you you
Workshops Certification in Soul-Work NLP; a streamlined version of Neurolinguistics and trance-work, the most brilliantly effective communication and integrated personal transformation skills. Learn the core skills that will allow you to be massively effective with your clients, as well as to create exponential growth in your business and personal life.
A two week group program that includes revolutionary personal-change tools for clarity, direction, and for being and expressing your vision for what’s possible in your life and for the world
NLP Coaching and Training, Neuro-Linguistic Programming Hypnotherapy, Certified NLP Coaching and Practitioner training program in California 760.782.9223
You are at the cutting edge, highly creative, and motivated – a visionary, an artist, a healer, an evolutionary leader. Your passion is to make your vision real. The world we all long for also includes your thriving life and business. Win-win is the only option.
Do you believe in the magic of a bigger vision for what is possible? Is it is time for you to commit to a new level of success and influence .. with full-on energy and creativity? Then this is where our conversation can begin.
We each work with a small number of individual clients. We customize the program to best address your needs. Please contact us for details.
Calendar
Upcoming Retreats and workshops
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DATES
- Monthly Constellation Workshop L.A. (Next workshop August 29)
- Silent Meditation Retreat at Manzanita Village September 4-7
- Family Constellation Retreat and Circle September 18-20
- Creativity and Play Workshop October 17
- End of Year Retreat December 27-30
- Retreat at Joshua Tree –.February 13-16, 2027
- Walking with Mary Magdelene April 16-19, 2027
- Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. Fundraiser. May 15, 2027
- Monthly Family and Systems Constellations
Saturday July 25, 2026 12:45PM – 4:30 PM Los Angeles – Silverlake
Saturday August 29, 2026 12:45PM – 4:30 PM Los Angeles – Silverlake
Saturday September 26, 2026 12:45PM – 4:30 PM Los Angeles – Silverlake
Saturday October 24, 2026 12:45PM – 4:30 PM Los Angeles – Silverlake - Ongoing Training
Family System Constellations
Family Constellation is a mirror, a microcosm, a reflection of your life as it is, and as it might be. Benefits are immediate and long-term. It may be therapeutic, but it is in many ways the opposite of traditional therapeutic modalities. It does not depend on engaging the normal channels of understanding. It goes deeper, like trance or plant-medicine. It shows you very directly, through a collaborative process, what you may have been unable to see or accept previously. By the testimony of many of our clients it compliments other modalities of change, and often achieves what months or years of therapy did not address. To quote one of our mentors, “It shows you what you may already know, but don’t yet know that you know.”
Before experiencing Constellation work, people often think that it’s all about resolving current issues within their family, or changing personal programming established during their upbringing. But the heritage of our family of origin goes far beyond the conditioning of our early life. We have carried buried loyalties that go back, in many instances, for generations ‒ deeper buried memories. So, a question: What if the expectations, disappointments, experiences that we imagine are our own, are determined by generational traumas and unresolved misunderstandings –‒ hidden out of fear, guilt, or simply not knowing that no one has an obligation to accept their present state if it no longer serves them. It’s always astonishing when people take agency over their inner state, and recognize their natural capacity to transform old traumas.
Monthly Family Constellation
Workshops in Los Angeles
with Caitriona and Michele
Saturday August 29, 2026 12:45PM – 4:30 PM Los Angeles – Silverlake
Saturday September 26 2026 12:45PM – 4:30 PM Los Angeles – Silverlake
Saturday October 24, 2026 12:45PM – 4:30 PM Los Angeles – Silverlake
$50 to participate/rep . $150 for personal constellation for newcomers.
Call or email to confirm or to arrange a personal constellation.
Please RSVP via email or phone (310-339-1660)
to register.
at 1538 Micheltorena St 90026 (Silverlake)
Please allow time for parking
Pre-register as a participant please.
Pay by Venmo to @Caitriona-Reed (1660)
or pay on the day
please contact us 310-339-1660 to confirm
info@fivechanges.com
The Stillness That Holds Us
Retreat at Manzanita Village
meditation, presence, and the living earth
with Caitriona and Michele
September 4-7, 2026
Friday afternoon through Monday 2 PM
Register here
The Stillness That Holds Us.
