Registration & Fees

How do I sign up?

• Click here to register or
• Click here to learn how to apply for financial assistance.

What is your refund policy?

• If you cancel 30 days or more before the Journey Into Manhood weekend: Your deposit and all registration fees are fully refundable. If we have already sent you a letter of instructions identifying the location of the event, etc., then we will issue the refund AFTER the conclusion of the event by reversing the charge on your credit or debit card.
• If you cancel MORE THAN 10 days but FEWER THAN 30 days before Journey Into Manhood: Your minimum required deposit ($300 in the U.S.) is NOT refundable; however, we will refund you any amount you have paid above that.
• If you cancel 10 days OR FEWER before the Journey Into Manhood weekend: Your deposit and registration fees are NOT refundable.
• If you are sick and potentially contagious, contact Rich Wyler, executive director, to discuss.

No other refunds apply, except on an exception basis approved by the executive director, Rich Wyler.

Location, Time & Transportation

When will I get detailed information on where the program will be held, travel instructions, and other details?

After you have paid your deposit, or about 4 weeks before the event, we will send you an email with all the information you need.

If you have questions in the meantime, or have not yet received the information, you can contact us at [email protected], or call 1-434-299-8696.

Where exactly will the program be held?

For security reasons, the location is CONFIDENTIAL for everyone except paid participants. Only those who have paid at least a full deposit will be sent information on the venue. However, the names of the nearest airports are on the online registration form when you pay your deposit.

Each Journey Into Manhood event is held at a rented camp, conference center or retreat center usually within a 1- to 2-hour drive or train ride from a major airport. This type of facility gives us sufficient privacy and provides a “retreat” environment set apart from normal day-to-day life.

Accommodations are not luxurious. Rooms are in a dorm setting typically with bunk beds, and in most locations you will need to bring your own sleeping bag or other bedding.

Do I have to stay at the camp or retreat center? Can I stay off-site instead?

The residential experience of being together as a community in focused personal-growth space for the full 50 hours is an essential part of the experience. If you choose to leave the premises, you will not be allowed to return.

What time does it start? What time does it end?

Normally, we start at 2:00 p.m. on Friday. Please do not arrive on site BEFORE 1:30 p.m.. Please do not arrive on site AFTER 2:00 p.m.. We normally end between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. on Sunday.

Please make your travel arrangements to accommodate this schedule. If you are flying, please be sure to allow enough travel time between the airport and the location.

*In Israel, the program usually runs Monday early afternoon through Wednesday later afternoon.

Do you provide transportation assistance?

We help to coordinate carpools among participants who may be flying into the same airport or driving from the same direction, but ultimately you are responsible to get yourself to the camp/retreat center and back.

Preparation & Confidentiality

Is there anything else I need to do to prepare?

YES. After you register, and about 4 weeks before your JiM weekend, we will email you an instruction letter with links to the following:

1. An online travel questionnaire to complete (to help us coordinate carpools, as needed).
2. An online health and life-experience questionnaire.
3. A link to electronically sign the Liability Release, Confidentiality & Other Agreements form. 

What about confidentiality?

Confidentiality is extremely important to create a safe place to do deep emotional healing work. All participants must sign a strict confidentiality agreement.

This commitment to confidentiality is also reiterated verbally, in person, at the start and again at the end of the weekend.

What will I need to bring with me?

1. Legal identification, such as a driver’s license or passport. This is to help ensure that all participants are at least 21 years old and that no one is attending under false pretenses or signing release forms under a false identity.
2. A sleeping bag and/or blankets and a pillow. (This is not always required. Some sites provide bedding, but not usually.)
3. Your personal effects and appropriate indoor/outdoor clothing. Rain gear is often recommended.
4. Necessary prescribed or over-the-counter medications. If you have a history of asthma, please be sure to bring an inhaler.
5. A towel, soap, sunscreen, bug repellent, and any other personal-care items you may require.
6. A refillable water bottle with your name on it.
7. Earplugs (highly recommended, in case of snoring).

