years. It was so powerful to go deep with Leslie and Tani into the parts of myself that I've kept at bay for so long, pushed and guided by them and held beautifully in a container where I could allow myself to be with those parts, to embrace and relish them. I came out of the experience with an expansion that has allowed me to deepen further into my personal power and sexuality, and to accept and love myself so much more fully than before.”

Tony L
San Francisco, CA

“I decided to do the Light Dark Experience when I realized that I was stuck in a rut of niceness. I had a life that looked good on the outside but didn’t make me happy.

I began to suspect that the missing element could be found in my shadow, but I was petrified of exploring it. What shameful, distasteful, lascivious, erotic, messy, dripping, crazy, swamp monster would emerge?

Tani and Leslie were definitely the right guides for me as I stepped over the edge into exploring this side of myself. They had the incredible ability to slowly draw out my desire, reflect the raw material that I was, and find the potential that lay there.

I met this woman in the dungeon – she was a familiar part of me, one that I had not encountered for a very long time, one who had been sequestered away and emerged when the conditions were right. When my shame of who I am was able to fall away, my Domme arrived.

The visceral experience of that will always remain for me, knowing that I have access to that power that can be of service in this world.”

Smita P.
Osteopath
Canberra, Australia

“Tani and Leslie have changed my life. Through the Light Dark Experience, I have met my most authentic self. Tani and Leslie facilitated a container within which I felt safe to express my full unfiltered vulnerability and power.

After years of hiding behind a façade and constraining my full presence from the world, I have come to understand the tender-hearted dominance that exists within me. I experience the lasting benefits of their work every day in my personal relationships and interactions in the world around me.

Tani and Leslie demonstrated to me what it feels like to have non-judgmental, unconditional love within a healing space. Thank you for opening my heart.”

Anna M.
Seattle, WA