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  • Welcome

  • Thank you for your interest in Presence at the Threshold.

    We know there are countless programs, workshops, and conversations about masculinity available today. This offering was born not from a desire to teach men who they should become, but from a different question altogether:

    What creates enough safety for authentic masculinity to emerge?

    If you've found your way here, something in you may already recognize that you're standing at a threshold.

    Perhaps life is asking something different of you.

    Perhaps the ways you've learned to move through the world no longer feel entirely true.

    Perhaps you're longing for deeper intimacy, greater aliveness, more meaningful relationships, or simply a life that feels more honest.

    Wherever you are, you're welcome here.

  • About the Program

  • Many men have inherited a version of masculinity that asks them to perform.

    To know.
    To protect.
    To provide.
    To lead.
    To remain composed.
    To hold it all together.

    These qualities are not inherently the problem. Many are beautiful expressions of mature masculinity. The difficulty arises when they become unconscious obligations rather than authentic choices—when our sense of worth depends upon performing a role instead of inhabiting ourselves.

    Over time, performance can quietly replace presence.

    It can distance us from our bodies, our emotions, our relationships, our creativity, and our capacity to fully participate in life.

    This program begins from a different premise.

    Rather than asking how men should change, we begin by asking a different question:

    What creates enough safety for authentic masculinity to emerge?

    Because when we feel deeply safe—in our bodies, in relationship, and within ourselves—presence becomes available.

    Curiosity begins to replace certainty.

    Play becomes possible again.

    Relationship becomes a place of discovery rather than performance.

    Leadership arises from responsiveness rather than obligation.

    Eros begins to emerge—not simply as sexuality, but as the life force that invites us into connection, creativity, vitality, intimacy, and a fuller participation in life.

     

    A Different Conversation About Polarity

    Much of today's conversation around masculinity asks men to choose between extremes.

    Be dominant or be soft.

    Lead or receive.

    Suppress your masculinity or defend it.

    We are interested in something far more nuanced.

    Our work is rooted in the understanding that presence is not the absence of polarity—it is what allows polarity to become conscious rather than conditioned.

    Rather than reinforcing prescribed masculine and feminine roles—or rejecting polarity altogether—we explore how presence transforms inherited patterns into conscious choices.

     

    Why Female Facilitators?

    One of the unique aspects of this program is that it unfolds within a relational field co-facilitated by women.

    Much of our relational conditioning lives beneath conscious awareness. It often doesn't appear until we are genuinely in relationship—with attraction, uncertainty, projection, longing, difference, boundaries, misunderstanding, care, or repair.

    Rather than talking about relationship, participants have the opportunity to experience it in real time.

    Through carefully facilitated relational practices with experienced female facilitators, unconscious expectations, inherited dynamics, and familiar protective strategies become visible—not with shame or judgment, but with curiosity.

    This creates an opportunity not simply to understand old patterns, but to experience what becomes possible when relationship itself begins to feel safe enough for honesty, playfulness, vulnerability, and authentic expression.

    As men begin to feel safer expressing the fullness of themselves, polarity no longer needs to be performed. It becomes something that can be consciously inhabited, explored, and expressed in ways that are authentic rather than inherited.

    This is not about learning how a man should behave.

    It is about discovering what authentic masculine expression feels like from the inside.

    What happens when leadership is no longer a performance?

    When protection arises from love rather than obligation?

    When strength no longer requires emotional distance?

    When vulnerability no longer threatens dignity?

    When play becomes possible again?

    These are not questions we answer intellectually.

    They are questions we practice.

     

    An Individual Journey Within a Shared Initiation

    While the group becomes a powerful field of practice, no two men arrive at the same threshold.

    This is not a one-size-fits-all program.

    Each participant begins with an individual one-on-one initiation session before the group convenes. Together, we'll explore the unique threshold you are standing before—the place where an old way of being no longer serves you, but a new way has not yet fully emerged.

    We'll identify the patterns that have shaped your relationships, the unconscious contracts you've inherited, the questions your life is asking of you, and the capacities that are waiting to be developed.

    Rather than prescribing a universal path, these conversations allow the work to be uniquely tailored to the person you are—and the man you are becoming.

    Throughout the six weeks, the group becomes a living laboratory where these themes are explored through embodiment, relational practice, dialogue, experiential exercises, and conscious feedback.

    The journey concludes with a second private integration session, creating space to reflect on what has shifted, what has emerged, and what threshold now lies ahead. Together we'll identify the practices, commitments, and developmental tasks that will continue supporting your life long after the program has ended.

    The group provides the shared field. The individual sessions ensure that your path through it remains deeply personal.


