TIAMAT (Training Program) in Toronto 2026

TIAMAT is coming to Toronto this spring!

Join Ethan Hsieh, Taylor Barratt & John Vervaeke in (and around) Toronto for TIAMAT Tier 1 (May 22nd-24th, 2026) and Tier 2 (June 7th-12th, 2026)

Note: Tier 1 is also being offered in Los Angeles on May 29th-31st, 2026

The TIAMAT program is informed by a 4E cognitive science framework, where cognition is taken to be more than just what happens inside the skull. Rather, cognition happens between the mind and the body, and between us and our world. There is an interdependent relationship between our mind and our body, and between ourselves and our world. What our workshops do is ask you to engage with the world in a different way. Because they are mutually dependent, a different manner of engagement reveals new aspects of both yourself and the world.

We’ve designed TIAMAT for transfer. In other words, we’ve designed it so that the altered relationship between yourself and the world within the practices, carries on and grows beyond the practices.

What is Tier 1?

Tier 1 is a three-day training that gives you the basic building blocks for reading your own experience—simple moves to notice, track, and regulate so you can act with more agency day to day.

We work as an ecology of practices—practicing dialogue, imagination, mindfulness, embodiment—because no single method does everything, and a mix can balance the shortcomings of one with the strengths of another. 

What to Expect in Tier 1

• We train ways to be, rather than ‘words you can say.’ We teach that active listening involves the whole person, and is not just a matter of saying “I hear you.” 
  • What if how you feel and how “they” feel didn’t have to be in competition?
• We crowdsource for possibilities. We build in group and dialogical sense-making to ensure that you’re neither stuck alone and confused, nor being told what to think by an authority figure.
  • Find out how sharing your and hearing others’ experience clarifies what’s happening for you and allows for something new.
• We challenge what ‘safety’ means, by asking you to take the lead. You can decide what is too much and when you want to stop, and we will ask about what’s happening for you.
  • What if safety was something you could develop the skills to make?
• We move at the speed of the group. This is neither therapy nor self-help, we are always growing individually and collectively at the same time.
• Expect to be challenged in a myriad of ways. Familiar to meditation? We’ll challenge you to play. Familiar to movement improvisation? We’ll challenge you to talk about it. We practice relationality in diverse ways that take into account the individual, other people, and the world.

Tier 1 is:

• Psychoeducation on steroids: you’ll learn our proposal for a shared language for making sense of (and intervening in) how you think, act, and value.
• Learn by doing: Just enough theory to allow us to play and explore in the exercises.

Tier 1 is not:

• Just conceptual ideas. Instead, we’ll challenge through experience and experience through challenge.
• Low-stakes therapy. Instead, you might realize something about yourself, but we’re not making that happen. It just might.
• Self-empowerment. Instead, we’ll propose a philosophically and scientifically robust way of looking at the world, and you decide if it makes sense to you. We’re offering a way of being in the world, backed by rigorous philosophical argumentation and cutting edge 4E cognitive science.
• THE answer. It is an evolving proposal, shaping itself in relationship to the participants who enter it.

What is Tier 2?

Tier 2 – Sitting between Tier 1’s structures and Tier 3’s state-work, focuses on shadow work (i.e. those behaviors we disown) in a participatory, relational container. The stance is curious and collaborative: we work with what arises, instead of providing an ideal standard for you to meet. Expect intensity paired with clear agreements, escalation-through-repetition, all with the support of like-minded folks and relational support. Collective sense-making is built into Tier 2, ensuring that you’re neither alone in distress nor stuck in your own rumination cycles.

What Tier 2 addresses

• “Shadow” confusion: projections, judgements, assumptions, and desires get tangled, so responsibility blurs.
  We teach you to recognize the distinctions so there’s less shame, more ownership.
• When we’re ” triggered”, personality runs the show: personas collapse into reactivity or inflate the ego.
  We’re developing character  so that you can re-orient in real-time, rather than hide behind appearances.
• Unmet expectations spike body and mood: dysregulation hijacks learning and decision-making. Find out what you want, what you really really want, so you can stand with dignity and articulate it with clarity. 
• Skills without norms: Hacking through life isn’t sustainable. Influence becomes manipulation, people become machines.

What to Expect in Tier 2

Real-time re-attunement: we’ll get riled up, but instead of going away to “self-regulate”, we’ll “co-regulate”, folding what’s happening into the present-moment situation so that we’re aware and available even under stress. 

Each day follows the same structure:

• Warm-up:
  Wake the body into movement and play, connect with each other and check in before breakfast.
• Skill-Building:
  We’ll build on Tier 1 to track more complexity in preparation for when things get edgy.
• Capacity-Building:
  We’ll intentionally look for our growth edges. We’ll repeat a flow of group practices to find our thresholds of growth or try something different from the previous day.
• Integration:
  What happened there? Share your experience, hear others’ and collectively make sense of what might have felt like a mess an hour ago.

All of this sits inside a strong, deliberately demanding container, making depth workable, growth shared, and impact accountable.

Tier 2 is not:

• Intensity for intensity’s sake. The design of Tier 2 bears in mind the Encoding Specificity Principle, so that the capacity for regulation and reorienting you learn in the practices transfers to the times where it will matter.
• An attempt to fix yourself. Instead, we will ask you to look at yourself as a process, to see more deeply into the patterns playing out in you, and to purposefully influence how those patterns change. 

Kind Words from Past Participants…

About your Facilitators

Logistical Details

Please note, you can register up for just Tier 1, or both, or Tier 2 only (requirement: you must have previously participated in Tier 1 in 2025, if before 2025, please reach out to discuss fitment). Due to the nature of the work, we have a limited number of spots available for both venues. 

Tier 1 – Non-Residential (you are responsible for your own lodging and meals)

• Location: Roncesvalles Village, Toronto
• Dates: 
  • Friday, May 22nd – 6pm to 10pm
  • Saturday, May 23rd – 10am to 8pm
  • Sunday, May 24th – 10am to 5pm
  • 2-hr Integration Call online via Zoom – Sunday, June 7th, 2026 @ 10am EDT

---

Tier 2 – Residential (Shared Accommodations & Meals incl. in rates below)

• Location: Ecology Retreat Centre – Mono, ON (just under an hour from Pearson International Airport)
• Dates: 
  • From: Sunday, June 7th @ 8pm
  • To: Friday, June 12th @ 4pm
  • 2-hr Integration Call online via Zoom – Sunday, July 5th, 2026 @ 10am EDT
• Residential Details:
  • Shared Accommodations 
  • Includes Linens & Shower Towel
  • Single Occupancy Supplement: Contact us after registration to inquiry about Single Occupancy supplement options.
• Meals:
  • Breakfast (omnivore) 
  • Lunch (vegetarian)
  • Dinner w/Desert (omnivore)
  • Special Diet Supplement: Such requests (GF, Dairy Free, Vegan, etc.) are possible for a per-meal-per-day supplement – please note your request when registering
• Also includes complimentary access to Crossroads & Connections events through June 27th!

Refund Policy: Full Refund minus any payment processor fee (~2.5%) is available through to April 3rd, 2026. After which there are no-refunds, however registrants may transfer their registration to another approved participant for a $100 admin fee (contact us). Of course, in the unlikely event of a cancellation of the program itself, you would receive a full refund.