How Program Works

Individualized Whole Person Approach

An emotional disorder, like an onion, has multiple layers, consisting of deep-buried root causes, compounding effect of multiple life events and individual manifestation.

Most types of emotional issues have similarities. A person loses interest in life, feels overwhelmed with life with no motivation to solve, spiralling down into addictions to cope and suicidal ideation.

However, all individual cases have different triggers, are experienced to a different degree and have different roots.

Assisting people in gaining emotional freedom since 2005, we’ve seen that cookie-cutter approaches just do not cut it. Each situation has unique causes and therefore needs unique resolutions.

This is why individualization and the whole-person approach is what defines us. While we have very specific methods that are well tested and proven to work optimally, when you arrive, we create a customized plan for you, depending on the health test results, your emotional state and physical health issues.

What Methods Do We Use?

Multi-Faceted Fresh Start Healing Structure™

Fresh Start Healing Structure comprises organic vegan meals, health drinks/ supplements and program activities. Healthy nutrition and fitness routine play an important role in your emotional healing. The program is very comprehensive and includes yoga, fitness classes, health education, meal demos, guided nature excursions and many other great elements. These are thoroughly put together to achieve optimum results. You will not be just going from a class to a class, from an activity to activity, from therapy to therapy. Every component was carefully thought through, tested for multiple years and put in the most effective combinations with others.

Multi-Therapy Approach

As a part of your program, you have one-on-one sessions with emotional wellness specialists, and various bodywork included. Since each guest comes with a host of health issues and emotional challenges, we cannot count that one single therapy would work. Therefore we use multiple therapies approach, from relaxation massages to structural bodywork, localized hydrotherapy and colon hydrotherapy. You’ll be offered an individual plan of appointments based on your health needs and program goals.

Multi-Skilled Practitioners

Our team of professionals is very experienced and knowledgeable in their fields and are true healers by heart. They do not simply do a massage or salt scrub but customize their treatments to your health needs and apply various skills acquired throughout multiple years of training and practice.

Custom Protocols

Custom protocols are various drinks and supplement formulas designed to support various body organs and systems. Those who come with depression and anxiety usually also suffer from IBS, malabsorption of nutrients, insomnia, adrenal burnout and multiple other issues. We have various effective protocols to assist your body with all of these. Custom protocols are individualized and included in the program cost.

Nutrition

Food is medicine. We take it a step further. In addition to quality organic nutrition, we add various supplements, nutritional drinks, juices, and thorough hydration with herbal teas and lemon juice. This starts re-nourishing and hydrating your exhausted brain and cells and helps you start feeling energized and optimistic.

Whole Body Detoxification

It is hard to put in words how our internal world affects our external one. By cleansing the lymph, blood, lungs and other organs, we are able to support healing on a deep level and change brain and body chemistry and balance your moods.

Exercise

Yoga and fitness classes, offered throughout the Program, will get you moving, and not just physically. When your lymph and blood circulate freely, unlike when sitting at the computer or laying in bed for hours, it brings into motion our internal part, lifting the mood and giving us a spring in our step.

Guided Meditation

Those racing thoughts take us to places we never planned. Learning to notice them, watch and slow them down gives us great control over how we feel.

Nature Therapy

Being on the ocean side and seeing the ocean during every group activity (all classrooms and dining room are oceanfront) is healing in itself. But when you see wildlife around, you’ll realize that this place is a little paradise!

Focus on Relaxation

Relaxation goes first is our motto. When you arrive, the first few days will be planned around relaxation. You’ll get a relaxation massage, go to an evening steam bath and will be encouraged to go for a gentle walk.

Small Group Environment

Our group sizes limited are limited to 20 guests. This creates a close-knit family environment conducive to the building of a sense of trust and connection with others, which is a major issue (and fear) of virtually every person with an emotional problem. However, in a safe environment, everyone gradually opens up and bonds.