What NOT to bring:

• Please leave all electronic devices at home or in your car when you arrive, including watches, mobile phones and wireless handheld devices. We ask you not to use them at all during the program. (Exception: electronic devices required for your health, such as a CPAP nighttime breathing machine.)
• Usually, the sites do not allow food in the residential rooms. If you bring food (such as kosher food), it must be kept in the site’s kitchen.
• No alcoholic beverages, street drugs or illicit mood-altering substances of any kind.
• Anything that may distract you or others from our healing purpose.

During the Weekend

Can I call home or work during the weekend?

We ask you to agree not to make or receive phone calls during the weekend and in fact to leave your phone in your car throughout the entire workshop. This is to help everyone stay in the experience and focus on their personal work in the present, rather than to be distracted by what might be going on at home or work.

We will provide you with an emergency number that you can give to family members who may need to contact you in case of emergency only.

Possible exceptions for unusual circumstances can be discussed with the weekend leader once you arrive.

What if I don’t want to participate in one of the processes?

Your choices will be respected. We ask you to participate in every process, but no one will force you to do anything against your will. Anyone may choose to “pass” and not participate in a particular process. The staff may challenge you to consider the reasons behind your choice, but they will never force you or manipulate you into participating.

What if I want to leave early, or want to leave for part of the time?

Of course, anyone can to leave the program altogether, at any time, for any reason. Certainly, no one is required to stay who does not wish to continue with the program.

Personal Accommodations

What if I have some physical limitations?

Journey Into Manhood is not generally a very physically rigorous weekend for most participants. Most of our “work” is indoors. We have always been able to accommodate the physical limitations of participants, whether due to age, weight, physical fitness or some type of disability. Of course, each man is responsible to take care of himself physically and to communicate his physical limitations to the staff, as necessary.

What if I have special dietary needs, or if I only eat kosher food?

When you register, one of the questionnaires we ask is about any special dietary requirements. Our cooks are typically able to accommodate most common dietary restrictions. In unusual cases, you may need to bring and prepare your own food and keep it in the kitchen.

Will my religious values be respected? Will my religious practices be accommodated?

Yes. Although Journey Into Manhood is not a prayer- or worship-based retreat — nor is it a so-called “pray away the gay” program — we are a faith-affirming community. We welcome Christians of all denominations, Jews (orthodox, conservative, reform and non-observant), Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others. We are also respectful and welcoming of people who are agnostic or of no particular faith.

We strive to create a spiritual framework for deep personal-growth work where the participant’s individual religious beliefs (or non-belief) are welcomed and may be incorporated into the individual work they may do, if the participant wishes.

We teach the spiritual principal of “surrender” to God and his divine will, as part of a broader program of healing and growth. We never intentionally challenge anyone’s religious beliefs, or lack of belief, their morals or values. We do our best to work within a participant’s existing framework of spiritual beliefs and values.

We also make sincere efforts to accommodate requirements of Jewish Sabbath observance. We often have at least one conservative or orthodox Jew on staff, and the senior non-Jewish staff men are also quite familiar with Jewish Sabbath requirements.

Controversies

Why is there so much online criticism of your organization and of Journey Into Manhood?

First, notice who is doing the criticizing. It’s almost always activists, gay media, or others with preconceived prejudices.

Since 2002, we know of fewer than 20 out of almost 3,000 participants — men who have actually experienced Journey Into Manhood first-hand — who have ever spoken out publicly against us. Otherwise, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. 

And when participants do speak out about what positive experiences they’ve had, news media and opinion writers don’t want to hear it. They only want to hear from the critics. That makes it pretty tough for our voice to be heard — even though our experience is vastly more typical.

In today’s polarized, us-versus-them world, it’s hard for some people to understand that there is a legitimate third path when it comes to dealing with same-sex attractions — neither suppressing and shaming nor indulging and celebrating, but discovering and addressing underlying issues and pain, from a place of self-acceptance and faith.

