Deep, Hoffman-Level Work—Without Leaving Your Life for a Week
High-Functioning, But Stuck:
✔️ You’re constantly on edge, can’t relax, even when things are “good.” You feel overwhelmed and anxious more than you want to admit.
✔️ You notice yourself overreacting, shutting down, or people-pleasing in high-stakes moments
✔️ You keep recreating the same conflict with co-founders or partners.
✔️ Investor relations feel like a power struggle.
✔️ You don’t feel truly close and perhaps you’ve lost the intimacy with your partner and now notice some friction and triggers.
✔️ You’ve tried mindset work, coaching, maybe even therapy. It helps—up to a point.
These are not just professional hurdles; they’re invitations to profound personal growth.
As a leader, you may find yourself:
This process aims to help you become more you—with less impact from the past running the show. It will help you become the pillar you most needed while growing up and learn how to truly take care of yourself and those around you from a place of stability and confidence.
Primal Therapy is a deeply transformative process that explores the first 0–10 years of your life to uncover and heal early developmental trauma and conditioning.
This is not talk therapy and not “new age.”
It’s a grounded, experiential approach that integrates elements of gestalt, regression, systemic constellations, and somatic work to reach the root of long-held emotional patterns.
Similar in depth to the Hoffman Process, Primal follows a self-inquiry and release arc—only in an intimate, personalized 1:1 setting.
We don’t manage symptoms.
We go back to the original imprint, so your nervous system can finally complete what it never had space or support to complete.
What Is Primal Therapy?
When you’re leading a company, your unresolved patterns could get in the way:
Primal Therapy gives you a structured way to:
You might already know of deep-dive processes like the Hoffman Process, where you step away from your life for a full week, hand in your phone, and immerse yourself completely.
For many founders and investors, that sounds ideal… and also impossible.
You’re responsible for a company, a team, capital, a family. The idea of disappearing for 7–8 days with no phone can feel like a logistical nightmare, even if you want that level of work.
- Old adaptive strategies (over-achieving, controlling, disappearing, pleasing) become your leadership style.
- The way you relate to caregivers often mirrors how you relate to co-founders, investors, and your team.
- Unprocessed fear, shame, or anger shows up as indecision, burnout, reactivity, or emotional shutdown.
- See the original blueprint that’s been running your life and leadership.
- Feel and release what’s been held in your body for decades.
- Build a different internal foundation where you can hold pressure, intimacy, and visibility without collapsing or armoring up.
You might already know of deep-dive processes like the Hoffman Process, where you step away from your life for a full week, hand in your phone, and immerse yourself completely.
For many founders and investors, that sounds ideal… and also impossible.
You’re responsible for a company, a team, capital, a family. The idea of disappearing for 7–8 days with no phone can feel like a logistical nightmare, even if you want that level of work.
Why This Work Matters for Founders & VCs
If you’ve been Hoffman-curious but haven’t found the window to disappear for a week, Primal may be the format that actually fits your life.
- Same level of inner work, different format: Instead of one intensive week, we work in a 10-session arc over 2.5–3 months.
- You keep living your life: You still run your company, see your family, and stay connected, while doing profound internal work in the background.
- Integration built in: Because sessions are weekly, you’re constantly applying and integrating what emerges into your real, everyday context.
This is a highly structured, time-bound container designed to create real movement, not endless processing.
Session Zero (30 minutes) – Orientation & Intentions. We clarify your desires, goals, and current patterns. We map how your early years may be showing up in your leadership, relationships, and nervous system today. If it’s a fit, we commit to the 10-session process.
Sessions 1–10 (60 minutes each, weekly). Over 2.5–3 months, we move through a progressive arc:
Closing Integration Session (30 minutes) We consolidate what’s shifted and define how you want to move forward in life, leadership, and relationships.
Between-session support: You’re not doing this alone between calls. The process includes:
Total: 11 touch points over ~ 3 months.
Session Zero (30 minutes) – Orientation & Intentions. We clarify your desires, goals, and current patterns. We map how your early years may be showing up in your leadership, relationships, and nervous system today. If it’s a fit, we commit to the 10-session process.
Sessions 1–10 (60 minutes each, weekly). Over 2.5–3 months, we move through a progressive arc:
- Early childhood (0–10): Exploring core imprints, attachment dynamics, and early emotional experiences.
- Regression & release: Guided experiential work to safely access and express long-held feelings.
- Somatic integration: Bringing the body into the process so the nervous system can actually shift, not just the story.
- Linking past to present: Connecting early patterns to how you lead, love, and relate today.