Caring and Thoughtful Team

A small group environment allows us as a team to provide a more individualized approach and care, which are impossible in a larger setting. Every member of the Fresh Start team understands that you are coming with a wound, with trauma, and does his/her best to accommodate and support you on your healing journey.

Education and Fun

Those two go hand-in-hand. You will learn a lot about physical and emotional well-being during your stay, starting from workshops on trauma and stress management to food preparation classes and health lectures and videos.

But we are not always serious. Movie and game nights, music therapy nights and art classes are all for your soul.

Disclaimer: Program activities are subject to change without notice.

How Do We Guide You through Your Healing Process?

Over the years, we have designed an effective process of laser-focused goal setting, regular progress feedback and results evaluation, which is presented below. This process is essential, as “when we do not know where we are going, no one wind will be our way.” In other words, if we do not have a clear idea of our priorities in healing, we can be trying a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and in the end, will not be sure what worked and in what area.

Choosing specific goals does not guarantee that you’ll reach 100% of them, but it helps us design the most effective program, and for you narrow down what is the most important aspect for you that if changes, it will make the biggest positive impact on your life and well-being. And when that improvement happens, you see it, value and appreciate your effort.

If you are like most people who were looking into coming to Fresh Start, you probably, wonder: ‘I know that Fresh Start will put only the best testimonials out there, but will it work for everyone?’

The answer is: no, we are not for everyone. There were people whom we were not able to help or help only partially. They normally fell into one of the 4 categories below.

1. The one who subconsciously does not want to get better (because he/she has fallen so much in love with his/her story that turned it into an identity). Such a person chooses to play a victim of trauma, depression or life circumstances, hoping that we will rescue him/her without him/her putting the needed work.
2. Someone who has unrealistic expectations about how quickly something can be released, healed or restored. Often these guests walk around and daily ask: “When will I feel better?” When they prepare their before and after results at the end of the program, they often are amazed that they actually got better, yet the day before, they did not see it.

It won’t be instant. It won’t be quick. Let’s be real: if something took years to appear, it would take time to disappear (and even 3 weeks with us may not be enough to deal with the entire life mess).

3. Doubtful and uncommitted. Typically these people have read the website through an iPhone, haven’t done homework or have been convinced by the family they have to do this program and did not make it their own project. They marginally feel better, but their results are not nearly close to those who read every single page on a laptop or desktop, watched and read testimonials and asked questions: ‘What work did those people do and what guidance did they follow to achieve those results, as they had what I have?’
4. Pre-set ideas of what the healing process should look like. Those who were not open to trying new things and only thought that there was one specific way to address their problem (and it is not the way we did it) were disappointed. They were usually the skeptical ones who did not like multiple therapies and practitioners, were not willing to look inside when an uncomfortable feeling or unhealthy thought pattern came up or did not give a treatment a chance to work long enough to make an impact.

Tips from the Program Manager:

Those who listen, follow the guidance and do not change around appointments, those who, while not feeling well, still stick to the plan and go to their therapies, who make themselves vulnerable to the group and available for the team to help, from my experience, have always been successful in transforming their emotional wellbeing. Even though I am yet to see someone who, after just one therapy instantaneously recovered, I am often in tears when I read your mid and end-of-stay self-assessments, even though more than one morning not everything was fine, more than one morning you were not sure whether you were willing to live, never mind to get up.

I worry when you leave and wonder: how will you continue in real life, with all its demands? Yet, I am so excited to hear a year from some of you how you were able to sustain your health improvements and integrate many principles you’ve learned. I am so excited to receive those thoughtful emails saying how much your life has changed.

My last tip for you:

Whenever you feel you are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and are ready to seriously change it, listen carefully to this 30-min testimonial. It’ll explain to you both what works and what does not. Re-listen to it for the 2^nd time and take notes. Knowing what to expect and being ready to work on yourself, letting go of fears and specific expectations on how much you’ll get and how far you’ll get, is a guarantee of your success.

Just come, and let’s enjoy the journey together!”