If your substance abuse, relationships, traumas and various other mental health issues have not robbed you of every penny, then here's a suggestion on where to go to restore ‘‘the peace and balance you desire’’ and ‘‘discover the best in yourself and your relationships’’.
Onsite is an hour out of Nashville in a tiny hamlet called Cumberland Furnace. The name is not a reflection on the weather but a reference to the first iron ore production in Tennessee that went on here in Dixon County through the 19th and early part of the 20th century. Onsite today run their experiential therapy workshops from the beautifully restored 1868 mansion, Drouillard House, that was built as a summer retreat by the wealthy Southern belle and inheritor of the iron ore business, Mary Florence Kirkman, and her Union army captain husband James Drouillard.
Onsite is not a rehab in the accepted sense but a retreat, and its longest programme is six and a half days. They do deal with substance abuse, but only within the context of self-empowerment and self-realisation and acceptance, for which they use a combination of talking and experiential therapy. I was lucky to make my visit at a time on a Friday after the departure of one set of residents and the arrival from the airport of the next, which gave me the chance to be shown around the building and grounds without interrupting any therapy.
Several different workshops can run at the same time within the retreat as Onsite contract in various expert therapists from around the country to lead programmes such as: Living Centred, Coupleship, Couples Intensive, Learning to Love Yourself, Insight, Healing Trauma Issues, Healing Sexual Issues, Healing Money Issues, Family Intensive and the Equine Programme. At roughly $3,000 a week these workshops are not expensive by US standards but they are designed for a ‘top-end’ clientele, often people who have been, or still are, in therapy at home, and who want to tackle their problem in a concentrated and intensive manner in a very beautiful, relaxing therapeutic retreat setting.
I was lucky enough to be offered a session of equine therapy which gave me a lot of insight into how horses can be used to mirror/reflect back to us some of the feelings and behaviours we experience every day without realising their effect on ourselves or others.
I loved this place. It has history and atmosphere and is so far off the beaten track that my self-esteem rose by just finding it!
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