Because of the uniqueness of the approach of the Kiloby Center for Recovery, we are often asked by potential clients what a typical day looks like. In order to understand what a typical day looks like, it is important first to understand what we do at the Center.
Our approach is based almost exclusively in training people to be presently aware of everything that is happening within their experience. This is sometimes referred to as “mindfulness.” Scott Kiloby calls it Natural Rest. The word “rest” refers to the experience of radically allowing every thought, emotion and sensation to be exactly as it is. To allow means to “rest with.” This means, instead of encouraging clients to constantly try and change their experience, we guide them into a deep acceptance of their experience. This deep acceptance has the power to transform lives in ways that cannot be understood until one dives into our experiential approach.
Our program is intense but gentle and supportive at the same time. We want to make sure that clients understand that our group and individual sessions may bring up uncomfortable and unconscious or buried thoughts and emotions. Bringing these thoughts and emotions to the surface allows them to be watched and then naturally let go of. Bringing this unconsciousness to the surface is critical in truly uprooting the deep core pain that lies at the heart of most human suffering. We have a firm conviction at the Center that any program that does not help clients fully release buried trauma and pain will leave clients suffering once the program is over. We focus our efforts in helping our clients truly transform and heal in the deepest way, both during their participation at the Center and after they leave and go back to their daily lives.
Each day, we provide various group and individual activities that foster a quiet, peaceful atmosphere. This support helps clients to be present to and to release the thoughts that are creating suffering in their lives. Each day begins with some form of either group meditation or skills training.
The skills training involves repetitively guiding people to relax in the naturalness of the present moment and let all thoughts, emotions and sensations come and go freely. This kind of daily guidance helps mindfulness become a way of life for our clients. We are all about simplifying human experience and seeing exactly why and how suffering happens, so that clients can become free of that suffering. Simplicity is the key to our approach. You won’t hear a lot of fancy theories at the Center. Everything we discuss is practical and useful. With that in mind, we train people to break thoughts down into words and mental pictures and to see the difference between the two. We also train them in how to sit quietly with emotions and sensations, fully allowing them and no longer fighting or resisting them. We train clients in feeling emotions and sensations without placing thoughts on them. This allows the emotions and sensations to surface and then vanish. Every day, during skills training and meditation, clients learn to go deeper into living fully present lives. Through this training in presence, addiction, depression and anxiety can begin to relax or fall away, revealing a new-found simplicity and well-being in life.
There are thousands of kinds of meditations in the world. The meditations we use are geared towards truly relieving addiction, anxiety, stress and depression. These meditations were developed through years of field testing by Scott in group seminars and workshops all over the world. They are focused on the gentle allowing of everything. They are guided either by Scott Kiloby or one of his trained facilitators. During meditations, clients are brought into a deep and abiding peace and that has lasting effects throughout the day and beyond.
Our group work is not always meditative in nature. We spend a good deal of time educating clients on how and why they suffer and how to be free of that suffering. Clients participate fully in the conversation, sharing the ups and downs of their own practice and learning, each day, new skills that help them discover an ever-increasing freedom. All of this happens in a safe and supportive environment. No one is made to feel unwelcome or forced to reveal things in a group that they are not ready to reveal. Most of the deepest work we do happens in the privacy and confidentiality of private sessions.
As the day progresses, clients participate in private sessions with Scott or one of his trained facilitators. In these sessions, the Living Inquiries (a development by Scott and his team of facilitators) are used to uproot and release the deep self-esteem issues that lie at the core of addiction, anxiety, stress and depression. The Living Inquiries are guided mindfulness tools that explore every single aspect of a client’s lives, slowly and gently dismantling years of suffering through the use of simple, very directed questions asked by a facilitator. During these sessions, clients are guided deeply into their bodies. They learn to embrace rather than escape from the uncomfortable emotions and sensations. These sessions can result in incredible liberation. In the words of a recent client spoken after a session, “I realize now that all the painful things that have happened to me do not affect my present being – I am free to think anything I want and feel everything that happens and yet nothing seems to disturb my own presence in this moment.”
As the days roll on at the Center, clients are afforded the opportunity to go even deeper, gaining new insights and realizations that free them from the very suffering that brought them to the Center. At the midway point of a client’s participation, the client learns to use inquiry on his own. This empowers the client to continue exploring freedom all throughout the day, even during times when no facilitators are around.
In addition to the tools mentioned above, we offer yoga and various forms of energy tapping that help to bring awareness into the physical body and further release negative emotional states. Each day is full of a wide range of activities yet all of the activities are geared towards one central purpose – living more fully and consciously in the present moment.
Although most of the work happens while clients are participating with us at the Center, our approach can have far reaching positive effects, long after a client leaves the Center. Once clients learn to use the tools on their own, they can take these tools into their lives and continue participating in our extensive aftercare program where they are fully supported by others who have used Scott Kiloby’s work in their lives. Participation at our Center and in our aftercare program reveals to clients that living more fully in the present moment is not just some state they experience while at the Center. It becomes a shift in perception, a life-changing way of relating to human experience in a more accepting and compassionate way for the rest of their lives.