- Repatterning: Practicing new ways of being that are more authentic, boundaries, and resourced.
Closing Integration Session (30 minutes) We consolidate what’s shifted and define how you want to move forward in life, leadership, and relationships.
Between-session support: You’re not doing this alone between calls. The process includes:
- WhatsApp support for check-ins and integration
- Tailored homework and practices
- Resources to help your system integrate the work week by week
Total: 11 touch points over ~ 3 months.
The 10-Session Primal Process
Every person’s process is unique, but common shifts include:
Emotionally
Relationally
Professionally
This process aims to help you become more you, with less impact from the past running the show. It will help you become the pillar you most needed while growing up and learn how to truly take care of yourself and those around you from your grounded adult self.
Emotionally
- Feeling more at home in your own body instead of living only in your head
- Less shame and inner criticism
- Greater capacity to feel without being overwhelmed or shutting down
Relationally
- Breaking recurring conflict patterns with co-founders, partners, and investors
- Clearer boundaries and less people-pleasing
- More intimacy, honesty, and emotional availability in close relationships
Professionally
- Making decisions from clarity instead of anxiety or old fears
- Navigating pressure, visibility, and responsibility with more steadiness
- Leading with authenticity and confidence
This process aims to help you become more you, with less impact from the past running the show. It will help you become the pillar you most needed while growing up and learn how to truly take care of yourself and those around you from your grounded adult self.
What Can Change
Retreats like the Hoffman Process are powerful because:
Primal Therapy honors that depth, and offers an alternative format:
It’s a different structure for someone ready to go all the way in, who also carries responsibility they can't leave.
You don’t have to choose between doing the deepest work and running your company. Primal is designed for both - it is the bridge between your desire for depth and your reality of responsibility.
- You step out of your environment
- You hand-in your phone
- You’re fully immersed, with no distractions
Primal Therapy honors that depth, and offers an alternative format:
- 1:1 instead of group – The work is tailored to your specific history, nervous system, and leadership reality.
- Weekly sessions instead of one intensive week – You don’t need to pause your life; you bring your life into the work.
- Continuous integration – Each week, you notice how early patterns show up in real time, with co-founders, investors, partners, and we work with that directly.
It’s a different structure for someone ready to go all the way in, who also carries responsibility they can't leave.
You don’t have to choose between doing the deepest work and running your company. Primal is designed for both - it is the bridge between your desire for depth and your reality of responsibility.
How Primal Compares to Retreat-Style Work
Yes, if you are:
This is not for you if:
If you’re not sure whether this is the right level of work for you, Session Zero is the place to explore that together.
- A Seed to Series D founder, executive, or investor who is high-functioning but emotionally stuck, burnt out, or repeating old patterns.
- You’re willing to go deeper than mindset hacks and surface-level optimization.
- You’re ready to look at your early years and how they shaped your current reality.
- You can commit to weekly sessions for ~ 3 months and show up honestly, even when it’s uncomfortable.
This is not for you if:
- You’re looking for a quick fix without engaging in deeper emotional work.
- You’re not willing to feel or express emotions, even with support.
- You’re in acute crisis or dealing with untreated severe mental illness or active addiction - this work is not a replacement for specialized clinical care.
If you’re not sure whether this is the right level of work for you, Session Zero is the place to explore that together.
Is This Work For You?
- Investment: 2600 USD
- Structure: 10-session process over ~3 months (weekly, 60 minutes)
- Total touchpoints: Session Zero (30 minutes), 10 core sessions, Closing Integration (30 minutes)
- Support: WhatsApp support, home assignments, and resources between sessions
- Paid in full - this work requires full energetic commitment
You begin by booking Session Zero, a 30-minute consultation to clarify your goals, ask questions, and feel whether this work and timing are right for you.
Investment & Commitment
Meet Your Guide
is an Executive Coach for tech Founders, CEOs, and leaders in the startup ecosystem. She works with companies from Seed stage and beyond, as well as top VC firms, coaching their partners and supporting their portfolio companies.
Vanya helps founders and executives navigate the complex realities of leadership, growth, and personal transformation. Her approach combines executive coaching, somatic and integral coaching and other transformational modalities, blending strategic leadership development with deep personal growth.
Additionally her practice is enhanced by insights gained from experiences living and studying in the Thai Buddhist tradition in Thailand, practicing and teaching holotropic breathwork and working with plant medicine.
Vanya Sofia
Trusted by leaders from:
Chad Olin
CEO and Cofounder, Supermind
I experienced a new awareness of a pattern that was negatively impacting my relationships and was able to release it instantaneously.
