Shared Heart Foundation

This review is for the Mens Retreat in January.
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I cannot recommend.
The stated purpose for the «Men’s Retreat» is to «establish meaningful friendships.»
The working method of his sessions includes sharing of intimate details of relationship problems, constructive feedback, and: generation of feelings of love among men through staring in each other’s eyes, hugging and singing.
Good enough… fair enough. Well it’s not often I have the opportunity to sing love songs to another man while embracing and staring into his eyes, but it’s not harmful, either. I don’t think. Yet, Some of the participants were not able to perform the basic functions of the retreat. Worse, one person attending was so disturbing that his presence must be disclosed to you.
Facts: Spent the weekend listening to inner-​most thoughts of a man’s uncontrollable urges towards women, he admitted to violating his own 12 year old daughter on multiple occasions. Privately, he asked me if I thought he was a monster. My only response was he must be brave to admit to a room full of people having molested his own daughter.
His presence was — to say the least — disturbing, and I’d rather be hit in the head with a hammer than listen to his inner most thoughts again. He made no efforts to establish meaningful relationships.
Fact: He’s been coming for fifteen years and he will likely be there if you attend. There were others, including a poor unfortunate soul that, for disability reasons cannot discuss anything, yet were still given equal share of time.
I did learn a few things about myself and made a few good friends, so I give it two stars for that.
CONCLUSION: I wish I had known this before I attended. I would have spent the weekend hiking, or backpacking. That’s why writing this review is necessary, so you can make an informed decision about whether or not you want to sing love songs while embracing and staring into the eyes of the people attending. Maybe that’s your thing.

It has been over a month since my wife and I attended the couples retreat with Barry and Joyce Vissell. We had experienced two difficult years through communication dead ends, deaths in both of our families, and continuous fighting that could almost be scheduled among our weekly responsibilities. We wondered how we could love each other so much, but fight about every little thing that mattered so little to us. Our relationship was getting more difficult with every added challenge in life, and it was by chance that I came across Shared Heart’s website while browsing for counseling that would be LGBTQ friendly. We could not be more thankful to have found this retreat, and most of all for Barry and Joyce. These two people not only opened their home where they offer the best counseling that we have ever had the opportunity to experience, but they also opened their hearts. This wonderful, highly qualified couple do not separate mind, body, and spirit with their services, which is what we have experienced before with counseling. Throughout the weekend, we felt connected with everyone involved, and to this day we are still awakening to the effects of the tools that were given to us to better our relationship. Every day we thank Barry and Joyce for changing our lives with their healing counseling, and for creating a platform where people are embraced, and cared for. Not only did we leave the retreat more connected to one another, but we also renewed our vows. Legally. We are now wife and wife. It’s been weeks, and we are still learning things about ourselves. This workshop opened our minds, and gave us the ability to understand each other with compassion, and the ability to understand ourselves as individuals. I would recommend any of the retreats offered by Barry and Joyce for any number of issues. With many thanks and appreciations.

My wife has read their books and wanted to go to the couples counseling weekend to «work on our relationship.» Like many guys, those words are about as welcome to me as «we have to talk.» But I went, and all I can say is WOW! Guys, this is worth doing.
Joyce is very intuitive and really able to get to the heart of a situation. Barry is a superb listener and counselor. They both have so much life experience and experience doing this with what must be many hundreds of couples by now that things move very fast. You WILL feel significant changes in yourself and especially in your relationship.
My wife and I had fallen into being parents almost all the time, and husband & wife only rarely. Barry & Joyce gave us specific ideas to fix that, and went further to tell us why parenting would be better if we spent more time every day on our relationship. We each got really clear about what we needed from the other. By the end of the workshop, when I told my wife what I vowed to do, she said: «Wow.»
We went to a session at their house, with four other couples. All interesting people with a variety of issues. I watched with interest as Barry & Joyce met each couple where they were and helped them move forward. By the end of the session one couple wanted to get married, and they performed a legal ceremony on the spot!
Excellent vegetarian food all weekend. You can camp if you want — they have a beautiful property for hikes. A handy hot tub to look at the stars.,
If you want to strengthen your relationship, I cannot recommend this highly enough. Six stars. We’ll be taking the kids to their family camp in Oregon next summer, and I’m looking forward to Barry’s men-​only session early next year.