    What We'll Explore

    Throughout the six weeks we'll work experientially with themes including:

    -Presence and embodied awareness
    -Authentic masculinity beyond performance
    -A unique approach to conscious polarity
    -Nervous system regulation and cultivating the conditions for safety
    -Emotional fluency, vulnerability, and play
    -Consent, boundaries, and authentic intimacy
    -Projection, expectation, and conscious relationship
    -Eros as vitality, creativity, and participation
    -Thresholds, initiation, and purposeful action

     

    An Invitation

    This is not a program about becoming a better man.

    Nor is it an invitation to abandon masculinity.

    It is an invitation to discover what becomes possible when performance begins to soften, presence deepens, and relationship becomes a place of genuine encounter.

    To discover that strength and tenderness are not opposites.

    That leadership can arise from listening rather than certainty.

    That vulnerability can deepen rather than diminish dignity.

    That playfulness is not childish—it is one of the hallmarks of freedom.

    Ultimately, this is an initiation into a different way of living.

    A way in which masculinity is no longer something to perform, but something to embody.

    A way in which polarity becomes a conscious expression rather than an unconscious pattern.

    A way in which eros is experienced not simply as desire, but as the force that draws us into deeper relationship—with ourselves, with others, and with life itself.

    Because when we create the conditions for safety, authenticity no longer has to be forced.

    It begins to emerge naturally.

    And from that place, life is no longer something to control or merely endure.

    It becomes something we are free to participate in.

    Because life is not a problem to solve.

    It is a medium to create with.

  • Program Overview

  • Dates
    Wednesdays, September 23 – October 28
    7:00–9:00 PM Eastern
    Live Online via Zoom


    What's Included
    -Six weekly experiential group sessions
    -Two private 1:1 initiation sessions (opening & closing)
    -Guided practices between sessions
    -Two facilitators

    Investment
    Sliding Scale: $900–$1,500

    We offer a sliding scale to make the program accessible while honoring the depth of the work involved. If accepted, we'll invite you to choose an investment level that reflects both your financial circumstances and the value of the experience.


    Commitment
    Because this work builds week by week, we ask participants to attend all six group sessions whenever possible.

  • Please let us know which time works best for you.*
  • About Your Facilitators

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  • Ashley Berry

    I blend my background in psychology, somatic work, improvisation, and conscious relating practices, with my work as a professional dominatrix, to create containers that explore radical acceptance, erotic wholeness, and embodied power as pathways to deeper intimacy with self and other. 

    Over the last 9 years I have worked with multiple hundreds of men, and have come to appreciate the many dimensions of social, cultural, and spiritual context that men in western culture are embedded in, and the very specific gifts, challenges, and longings that arise from these contexts.

    My approach is always rooted first and foremost in welcoming the truth of what’s here now, and regarding it with curiosity, a playful attitude, and an orientation towards wholeness and coherence.

    I am also passionate about rites of passage and how we can move together towards a culture of initiated adults that can participate in and steward our life and relationships with maturity, collaboration, joyful responsibility and connection to the Eros of presence.

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  • Rosie Kalashyan, M.A.

    Rosie Kalashyan is a facilitator, writer, and depth psychology practitioner whose work explores the questions of what it means to be human and how we participate in the larger unfolding of life.

    Drawing from Jungian depth psychology, archetypal studies, somatics, mythology, ecopsychology, rites of passage, and systems thinking, she is fascinated by the ways personal experience intersects with collective, cultural, ecological, and cosmological processes. Her work explores how the stories we carry, the archetypal forces that shape us, and the living systems we belong to continually inform one another.

    At the heart of her work is a belief that transformation cannot be forced. Rather than teaching people who to become, Rosie is interested in cultivating the conditions in which authentic ways of being naturally emerge. Through embodied practice, relational inquiry, and depth-oriented exploration, she invites people to move beyond inherited identities and into a more conscious relationship with themselves, others, and the living world.

    She understands eros not simply as sexuality, but as the life force that calls us toward vitality, intimacy, creativity, beauty, and meaningful participation in life. Whether facilitating individual sessions or group experiences, her work is ultimately an invitation into deeper presence, authentic relationship, and a more wholehearted way of being human.

  • Before You Continue

  • We invite you to slow down before beginning the application.

    There are no perfect answers.

    This isn't a test.

    We're not looking for polished responses or the "right" words.

    We're simply interested in meeting you honestly.

    Take your time.

    Answer from where you are today.

    The application itself is part of the initiation.

  • Basic Information

  • Format: (000) 000-0000.
  • About You

  • Where do you feel most disconnected? (Check all that apply)*
  • Relationships

  • When conflict arises, how do you typically respond?*
  • Embodiment

  • Threshold

  • Group Experience

  • What are the topics that are most interesting or places you most like guidance in the context of this container?*
  • Health & Wellbeing

  • Commitment

  • Please indicate your agreement with the following:*
  • Closing Reflection

  • Questions? Email: xbeyondtheveilx@proton.me

  • Should be Empty: