Oprah Winfrey described it as “10 years of therapy in one week.” Katy Perry said it saved her life from terrible depression. AND Vogue Paris noted it as “one of the best wellness retreats to heal body and mind in the world.” We are talking about the Hoffman Method, an intensive personal development program which, according to the official website, seeks to “establish a more loving relationship with others and with ourselves through immersion in our childhood”. Its detractors, however, see it as far from being a smooth path to self-realization. For some, the eight-day retreat is more of a forced immersion in suffering than a fast track to transformation.
It was not Rafael de Cárdenas’ perception. A year after finishing the trial, the New York-based creative director and designer shared on his social networks his experience after spending a week isolated with twenty strangers in the Californian city of Petaluma. “I’m not always grateful or happy, but now I can see the dark patterns that have shaped me,” he wrote on Instagram, in a testimonial in which he talks about feeling “raw, vulnerable and exposed.” In a video call with ICON, De Cárdenas explained that he didn’t come to the method through a crisis or life breakup. “I wanted to live with more gratitude; I felt like I was always competing. What I didn’t know was that I would be competing against myself, because ultimately the work to be perfected is you.”
The Hoffman Institute defines its process as a transformation on four levels: emotional, spiritual, intellectual and physical. The co-director of the Institute in Spain, Luis Fernando Cámara, says that “there is no magic formula for healing” and insists that he cannot promise that a week’s retreat will change your life. “I don’t know what effect it will have on you, but 95% of our patients feel a change in their personal, partner or family relationships.” He explains that, through different techniques, such as Gestalt therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and psychoanalysis, participants review episodes from their childhood to identify patterns and try to change them.
Eleonora Moran, journalist Caretakerhe signed up for the Hoffman Method after a romantic disappointment, according to what he declared in an article published in the British newspaper. Without knowing why, she fell into the same pattern of men and relationships again and again. Moran discovered that his failed relationships had more to do with childhood bonding with his father than “lovesickness.” “I realized that I had put my father on a pedestal when I was little, even though he had been unreliable and downright dangerous.” After that week of “profound change,” she now describes herself as a more empathetic person, aware that “we all have secret wounds that we try to hide.”
The tailor who wanted to make you happy
The Hoffman Method was founded in 1967 by Bob Hoffman, a former tailor with no training in psychology who, by his own account, listened to his clients’ problems and tried to guide them. Over the course of nearly 60 years of applying the method, it has gained thousands of followers, but also detractors. In 2006, the German magazine Stern warned that “there is a risk of retraumatisation: the negative feelings become so present that the affected person is no longer able to process them”. One article cited the German case from the 1990s of some patients who “had to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals during or after withdrawal due to delusions, severe depression or other severe reactions.” In Spain, expert psychologists consulted, such as the Official College of Psychology of Madrid, refuse to evaluate the process because “they have never been immersed in the experience”.
From day one, patients must share their intimacy and experiences with strangers and explicitly pledge not to divulge what happens during that week. However, among the testimonies of former participants, references to unorthodox practices are repeated: hitting pillows with a bat or tearing up telephone directories on days that start at seven in the morning. For some, this intensity is part of the proposition; For others, this shows that it is not a one-size-fits-all process.
Despite being something of a cult retreat, the Hoffman Method isn’t exactly a secret: It’s present in 15 countries, with more than 150,000 participants, according to Institute data. Its popularity has resurfaced with some regularity when some celebrities – Orlando Bloom, Sienna Miller and Gwyneth Paltrow, among others – have publicly declared that they practice it. In Spain, however, its echo is discreet. The Institute has been operational since 1996 and has around two thousand participants. The reason, accuses Luis Fernando Cámara, is the low visibility it has compared to other centers: “We have not been able to extend it or give it sufficient diffusion as they do in the United States, in a population closer to psychology and with more economic power.”
The high price also has an impact. In Spain, the cost of the retreat week starts from 1,800 euros, plus the price of an overnight stay at the Hotel Campus Ph (where patients are admitted), in the city of Cacéres, Extremadura. An average of 100 euros per night which makes 2,500 euros for the entire experience. In the United States costs go up to 8,000 dollars (6,750 euros) depending on the dates and locations. Already in 2005 the American journalist Horacio Silva was ironic The New York Times magazine about the process as one of the whims of the fashion industry and privileged people. “The Hoffman Method is a retreat where devotees are encouraged to use labels, not Prada or Gucci, but labels like victim and unworthy, based on how they perceived themselves as children.” For Silva, who has not undergone therapy, it was something “diabolical”: “I would rather participate in Icelandic Fashion Week than share intimacy with a group of strangers,” he said, in a display of anti-snobbery snobbery. Oprah Winfrey defined the Hoffman Method as “a therapeutic retreat reserved exclusively for the rich and famous.” Those who can afford it try to solve in a week what most face for a lifetime. For some, the pleasure lies both in the possibility of healing and in paying for it.
