The private counselling retreat is customized for you. I find out from you what your best hopes are, what you’d like to see happen as a result of us meeting, and collaborate with you to come up with a retreat that will meet your needs, wants, and goals.
Once you’ve reserved your retreat, I’ll send you questionnaires for you and your partner to complete separately. These will give me a good idea of what’s been happening in your relationship–identifying both your strengths and your challenges. These will help focus our conversations during the retreat by establishing clear priorities.
The retreats can be offered for two or three days during the week or on weekends for either 10 or 15 hours. There are two possible scenarios for this. In the first option, we would meet for five hours each day over two or three days depending on whether you’d like a ten or fifteen hour retreat. Another option for the 10 hour retreat is to meet with me for three hours the first evening, five hours the following day, and two hours the morning of the last day. This option can be helpful if you plan to come to Canmore the first day and return home the afternoon of the third.
At the beginning of the retreat, I will meet with each of you individually to discuss what’s been happening in your relationship and to gather more information based on the forms you will have completed prior to the retreat. This will help me get a much clearer picture of the reasons you thought a retreat would be helpful and helps me plan what will be most helpful during our time together.
The goal after these individual meetings is to spend the rest of our time altogether. Depending on what your needs and goals are, we’ll spend some time talking about and practicing using some helpful tools such as better ways to communicate, or how to create more time for meaningful connection. We’ll also talk about ways to continue in the right direction once you go back to your everyday lives.
Counselling can be intense. One of the great advantages of coming for a retreat is that you have both enough time to really get a good handle on your goals, to integrate some ideas, and to just plain relax.
You may want to arrange times for us to meet in-person, on the phone, or on-line after you leave in order to continue working on your relationship, to maintain the changes you’ve made, or to move past setbacks.
Canmore has some excellent walking, running, and biking trails in and around the townsite. Following these trails can take you anywhere from downtown to the Bow River and up to the Canmore Nordic Centre.
There are quite a few spas in the area that offer wonderfully relaxing possibilities. Shops in the downtown offer unique gifts, clothing, and sports equipment.
There are a range of activities for those who want to be active:
to do something more artistic, or for those wanting to attend an event:
Please go to Canmore Tourism for more information on things to do.
For accommodation information, please go to:
There are a number of relaxing walks people can take in and around town on trails beside the Bow River, up mountains, or through the forest. For those wanting a view from atop the mountains, the Banff Sulphur Mountain Gondola will take you there!
For those wanting a spa experience, there are a number of excellent spas in town. You might think about booking couple’s massage treatments, or spending some time getting pampered.
For sports enthusiasts, there are incredible places to run, bike, hike, golf, or ski.
Banff also boasts a variety of excellent restaurants, bars, and live music. There are often live concerts and performances at the Banff Centre. There are hot mineral pools at the Parks Canada Upper Hot Springs.
Banff is in Canada’s first national park and is a world-famous destination for outdoor enthusiasts and sightseers. It’s famous for its incredible landscape and is the highest town in Canada at 4537 feet. From almost anywhere in the town, there is a breathtaking view of the mountains.
Canmore is approximately 70 minutes from the city of Calgary while Banff is only 90 minutes. Both towns are less than 2 hours away from the Calgary International Airport. There are regular bus shuttles to and from the airport to Canmore and Banff. Banff is a 20 minute drive from the town of Canmore and 45 minutes from Lake Louise.