This was a profound transformation
Yana Tornoe
Cofounder, Questionbase.ai
Vanya and Elitsa created a space of deep safety and connection. Even as we explored vulnerabilities, I never felt alone. Their presence, clarity, and intuitive guidance made it possible to access truths that were hard to name but ready to be seen. I’m forever changed and would join them again in a heartbeat.
I felt a profound shift in how I relate to myself.
Janet Todorova
Head of Expansion, Founders Institute
I was impressed by her deep knowledge and wisdom, coupled with her gentle approach, which made exploring deep topics feel safe and transformative for each of the participants.
I really enjoyed my experience at the event with Elitsa.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Chad Olin
CEO and Cofounder, Supermind
I experienced a new awareness of a pattern that was negatively impacting my relationships and was able to release it instantaneously.
This was a profound transformation
Yana Tornoe
Cofounder, Questionbase.ai
Vanya and Elitsa created a space of deep safety and connection. Even as we explored vulnerabilities, I never felt alone. Their presence, clarity, and intuitive guidance made it possible to access truths that were hard to name but ready to be seen. I’m forever changed and would join them again in a heartbeat.
I felt a profound shift in how I relate to myself.
Janet Todorova
Head of Expansion, Founders Institute
I was impressed by her deep knowledge and wisdom, coupled with her gentle approach, which made exploring deep topics feel safe and transformative for each of the participants.
I really enjoyed my experience at the event with Elitsa.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Yana Tornoe
Cofounder, Questionbase.ai
Vanya and Elitsa created a space of deep safety and connection. Even as we explored vulnerabilities, I never felt alone. Their presence, clarity, and intuitive guidance made it possible to access truths that were hard to name but ready to be seen. I’m forever changed and would join them again in a heartbeat.
I felt a profound shift in how I relate to myself.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Chad Olin
CEO and Cofounder, Supermind
I experienced a new awareness of a pattern that was negatively impacting my relationships and was able to release it instantaneously.
This was a profound transformation
Janet Todorova
Head of Expansion, Founders Institute
I was impressed by her deep knowledge and wisdom, coupled with her gentle approach, which made exploring deep topics feel safe and transformative for each of the participants.
I really enjoyed my experience at the event with Elitsa.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Chad Olin
CEO and Cofounder, Supermind
I experienced a new awareness of a pattern that was negatively impacting my relationships and was able to release it instantaneously.
This was a profound transformation
Janet Todorova
Head of Expansion, Founders Institute
I was impressed by her deep knowledge and wisdom, coupled with her gentle approach, which made exploring deep topics feel safe and transformative for each of the participants.
I really enjoyed my experience at the event with Elitsa.
Yana Tornoe
Cofounder, Questionbase.ai
Vanya and Elitsa created a space of deep safety and connection. Even as we explored vulnerabilities, I never felt alone. Their presence, clarity, and intuitive guidance made it possible to access truths that were hard to name but ready to be seen. I’m forever changed and would join them again in a heartbeat.
I felt a profound shift in how I relate to myself.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Kristen Lower
Sales executive, Salesforce
What made the experience especially impactful was the Primal work itself. It helped bring insight into the deeper patterns shaping my life, while also creating space to connect with the younger parts of myself that had been carrying so much for so long.
Elitsa and Vanya held that space with real integrity, compassion, and skill.
Chad Olin
CEO and Cofounder, Supermind
I experienced a new awareness of a pattern that was negatively impacting my relationships and was able to release it instantaneously.
This was a profound transformation
Janet Todorova
Head of Expansion, Founders Institute
I was impressed by her deep knowledge and wisdom, coupled with her gentle approach, which made exploring deep topics feel safe and transformative for each of the participants.
I really enjoyed my experience at the event with Elitsa.
Yana Tornoe
Cofounder, Questionbase.ai
Vanya and Elitsa created a space of deep safety and connection. Even as we explored vulnerabilities, I never felt alone. Their presence, clarity, and intuitive guidance made it possible to access truths that were hard to name but ready to be seen. I’m forever changed and would join them again in a heartbeat.
I felt a profound shift in how I relate to myself.
FAQs:
Is this like regular CBT therapy?
Is this “screaming into a pillow” work?
Primal process was established in the 1960s and at the time the focus was catharsis. Today the method has evolved. While emotional expression is part of the process, the work is held in a contained, grounded, and attuned way. It’s not about the emotional release; it’s about feeling your feelings and completion.
What if I’m very busy as a founder?
Is this safe?
Is this confidential?
What’s expected of me?
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