1-to-1 Sessions
People seem to find me when they sense that another Life is possible — and they’re choosing if they want to Live it.
Meeting formats are individual and intuitive, but we tend to use things like:
Somatic awareness & guidance
Parts work & Process work
Imaginal perception
Ritual craft
Following intuitive threads
Tracking and moving energy
Attention-craft
Reconnecting with Eros
Shootin’ the breeze
Depending on the person, we can pull in things like mantra, meditations, journeying, nature work, art, and intuitive oddities that crop up as we go. Some people love these options and come to me explicitly for them, others have zero interest. Personally I love it, don’t be afraid to ask.
Details
The purpose of our session logistics (pricing, schedule, etc) isn’t just to have a tidy transaction between us. The purpose is to use money, commitment, and standards to increase the odds that you have a transformative experience from putting your time and energy here.
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The first session is based on mutual generosity. I do the session the most natural way I can, and you can give whatever you’re moved to give, either before or after.
After that, working together is based on mutual stewardship. I take the work seriously on my side — and together we decide a price that helps you take the work seriously, really committing to your unfolding. A price that, if you start to flag or want to walk away, will help you remember that your time and life are precious, and you want to make the most of them.
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For both me and you, it’s best if we feel a sense of commitment to what we’re doing. That way, each session isn’t just an isolated event, but part of a larger whole we can count on for the work to take place in.
We have a couple ways of establishing this field of commitment, and I’m open to other ways you might want to bring in:
Session Packages: I usually ask clients to book in one- or two-month blocks, so we have an assured stretch of time where we can let issues breathe and take up room.
Take-Home Practice: Most clients like to receive (and I love to give) practices or agreements to try out between sessions. It can also be helpful to send me texts or voice notes about the practices during the week. This can help keep the field of work alive and present.
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There are some standards I like to hold, in service to cultivating a mindset of commitment and openness where you can treat yourself to a sense of dedication to your own unfolding.
Informality: I’ve found my style goes best with a healthy sense that we’re just two folks hanging out, talking over life and reality. I’m not An Expert™ or, god forbid, An Authority™, so we can just be two people sussing out what matters most.
BS-lessness: We both make an effort to avoid, notice, and cut through bullshit. If what we’re talking about is laced with half-truths, inflations, deflations, and distortions, we’re not getting close to what matters most.
Mystery: Be a little less certain of what you know — especially about yourself.
Clients Say:
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I have so little to say about it in the best way. It feels so hard to say anything about it in a way that honors its intimacy.
— Y
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River is... well, it's hard to describe what exactly River does. It's not therapy, it's not coaching in the ways I've understood it, it's deep in Secret Third Thing territory. River feels like a sort of custodian of gateless gates. We worked together for two months, and in that time he helped me get unblocked in a bunch of directions at once. River creates a space where what needs to emerge can do so, and offers thoughts about it.
— @mykola on Twitter
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I think what River excels at is creating a space where certain kinds of things can come up and be welcomed and explored - it's a sort of safety, but not simply safety because he's also opinionated and human and there is a sort of edge to the safety that in some ways made it even more helpful than a more sterile "this is a safe space" sort of thing
— K
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River helped me to process a lot of complex emotions in ways that both echoed and subverted the more typical "how does that feel in your body?" therapeutic process. I appreciated that he was able to roll with my own complex, multi-modal approach to stuff - bouncing between somatic and symbolic and cognitive and mythic and etc as parts of an underlying rhizome.
— 2-month client
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It felt like an energetic/symbolic improv -- but the improv crew is not just [River] and me on Zoom. It’s also archetypal energies, rituals or narratives that emerge, places from the-land-where-mystics-hang, friendly-trees-from-the-hood jumping in to say hello.
— Milan
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The world asks a f***ing lot of you, eh? You enabled the movement of a mountain in my consciousness today, and I'm imagining you just looking around, dusting your shoulders off, and being like 'alright, cool, is there anything else?'
— 1-session client
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Working with River was like working with a loving older brother — no coercion of any sort when teaching, lots of room for free thought and stories, yet very much tracing a strong thread of what imaginal practice can be for oneself
— Sami Husseni
Reactions from My Group Work
I enjoy running group cohorts, and I’m good at it.
If you’re interested in pulling a group together to learn and practice in a cohort with me, I absolutely love following threads of interest with small groups (4-7 people).
These sometimes take a shape like group coaching sessions — and sometimes more like a tailor-made course in a shared area of interest.
If you’ve got a group and an interest in something you think you could learn about with me, get in touch and we’ll find a format.