What happens at the Kaizen Men's Weekend

The shape of the three days at the Kaizen Men's Weekend

The weekend opens at noon on Friday, October 23 at the El Segundo Masonic Center and runs until it completes on Sunday, October 25. Three days, one room, roughly thirty men.

Saturday is the long day and the one the weekend is built around. Friday evening opens it; Sunday closes it. You can read the shape of the days off the meals alone, which is the most concrete schedule anyone can honestly give you in advance:

• Friday: arrive at noon. Dinner is provided that evening.
• Saturday: the full day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all provided.
• Sunday: breakfast and lunch are provided, and the weekend runs until completion rather than to a fixed clock. Leave Sunday evening open.

Why the men's weekend will not publish a minute-by-minute agenda

Because knowing the answers in advance is what would take them from you.

That is not a marketing line, and it is worth being straight about why it sounds like one. This category has a real credibility problem: men's work sites hide behind mystery, and to a man deciding whether to hand over $497 and a full weekend, mystery reads as evasion. Sometimes it is.

So the honest split is this. Everything about the container gets said out loud, on this page. The only thing withheld is the content of the work itself, because a man who already knows what is coming spends the weekend performing his way through it instead of finding anything.

Here is the container, in full.

What the Kaizen Men's Weekend asks of you, and what it does not

You are asked to show up at noon on Friday and stay through Sunday. That is the real commitment, and it is not negotiable: the weekend builds on itself, so there are no ins and outs once the programming starts. Arrange your Friday, Saturday and Sunday before you register.

You are asked to be present and to treat the other men decently. That is the whole code of conduct.

You are not asked to share. Men speak when they choose to, and plenty of men spend most of the first day listening. Nothing is required of your body. Nothing is done to you. In the words of the men who run it, the weekend is not about fixing you or changing who you are. It is about stripping away what isn't real.

You keep your phone, your keys and your car.

Confidential, not secret, and why the distinction matters

What a man says in that room stays in that room. Not because there is something to hide, but for the same reason you would not repeat what a friend told you at two in the morning. It is the condition that makes honesty possible in the first place, and it is the norm in any serious group work, clinical or peer.

That is confidentiality. Secrecy is a different thing, and the test for it is simple: is anything being kept from you before you commit? On this weekend, no. The cost, the venue, the hours, the food, the age minimum, the refund policy, who runs it and what is asked of you are all published. The organization behind it is Kaizen Community, a nonprofit limited liability company doing business as Kaizen Dojo.

If it helps to see where the line sits, it is worth understanding what group psychotherapy actually is. This is not that. The staff are volunteers, not clinicians, and no one here is treating you.

What to bring to the men's weekend

• Water and snacks
• A flashlight
• A towel
• A printed photograph of your father, or of a father figure
• A printed photograph of yourself at twelve years old or younger
• A portable musical instrument, if you play one
• Anything else you personally need to get through three days

Print the two photographs before you come. A picture on your phone is not the same object, and you will understand why by Saturday. If your father is someone you would rather not think about, bring the photograph anyway.

Who is in the room with you

Roughly thirty men, from their twenties to their seventies, most of them from around Los Angeles. Some were sent by a friend. Some found the weekend on their own after something went wrong or something went numb. Some already sit in a men's circle and have done this kind of work for years.

Holding the room is a staff of volunteers who did the weekend themselves and came back to run it on their own time, for nothing. That is who they are, and it is a better credential than a resume.

What happens after the weekend ends

You drive home on Sunday and go back to your life on Monday.

Kaizen (改善) means continuous improvement: small changes made consistently, compounding over time. It is an honest name for this and an honest limit on what three days can promise. One weekend does not finish a man. It starts something, and then you are the one who carries it.

The category's loudest and fairest criticism is that intensive weekends produce a high that fades in three weeks because nothing supports it afterward. So ask about that. Ask the men you meet what they do to keep going, and ask Janjua at 770-851-7368 what runs through Kaizen Dojo after October.

Being in a room with other men is not a small thing

Half of American adults reported loneliness before the pandemic, and the Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on loneliness and isolation treats it as an independent risk factor for heart disease, dementia, depression and early death, on a scale comparable to smoking.

Most men have not been genuinely known by other men since they were boys. Three days will not undo that. It is, however, a place to start, and it is ten minutes from LAX.