If you want to know what those who have actually been through our programs have to say, visit our testimonials page.

How do you respond to critics who say that you use questionable techniques that have not been scientifically proven to be effective?

Why should we have to? We are a voluntary, peer-led, self-help program for adults to participate in if they so choose. Brothers on a Road Less Traveled is not a mental-health clinic. We are not a therapy group or an academic body or a research organization. We are a peer-support community.

In our experience, our program is effective in powerful ways to a large number of attendees. In short, it works for us. We don’t need a scientific body to tell us what works for us. We know it because we’ve lived it. 

What’s this I saw online about beating a parent “in effigy” (beating a punching bag that represents the parent)?

No, we never beat anyone “in effigy.” That is a deliberate misrepresentation that some people have made up to try to mock or discredit us.

What we DO offer participants are opportunities to feel, express and release long-buried emotions in a safe, structured environment, rather than to suppress or deny those feelings. We teach: “Any emotion fully felt will shift to another emotion, until it arrives at a state of peace or acceptance.”

Here’s a simple example: Almost everyone has had the experience sometime in their life of having a good, hard cry — and then feeling much more peaceful or resigned afterwards. You may not have been happy, exactly, but your emotions probably shifted from deep grief to a place of acceptance and surrender.

The same is true with anger, fear and other emotions. When they are expressed fully, the released emotion shifts to something else, and ultimately arrives at a place of peace and acceptance, or even joy.

It’s not uncommon for some men to come to Journey Into Manhood with some powerful, pent-up anger that they’ve never been able to fully express or even access before. We create a safe place where they can do that, if they need to — perhaps by yelling, or by punching a punching bag, beating a pillow or wringing a towel. The anger is usually directed at a specific memory or internal message — perhaps a bullying, shaming, or abusive experience or series of experiences from the past that may have stayed with them for years.

By accessing and releasing their anger in a safe, structured environment where no one can get hurt, men can reclaim a sense of personal power and experience a real-life victory over an old wound that had long left them feeling like a victim.

I heard there is nudity at Journey Into Manhood. Is that true?

No. There is no nudity and there are no naked processes at Journey Into Manhood.

I heard you use “therapeutic holding” at Journey Into Manhood. What is that, and why?

The Journey Into Manhood program includes some inner-child healing work that can include optional holding of the “inner child” by someone of his choosing who represents either the individual’s mature, adult self or an ideal “golden father.”  

Touch, including same-sex touch, is a basic human need, and people who have experienced touch deprivation or abusive touch are often at risk for sexualizing what, at its core, is a nonsexual need. We teach and model clear boundaries around inner-child holding to keep it safe and healing — for instance, within a circle of men who witness and support. Many have reported that these processes have helped de-eroticize or de-sexualize their same-sex attractions over time.

I read online that you verbally assault the participants and call them names. Is that really true?

Of course not. This is a deliberate distortion that some critics have made up in order to try to mock or discredit us. 

During a psychodrama process, a participant may externalize some of the negative self-talk in his head in order to shut it down and overwrite it with new, positive self-talk. They are always HIS internalize messages, word for word (we never improvise them!), and the end result is that he ALWAYS over-rides them and shuts them down in the course of the role-play. Every process is designed to result in a victory for the participant.

How does it make sense to put together a bunch of guys who all experience homosexual temptations? Shouldn’t they stay away from each other to avoid being triggered?

Much of the work necessary to resolve unwanted same-sex attractions is counter-intuitive, and this is one significant example.

One of the things we hear almost universally about the impact of Journey Into Manhood is how normalizing and de-shaming it feels to be in a roomful of men who are dealing with or have dealt with the same issue, and who share a common desire for healthy change.

This kind of support and camaraderie may be one of the biggest factors contributing to the participants’ long-term success.

We hear comments like:

Other

What if I have another question that wasn’t addressed here?

Contact the administrator of Brothers on a Road Less Traveled, Tim, at [email protected] or 1-434-299-8696.