Two participants in the dyad practice, forearms held, in rust and copper

True Contact · Boulder

There’s a place in you that words can’t reach.And it’s yearning to be met.

True Contact is an embodied dyad practice for meeting what’s beneath the surface—and cultivating secure attachment with Life itself.

Apply to True Contact

Sat–Sun, Nov 7–8. Weekend intensive.

From past True Contact participants

“I moved deep energy that my lineage was never able to fully meet or process.”

Stevie Calderon

“This is actually helping me feel safe in my body, on the planet.”

Shannon Hoppenstedt

“I feel more in contact with the raw vulnerable part underneath.”

Brian Duda

Watch again
/
CC
Speed
Quality

How this began

A note from Edmond & Kiki

The dyad practice we now teach as True Contact was forged in the fire of our relationship.

We love each other deeply. And still, there have been moments when that love has felt impossible to reach. We’ve yelled. We’ve fought. We’ve said and done things we’re not proud of. Our nervous systems get flooded, and suddenly we’re no longer two partners trying to understand each other.

We’re inside old pain.

We needed a way beneath the argument—to the fear beneath the anger, the grief beneath the defense, the younger places still fighting for safety and love.

Dyad practice became how we found our way there.

One person turns toward the sensations inside their body. The other embodies presence and acceptance: “Even here, I’m with you.”

Edmond and Kiki face to face, eyes meeting, among monstera leaves

Something would shift. The conflict would open into something deeper. What had spent years protecting itself could finally be felt and met. And we would find each other again.

We first discovered the power of this practice inside our partnership. Then we began bringing more than our relationship conflicts into the dyad—an unrealized dream, a loss, a desire we didn’t know how to follow. Whatever was alive in our lives could enter the practice.

We began to realize this wasn’t really a couples practice. It was a way of meeting whatever Life was bringing us, in contact with another human.

So we began teaching it.

And through dyad practice, we each began to discover:

Whatever Life brings me, I can meet it.

Edmond & Kiki

We can talk about the same patterns for years without ever touching what keeps them stuck.

We can understand them. Know where they came from. And still find ourselves repeating them.

Because some things aren’t waiting to be understood.

They’re waiting to be touched.

And often, the places most yearning for contact are the hardest to reach alone.

That’s why we practice with each other.

I’ve been doing inner child work, internal family systems, for a long time. I’ve done shadow work. I’ve done medicine journeys where these younger parts were able to come out and be held. And what all those have in common is a story. What this training has done for me is to help me drop the story, leave it behind, and drop into the direct experience. In four short weeks, I’ve touched things in my core material that I’ve never touched before. So it’s not a story anymore, I’m just living my life.

Tom Marbois

True Contact, founding cohort

A participant roaring into Tom’s hands as he meets her, Kiki standing behind

The practice

The form is simple: two people, dropping beneath the words and stories into the sensations most alive in the body and most yearning for contact.

One person goes directly into their own material—from their life, history, and relationships. The other meets them with presence and physical contact, meeting through the arms with pushing and pulling, following what the body is asking for.

Charge moves—anger, rage, grief, collapse, whatever is living in the body—because it is finally met.

The practice works with the precision of an acupuncture needle: finding the exact place where Life is pressing for contact, and meeting it until something moves.

What gets touched there may be very young. An attachment wound. An old grief. A place that learned to brace against Life.

And instead of turning away, you discover you can stay.

I am becoming increasingly aware of how much of my suffering comes from a fear of being intimate with life. I see how this fear keeps me moving nonstop, because to stop, to actually land, would mean becoming intimate with myself and with the experience of being alive. This practice has encouraged me to make contact with that. And on the other side, there’s so much liberation.

Stevie Calderon

True Contact, founding cohort

No matter what we’re experiencing, Life is still there holding us.

True Contact is a relational practice. But what it transmits to the body is something larger:

Even here, I am held by Life.

In grief, rage, fear, or uncertainty, Life is still here with us.

This is what we mean by secure attachment with Life itself.

Whatever Life brings me, I can meet it.
Because whatever I’m experiencing, Life is still holding me.

What I got to learn here is how to feel met by the world, by the universe. And that you sometimes need to be met by the universe or something else because maybe you didn’t get met by a partner or past relationships. It’s important to know that life just needs to meet you where you are.