Slow down and remember what is here, the power and balance you already have within you. In a world increasingly shaped by violence, we offer this retreat as a space to rest and be still. Stillness is not something we create, but something that quietly arises within us, greets us, receives us. Through meditation, silence, inquiry, and time on the land, we unfold presence as a living relationship with ourselves, each other, and the Earth.
The retreat is an invitation for you to witness how the living Earth can support your practice. Walking, sitting, breathing, and listening, attuning yourself to the intelligence that holds all life. Rather than turning away from the world, we allow mountains, trees, wind, and soil to be teachers—revealing a sacred intimacy that is often overlooked.
This retreat is open to all, regardless of your spiritual practice, or if you are a beginning meditator. If you are longing for simplicity, depth, and freedom — not as an escape, but as the ease that arises naturally when you simply STOP. To rediscover a quiet belonging—one that steadies the heart, opens compassion, and reconnects you to the larger life we are all a part of.
Cost: base-cost for the center + food and accommodation $300
Additional donation to support Manzanita Village and the Teachers (suggested $200 or what you can afford)
Low-income scholarships always available. Please ask.
Questions: info@fivechanges.com
Register here
September 18-20
With Caitriona Reed, Michele Benzamin-Miki, and Amy von Harrington
Identity, gender, and standing in your own true nature
A weekend of Family and Systemic Constellation work, meditation, sitting in community.
“Any personal or spiritual work you do here on this sacred land is magnified many times over. Most people feel it when they arrive. And simply just by being here, something inside me shifts, and I drop into a deeper place of knowing.”
Caitriona and Michele will be joined by Amy von Harrington,
Amy is a fellow facilitator, an artist, and in her own words, “a disruptor, curious to move beyond the edges of expectation”
Meeting with her on several occasions we couldn’t resist organizing this collaboration.
This is open to all, whatever you experience of Family Constellation.
Starts Friday afternoon, June 26 2:00pm and goes through mid-day Sunday June 28.
$250 includes plant-based food and accommodation.
To Register: Send payment in full via Venmo to 310-339-1660
IMPORTANT: Please include a note with your payment that includes your phone and email.
We will send confirmation, directions and details..
For other payment options please contact us.
Arrival – Please note: If you are coming from the Los Angeles area, to avoid Friday rush hour traffic, and to arrive for the start of the retreat, plan to be on the road by 10:00 A.M.. (It’s the difference between a 2 hour drive and a 5 hour drive)
There are several health food stores and restaurants in Temecula where you can pick up lunch on the way.
Creativity, celebration, and play
with Caitriona and Michele
art Manzanita Village
image – word – sound – silence
Saturday October 17
10 AM – 7 PM (Sliding scale $175-$300)
Overnight Stay optional ($50 donation)
Sunday. Meditation, walks, feast
We invite you to immerse yourself in the spirit of play and creativity. You don’t have to be, or call yourself, an artist. Just bring an open heart-mind, and the willingness to let yourself be surprised and open.
Saturday activities will include:
- Enso, Zen circle painting
- Words, sound, poetry, creative journaling
- Voice. Vocalizations to energize the body-mind
- Painting with both hands – integrating right and left sides of the brain
- Embodied movement – dance
- Council, sharing, laughter
- Creative ritual, sourcing and rooting your creativity
Bring journal, sketch pad, pens or pencils, musical instruments, ritual objects.
(supplies for Enso (zen circle) painting will be provided
Michele and Caitriona have spent their entire lives creating art in different form, visual arts, writing, poetry, music, singing, performance, dance, Manzanita Village itself is part of that expression. They have cultivated different ways of preparing and then diving into creating,. They have also experienced the challenges of the dreaded and sometimes paralyzing inner critic.
Confirm and register by calling Michele at 310-339-1660
Everyone welcome!
