Seven Days · Eight Men · Led by Dr Philippe Jacquet
The Retreat
A residential week for men who have done enough talking to know that something else is needed.
What It Is
Seven Days,
Eight Men.
A seven-day residential retreat for men working on eating disorders, compulsive exercise, body image and the shame underneath them. Numbers are capped at eight, and that cap is not a marketing device. Above eight, a group stops being a group and becomes an audience, and men who have spent years not saying the thing do not say it to an audience.
How It Runs
We Run It When
There Are Enough Men.
This is worth saying plainly, because most programmes are vague about it.
There is no fixed calendar. A retreat runs when there are enough men ready to fill it, usually six to eight. When enough interest has gathered, the dates and setting are confirmed and everyone who has registered is contacted first.
That is a deliberate choice rather than a limitation. A retreat run to meet a date in a brochure, with three men in the room, does not work. The group is the instrument. It needs to be the right size and the right men, and that occasionally means waiting a few months.
If you register your interest, nothing is committed and nothing is charged. You are told when a retreat is forming, and you decide then. Most men who eventually attend register long before they feel ready, which is the usual order of things.
The Week
What Actually
Happens.
Mornings are group work. Afternoons combine individual sessions with Dr Jacquet and the practical work of the week: active imagination, dream material, and the mythic and symbolic ground that runs through the whole practice. Evenings are unstructured on purpose. A good deal of what matters happens over dinner and on walks rather than in a session.
The week is not a detox, a bootcamp or a fitness programme, and it is emphatically not a place where anybody is weighed. It is a week of concentrated psychological work with other men who understand what you are describing, in a setting where there is nothing to manage and nobody to perform for.
Most men say the same thing afterwards, and it is rarely about a technique. It is about having said something out loud, in front of other men, and having it received without flinching.
Honestly
Who It Is For,
and Who It Is Not.
It suits men already doing individual work who have reached the point where insight is no longer producing change; men whose difficulty is bound up with isolation, shame or the absence of other men to speak to; and men who have recovered on paper and know that something has not moved.
It is not right if you are medically unstable, if your weight or physical health needs monitoring, if you are in an acute crisis, or if you are being sent by somebody else. A residential week is demanding, and it works from a stable enough base. Where that base is not there yet, Dr Jacquet will say so directly and suggest what comes first.
Every man attending has an individual conversation beforehand. Nobody arrives having only filled in a form.
Afterwards
The Thirty Days
That Follow.
The week is not the treatment. What happens in the month afterwards, when you are back among the people and habits the difficulty grew in, is where it either holds or does not.
Every retreat is followed by thirty days of structured group follow-up, so the return is supported rather than left to willpower. Men who continue in individual therapy alongside it generally do better, and that is discussed rather than assumed.
Clinical Scope
What This
Is Not.
Men Who Heal provides specialist psychotherapy and psychologically informed support for adults. The retreat is not an emergency, inpatient or medical stabilisation service, and it does not replace medical care. Where physical health is at risk, Dr Jacquet may recommend involvement from your GP, an eating-disorder physician, psychiatrist or dietitian, and will say so honestly. If you are in immediate danger, call 999, or Samaritans on 116 123.
Take the First Step
Registering Interest
Commits You to Nothing.
Tell us you are interested and you will hear first when a retreat is forming. You decide then.