About The Centre for Intensives

The Centre exists to organise this work and make it findable, as well as promoting the impact and efficacy of intensives more widely.

The four arms

The Centre is the organising name for four related areas of work sharing one clinical approach.

• Individual intensives. Concentrated one-to-one therapy for adults, delivered online worldwide and in person on selected retreats.
• Couples intensives. Structured intensive work with couples, delivered online worldwide.
• Organisational intensives. Confidential clinical work with a senior leader, funded by their employer, under a confidentiality structure agreed in advance.
• Therapist training. Training, coaching and community for therapists building their own specialist intensive practices, delivered at The Spacious Practice.

The first three are clinical provision. The fourth is training and is not clinical treatment.

What a therapy intensive is

A therapy intensive is a concentrated block of clinical work delivered across consecutive or near-consecutive days, in place of the weekly hour. Assessment and history are taken before the first day, so that the days themselves begin at working depth rather than at introduction. Integration is structured afterwards.

The term is used loosely across the wider market, so it is worth being specific about what it means here.

Why the format matters

Weekly therapy spends a portion of every session re-establishing where the work had reached. For some presentations that rhythm is exactly right, and weekly therapy remains the appropriate instrument for a great deal of clinical work. For others, the re-entry cost is the reason progress stalls for years.

An intensive removes that cost. It also suits people whose working lives make reliable weekly attendance unrealistic, which is a practical rather than a clinical argument, but a real one.

Who delivers the clinical work

Lucy Orton, personally, in every case.

Registered counsellor, ACA #27921. MSc. PGDip. Level 3 IFS-trained. Brainspotting practitioner. Certified Sex Therapist. RLT-trained. Over 18 years of clinical experience. Currently a PhD candidate in clinical sexology.

Before training as a therapist, Lucy worked in advertising strategy and was a WPP Fellow, so she brings a corporate and commercial background to organisational work.

Because all clinical work is delivered by one practitioner, the Centre takes a limited number of engagements in each arm per year.

Founded by Lucy Orton →

Standards

Clinical practice is governed by Lucy Orton's registration as a counsellor, ACA #27921, and by the code of ethics of that registering body.

How the Centre is organised

Each arm has its own destination. Individual intensives are described at lucyorton.com. Couples intensives are at couplesawaken.com. Therapist training is at The Spacious Practice. Organisational work is described on this site.