Justin Daniels

True Contact, founding cohort

The room standing in pairs, arms held, a participant laughing as she is met

The next True Contact intensive

A weekend of True Contact

An intimate group gathering over one weekend to learn the dyad practice and cultivate secure attachment as a way of life.

When
Nov 7 – 8Saturday and Sunday
Time
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Where
Boulder, Colorado
Group
Max of 12 participants
Investment
Sliding Scale: $650-950We offer a limited number of need-based scholarships for diversity and inclusion.

Interested in doing this with your partner? Tell us on the application.

Apply to True Contact

What you leave with

  • A way of life

    Learn the move: an embodied practice that lets you work in collaboration with almost anything Life brings you.

    Discover how to turn ordinary moments—in relationship, parenting, work, desire, grief, and uncertainty—into opportunities to deepen secure attachment with Life.

  • Capacity to stay

    Meet collapse, freeze, defense, fight, and fawn without abandoning yourself—and discover what becomes available when you stay.

    Break cycles of looping thoughts and story by continually meeting what’s here in the body.

    Open to new levels of joy, grief, anger, desire, and aliveness without needing the intensity to go away or be managed.

  • Attunement

    Find what’s actually asking to be met underneath the words and stories—in your own body and others.

    Develop a precise felt sense for where contact can shift something words can’t reach.

  • Containment

    Acknowledge your story—and someone else’s—without letting either drive your behavior.

    Learn to accept what you’re feeling without needing to fix it, manage it, or make it go away—and discover what begins to change when you stop trying.

    Expand your capacity to feel intensity without becoming overwhelmed by it.

  • Projections

    Discover how something that feels like a problem outside of you can be worked with inside your body.

    Reclaim the energy you spend needing another person—or Life—to be different.

    Resolve patterns that insight, solo practices, and medicine journeys often can’t touch.

  • Secure attachment with Life

    Experience what attachment repair feels like as it happens in the body and nervous system.

    Feel in your body what it’s like to unconditionally trust that Life is holding you, no matter what.

    Deepen your capacity to stay intimate with Life—even when it brings what you would never have chosen.

I was able to touch parts of myself that had longed to be felt for a long time. I left the weekend feeling empowered — having learned a new practice of meeting myself at any time. To me, it feels like one of the most integrative and potent ways we can incorporate secure attachment into our lives and to life itself.

Lilanee

True Contact, weekend intensive

Hear it from them

Watch again
/
CC
Speed
Quality
Shannon Hoppenstedt
Watch again
/
CC
Speed
Quality
Tom Marbois
“
Trauma or early wounding and disruptions to contact have very important protective functions. But it also cuts us off from life. And so this is the invitation to reconnect to all those disowned and disconnected parts and places within us and find our wholeness, which is always present — we’re just not always aware that it’s always present. This is such a powerful direct way to do that.
— Brian Duda, True Contact, founding cohort
Justin and Shannon in the dyad practice, arms held, eyes meeting, with Edmond beside them

Meet your guides

“
Through the safety of your guidance, your epic team, the container, and the group, we were able to meet each other within that and access true healing and connection. I can feel that this is truly your life’s work.
— Chelsey Lehl, True Contact, weekend intensive
Edmond Lau portrait

Edmond Lau

Founder of Co-Awaken

Founder of Co-Awaken, coach, author, husband, and father. Edmond’s work is rooted in years of daily relational practice, embodiment, and attachment work, exploring how intimacy and partnership can become paths of awakening.

Candace “Kiki” Sauvé portrait

Candace “Kiki” Sauvé

Founding Partner

Attachment repair coach, Sleepawake facilitator, writer, and mother. Kiki’s work centers on presence, repair, and village, informed by years of daily embodied practice and training in attachment, Aware Parenting, and Emotional Resolution.

“
Edmond and Kiki have a beautiful relationship in facilitation. There’s a rawness and realness to it where when they’re doing a demo, they get really right into the heart of the matter, something that’s current and alive with them, even sometimes something that’s still raw and unpackaged. And so they open themselves up vulnerably, to demonstrate trusting the practice, trusting the process that they’ve developed, that it has the ability to hold them and to hold us.
— Damien, True Contact, founding cohort

Assisting

Erica Shapiro portrait

Erica Shapiro

Chief Catalyst & Business Doula

Grounded in Somatic Birth Psychology and relational practice, Erica brings a deep attunement to the nervous system and the thresholds of birth, creation, and change.

