Bottom-Up and Moment-to-Moment Sex Therapy: An Online Study Group for Clinicians
OCTOber 1-5, 2026 ALL ONLINE
This 16 hour study group is for clinicians who are interested in the how of working bottom-up and moment to moment with couples in sex therapy. We will use video to invite you into real sessions with Karen and Caroline so you can see and feel what it’s like to slow things down and see in real time how a couple’s relational system is causing pain and interfering with their erotic aspirations. From there you will learn how to structure your work developmentally to help couples move from a sexual impasse to ripening over their lifespan.
This is a pilot so we are reducing the fee and asking clinicians to be generous with their feedback. We are seeking CE certification but this may not happen in time for the study group.
We will be using video of real couples and will ask that you sign a contract with us agreeing not to record or distribute this material.
Learning Targets:
Assessment and Case Construction in Bottom-Up Sex Therapy. Learn how arousal regulation, attachment style and embodiment affect a couple’s capacity to function securely in an erotic context.
Learn to sequence your work developmentally so couples develop the skills they need to grow their erotic capacity.
Learn common mistakes couple therapists make working bottom up.
Learn how to stage a couple’s most challenging erotic impasse.
“The Ripening Approach is a strategic roadmap that hones in on the moment-to-moment erotic journey of the couple. Karen and Caroline explore the somatic narrative that is so often overlooked but when explored provides new, sensual ways of being connected. The Ripening Approach brings a fresh perspective to sex therapy, leading to lasting change. It is what we need right now.”
—Allison Howe, PACT Institute Senior Faculty
PACT in the Bedroom: Using PACT Interventions in Sex Therapy to Jumpstart Secure Functioning
2.5 Hour course available on the PACT Institute Website taught by Dr. Karen Berry, PACT Certified Clinician, and Caroline Russell Smith, LCSW, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, PACT Level 2.
https://www.thepactinstitute.com/products/pact-subscription/categories/2154568141/posts/2174426647
The Power of Working Bottom-Up in Sex Therapy: An Introduction to the PACT Approach FOR CLINICIANS
(ONLINE: 4 CE Hours)
Skills for Ripening Over the Erotic Lifespan:
A Retreat for Couples
WINTER 2026 Dates TBD in Warwick, NY
Ripening Through The Erotic Lifespan
Long-term couples face a wide variety of sexual and relational challenges as they mature like these peaches. Infidelity and serious illness, functional impairments, desire and kink differentials, performance anxiety, losses, and so much more. These painful experiences can destroy relationships or they can become nutrients for erotic and relational development if a couple knows how to be a couple inside and outside the bedroom.
This is a Skills-Based Retreat
We are practical. We want you to return home from the retreat with skills you have already practiced. Everything we do during our time together will be about learning what it means to be your partner’s erotic ranger buddy, sexual whisperer, and adventuremate in the bedroom and beyond. We work slowly and deliberately. Our focus will be on what’s happening in the body in real time so you are less likely to automate each other and more likely to be creative, collaborative and caring. We blend relational science, Tantra and play into powerful fuel for growth and development.
What does relational science have to do with pleasurable sex?
Ripening Retreats are based on the work of Dr. Stan Tatkin, world-renowned couple therapist and creator of the Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT). Based on neuroscience and attachment theory, PACT helps couples transform their relationships through the development of secure functioning, the capacity to understand and care effectively for each other moment to moment especially under challenging circumstances. On a Ripening Retreat couples learn how to apply the science of secure functioning to sex.
Couples in PACT therapy often exclaim to their therapist, “Are you reading my mind? How did you know I felt that way?” The therapist can often predict what clients are feeling because they understand neurobiology, arousal regulation and the science of attachment and can see how a client’s history is showing up in their office right then and there! Ripening Retreats teach couples how to do that with each other. Once couples are able to understand and predict their partners, once they realize that very little of what is happening is personal or pathological, couples are able to use secure functioning in the service of erotic transformation. So come learn the basic principles of secure functioning and how they serve as guardrails on your journey towards pleasurable sex!