Details, what to bring, and directions will be sent after you confirm.
Michele info@fivechanges.com
or call (or Vrnmo to reserve your spot) 310-339-3531
End of Year
Retreat
December 27-30
with Caitriona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki
December 27-30, 2026
Starts 2:00 pm Sunday ends 2:00 pm Wednesday
- Meditation . Silence . Grounding to the Earth
* Daily rhythm of silence, meditation, and guided teaching
* Becoming native to place: stories and perspectives that ground practice in relationship with the living Earth
* Explorations of thought, intuition, and spirit
* Opportunities for dialogue,alone time, journaling, and reflection
* A supportive, respectful community of shared practice
Everything is in process. Nothing stands still. Our experience as well as very wisdom tradition affirms it. We hope for constancy and security but it is as fleeting as a cloud in the sky. Safety is in the heart, in the spirit, in the keening of our senses.
Join us in this weaving of wisdom traditions—rooted in silence, nourished by story, illuminated by thought and imagination, and alive in community. Together let’s rest into the flow of life.
Food and Accommodation included
Sliding Scale starting at $400
email – info@fivechanges.com or call +1-760-782-9223
JOSHUA TREE RETREAT February 2027
Energy, Focus, and Patience
with Caitriona and Michele at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center
February 12-15 2027
Starts Friday afternoon ends Monday mid-day
The Six Perfections
We are excited to return to Dhamma Dena again after long absence. We taught there for many years as guests of the founder, Ruth Denison. We taught there again in the Spring of 2026 and are teaching again in 2027. Please join us for this homecoming to explore the Six Perfections.
Details to be announced
Training for Constellation Facilitators 2027
Certification training will be in person with two (or more) weekend retreats at Manzanita Village.
In addition there will be weekly online group and individual training.
Details to be announced.
Caitriona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki
are senior teachers in the dual Buddhist wisdom lineages of Vipassana and Zen. They were empowered as teachers by Ruth Denison and ThIch Nhat Hanh. They are also facilitators and teachers of The Work that Reconnects and collaborated extensively with Joanna Macy. They certify students in NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), Clinical Hypnosis, and Family, Organizational, and Systemic Constellations. They have led retreats and workshops internationally since the early 1980s and have been at the forefront of bringing Socially Engaged Spiritual Practice into public awareness. They continue to work extensively in the medicine traditions of North and South America.
They have been stewards of the land at Manzanita Village since 1993, and regard the land itself as teacher and guide.
Manzanita Village
Manzanita Village is a no-joke place!! This is a bring-all-your-wisdom, bring-all-your-honesty, and bring-all-your-bullshit place. Because we live in a time that’s filled with chaos and confusion. But things get a whole lot clearer here. — Jamie Grace Davis
Our passion is to help people bring their authentic selves into their daily life to lead us all towards the World we long for .. Caitriona and Michele
I had no idea how profound the training was going to be. Looking back now, I can’t imagine my life if I hadn’t done this. Play Steinberg
I have been utterly and subtly and profoundly and irrevocably transformed by my time at Manzanita Village. Thank you. – Darya Norvet
We are calling together a community, a wisdom-council of people who are ready to support each other in learning and growing, to dive into the sacred work of personal and spiritual transformation. To serve others and the world and to realize your deepest calling.
Everyone’s journey, everyone’s life, is unique. Your participation in this program is designed for you to meet your own personal and professional goals and to the develop skills that let you be the creator of your own life.
What are the qualities you most desire to embody?
Program includes, as we move forward in 2025, then 2026, retreats on the sacred land that we call our home, personal coaching, family and systemic constellation work, coaching and mentorship with both Caitriona and Michele. You will dive deeply into the how-to’s of psyche-magic, key elements of Buddhist practice, NLP, Family Systems Constellation work, Divination, and indigenous practices.. All of which are part of the seamless whole of the program we will co-create with you. For Information Click Here
Manzanita Village together with the work of Five Changes is an incredible fertile field of magic — Lawrence Ellis
Call or Text 310-339-1660
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