Jessyca Jordan portrait

Jessyca Jordan

Embodiment Coach & Sacred Intimacy Facilitator

Jessyca works with eros as life force through tantra, dance, movement, and embodied relational practice.

The founding cohort seated in a circle on the rug, Edmond and Kiki at the head

Lineage

Woven from many threads

The dyad practice we share is an embodied, relational technology woven from several lineages:

  1. Holographic FlowEthan HensonLuminous
  2. Projections WorkMina Lee and Joe HudsonArt of Accomplishment
  3. Emotional ResolutionCedric BertelliEmotional Health Institute
  4. The Adult Attachment Repair ModelPeter Cummings
  5. Shamanic Medicine WorkVee Dalindo

The Dyad Practice

These threads, alongside years of our own exploration, have been tested and woven into a single form through five years of practice.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a partner to join?

No. Most of the founding cohort came alone. You practice with different people in the room, and it’s often easier with someone who isn’t your partner. Couples are welcome and can practice together or apart.

Do I need prior experience with somatic or relational work?

No. The practice is taught from the ground up, and every session includes guided practice with a facilitator beside you. Experience with therapy, meditation, or medicine work is common in the room and not required.

What does the physical contact involve?

Hands and forearms only, seated on cushions or standing. One person pushes into or pulls on the other’s arms. Eye contact is encouraged when you have capacity for it. Every step is consented to by both people, and you can adjust or stop at any point.

What if I get overwhelmed, or it’s too intense?

True Contact is held as a trauma-informed container. Intensity isn’t something you need to push through. You set the intensity. The first practice runs at a low level, and you’re given a simple stoplight system for slowing down or stopping. A facilitator is with you throughout. It can be intense, and the container is built so that it’s held.

What if I can’t feel anything, or I dissociate?

Numbness, fog, and freezing are common and are worked with directly. Frozen states are met slowly, with presence rather than force, and often shift over several sessions. One participant who arrived unsure he felt things the way other people do was in tears of joy by week three.

What if I get stuck in my head?

This is the most common thing that happens. The practice includes specific ways to trace a thought back to the sensation underneath it, and the facilitators coach it in the moment. Being in your head is material to work with, not a reason you can’t do this.

Is this therapy?

No. It’s a practice you learn and keep, not treatment you receive. Therapists have taken it and brought it into their work with clients. If you’re currently in therapy or have a mental-health history you’d like us to know about, there’s a place for that on the application, and it stays with the facilitation team.

How do I keep practicing after the weekend?

You learn a simple, somatic form you can do with anyone willing to lend an arm, and a solo form using your own arm. After the weekend, there’s a WhatsApp group, an ongoing practice space we’re forming, and the next intensive if you want to come back.

What if I can only make one of the days?

The second day builds on the first, and the group is small, so we ask you to attend both days in full. If a conflict comes up, talk to us before you apply.

Do you offer scholarships?

The investment is a sliding scale, and you choose what feels true for you. Beyond that, we hold a limited number of need-based scholarships for diversity and inclusion, for people from communities underrepresented in this work. If that’s you, say so on the application.

The founding cohort together at the end of the four weeks, arms around each other

What in you is yearning to be met?

True Contact begins with another human willing to meet you there.

Apply to True Contact

November 7 – 8 · Boulder

The part that is really good at hiding has found so many cute and curious ways to hide and avoid true intimacy. I’ve known that I needed to contact it, but I’ve never been able to find the space and the safety to do so. That was the hardest part—the being witnessed in the rage, in the shame, in the sadness, in the fear. I still don’t like to be seen but I feel braver and courageous and hungry to do so.

Shannon Hoppenstedt

True Contact, founding cohort

Sat–Sun, Nov 7–8. Weekend intensive.

Apply to True Contact

Letters from Co-Awaken

Lessons in letting Life hold you.

What we’re learning as we build the school. Stories, teachings, and each new offering as it opens.

    Written by real humans, from the heart.

    Letters from Co-Awaken

    Welcome in.

    You’re one step away from your first letter. Leave your name and email, and we’ll take it from there.

      Written by real humans, from the heart.