Here is what Stan has to say about Karen:
“Karen is a master clinician whose groundbreaking contributions are indispensable, significantly enhancing therapeutic outcomes for couples striving for deeper, more meaningful connections. She now leverages her extensive expertise to develop the innovative Ripening Model of Secure Erotic Functioning.”
—Stan Tatkin, PsyD MFT, Founder of the PACT Institute
Why relational science?
Sex is a dynamic process shaped by our early connection to caregivers, nervous system regulation, communication patterns, erotic preferences and so much more! Relational science offers us a roadmap for creating more connected, satisfying and resilient intimate experiences.
Why Tantra?
Tantra offers us a way to experience sex beyond the confines of sexual performance. Tantra invites us to explore energy, breath, sensation, movement and heartfulness in an erotic context. Freed from a preoccupation with orgasm, with looking/smelling/sounding right, with needing things to be a certain way, we are able to experience our capacity for deep connection with ourselves, our partner and the divine.
We are including ecstatic dance to the retreat because it offers couples an opportunity for playful, embodied, physical and emotional connection without words. It can help couples release self-consciousness, build erotic energy, rhythm and relational attunement, and have fun!
Why Play
Play is the way children learn best. In a game of make-believe when something doesn’t work to keep the action going kids simply try something else. They are free to experiment without judgment, to try on different roles, and explore as many scenarios as their minds can imagine. Children play for adventure and for healing and so shall we! Ripening Retreats balance the serious work of relational healing and erotic growth with laughter, creativity and play.
Who is this retreat for?
Maybe you’re having satisfying sex but you yearn for something deeper, more complex. Sex that’s mind blowing. Healing. Transformational.
Maybe sex in your relationship is stressful, painful, and/or disappointing. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life this way. You might even be questioning how sexual you really are.
Or maybe you haven’t had sex with your partner in a long time and there are a lot of challenging emotions that come with wanting to bring this part of your relationship back online.
Maybe you are interested in deepening your understanding of secure functioning in the erotic realm and wish for a personal experience to inform your personal and/or professional development.
Our clients share their sexual fears, doubts and yearning with us and for decades we have helped them ripen their capacity for sexual growth.
This workshop is our way of sharing the work we do in our offices with a wider audience.
Let us take you on a dynamic journey towards pleasurable sex.
We welcome committed couples of all kinds.
We welcome queer and straight couples, couples of all sizes, ages and abilities, races and ethnicities. We welcome couples who practice monogamy and couples who live in non-traditional relationship structures. Our focus will be on the science and art that binds two people in a committed relationship seeking pleasurable sex but everything you learn is applicable to a more complex relational system.
Ripening Doesn’t Happen Overnight
The kind of sex you are looking for, just like a perfectly ripe peach, takes time and optimal conditions. Pleasurable sex in a committed relationship can require rigorous study of each other. It takes creativity, play, movement and breath. It pushes couples to acquire an appetite for uncertainty and risk, a tenderness towards pain and grief, and an ability to collaborate as if their lives depend on it. Ripening takes more than a weekend. We will help you imagine your shared destination and develop the roadmap.
Participants will step out of time,
into sacred space engaging
eye to eye, belly to belly, pelvis to pelvis,
and heart to heart.
New possibilities emerge at
the gateway to erotic transformation.
Important Details
The retreat will be held at Mountain Lake Park in Warwick, NY.
We will meet:
Thursday, from 3 pm – 6 pm
Friday, from 10 am – 5 pm
Saturday, from 10 am – 3 pm
Sunday, from 10 am – 2 pm
Ecstatic Dance, 7 pm – 9 pm
Mountain Lake Park is located at 46 Bowen Road in Warwick, NY.
We will be using one of Mountain Lake’s group spaces. The park has scenic trails for walking and a pond for playing in if you wish to get outside during one of our breaks. Learn more at: www.mtlakepark.com. You might also wish to stay onsite!
Imagine ripening your relationship one erotic encounter at a time.
Please click here if you are interested so we can contact you.