Exploring the Inner Courtship with Ted Cation, LPC and Kay Gardner, MS
There's a conversation happening inside you, whether you've named it or not. In yoga traditions, it's Ida and Pingala. In other languages, it's Yin and Yang, masculine and feminine.
In Internal Family Systems terms, it's an inner marriage — the ongoing courtship between different parts of you that don't always see eye to eye, but are, underneath everything, trying to find their way back to each other.
This gathering is an invitation to slow down and pay attention to that courtship. Not to fix it or finish it. Just to meet it — with presence, with compassion, and with the support of a small group of people doing the same work.
5 days and 4 nights (residential)
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What We Mean by "Inner Courtship"
Most of us live with a kind of internal fragmentation.
One part of us wants to go all in. Another part wants to protect us by holding back. One voice says yes. Another says no — for good reasons. We call these disagreements inner conflicts.
But what if they're not conflicts at all? What if they're just two parts of you speaking different languages, trying to find each other?
In Internal Family Systems language, we talk about this as an inner marriage — a courtship between the different aspects of yourself. Not all parts agree. Not all parts feel safe. But all of them are trying, in their own way, to take care of you.
This retreat is an invitation to shift how you relate to that internal conversation. Instead of fighting between the parts, or suppressing one to serve another, what if you could create a secure attachment from within? What if the parts of you that have been at odds could actually find their way back to each other?
Where This Comes From
Ted Cation and Kay Gardner have known each other for fifteen years. Their story begins in an IFS training where Kay was the lead trainer and Ted was a participant. Kay describes it like this:
"I met him for the first time and he was totally disarming to me. He would talk about things that no one else I knew talked about — that we are 'rays of light held between heaven and earth.' I knew about this, but never spoke about it to anyone. And yet here we were having an open conversation about it."
That conversation didn't stop. Ted later shared a meditation he'd learned from an energy healer. Kay recognized something in it immediately — an inner knowing that the two of them would create something together.
When COVID hit, Ted was grieving the loss of his dance community and the isolation of lockdown. Kay offered what she had: the meditation, and what it was teaching her about the chakras, about who we really are underneath the noise. They began meeting three times a week with a small group of close colleagues.
What they learned together became the seed of a mystery school called the Possibility of Awakening. Six programs later, they noticed a pattern emerging in the people who came through: a courtship forming between the different parts of themselves. That pattern — the inner marriage becoming real, alive, integrated — is what this gathering is about.
What You'll Experience
You'll engage in grief work — releasing the cultural and ancestral burdens that have split you off from yourself. And you'll do it in the presence of two facilitators who have spent decades learning how to hold space for this kind of deep transformation. You'll walk away with:
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Meet Your Facilitators
Kay is credited with creating ancestral unburdening work — a practice that explores the legacy and cultural burdens we carry in our bodies and systems. Her current work integrates the spiritual and energetic dimensions of IFS, particularly around the chakras and what she calls the "inner marriage" between parts.
Before IFS, Kay taught and practiced Hakomi Body-Centered Psychotherapy and was instrumental in bringing the body into the IFS model itself. She has co-facilitated the Women's Circle in Chicago and led workshops across the country on themes like Persephone's Journey, Men and Their Mothers, Women and Their Fathers, and Sacred Theatre for Couples. A student of yoga and meditation for 40 years, Kay brings an embodied, spiritual, and energetic presence to her work — a way of teaching that honors both the invisible and the visceral.
Instead of ending it, Ted had a different idea: go see the whole world first, and find out if life is worth living before deciding it isn't. He went. He found that it was — and that his existential agony needed presence and understanding, not resolution.
That search has carried him through decades of training in Hakomi, IFS, Tantra, and energy healing. It's been informed by teachers and writers like Joseph Campbell and Anthony de Mello. What he wants now, he says simply, is to be fully present with each and all of you — to witness your unfolding and your inner courtship with genuine care.
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Enjoy The Beauty of Port Carling
Accommodation selections will be confirmed following your application approval. If you'd like to request a specific room type or arrangement, please contact us at hello@thenestcollective.ca.
Pricing plan
We offer flexible payment options to make this accessible. A $500 application deposit due upon acceptance of your application to secure your spot.
Once your application is approved, you're automatically enrolled, and the remaining balance is due according to the payment schedule above.
FAQs
Have a question? We've got you covered. If you have a question that isn't answered here, don't hesitate to reach out to us.
