About us
We are Rabbi Michael Trachtman and Dr. Penny Gold. We do heart-centered coaching with couples who have been together a long time, know they still love one another, and yet, something has quietly gone missing.
Michael & Penny
Our story
We met at a friend's summer cabin on Little Sebago Lake in Maine. We always tell people we met in the hot tub, under the night sky with shooting stars, fifteen feet from water's edge with the haunting call of the loons in the distance. It could not have been more romantic.
By the end of COVID we had been together two decades, and we were fighting too much and feeling too far apart. We knew each other's arguments by heart, and we were losing the thread of why we had chosen each other in the first place.
In May of 2022 we were at a retreat, and one of the exercises had us begin deep soul conversations. That is where our own healing began. What we found surprised us. We did not simply get back to where we had been. We reclaimed the original excitement of falling in love, the part everyone tells you is gone for good. We were married that August, and four years later, we keep falling more in love.
We learned a whole new way of relating as we went through our own transformation.
One that lets us understand and work through tension the moment it arises, without losing sight of the fact that we're on the same loving each other team. We built a new, deeper sense of "We" that keeps growing and keeps guiding us.
That shift changed our work with couples too. It moved from helpful to transformative.
Today that work takes several forms: retreats, workshops, date nights, and private one-on-one sessions.
It is what we wish someone had handed us at year twenty.
Who we are
We have each spent most of our lives with people who were trying to work something out. What we do is listen closely, and then help you find your own way to whatever it is that needs to heal. It is heart-centered work, and we would also call it sacred. Some of that comes from Michael having been a rabbi since his early twenties, and from Penny being ordained as well. We are quite different from each other, and couples tell us that is the useful part.
We both come from religious lineages, but the work itself is not religious. It is heart-centered and transformational, and it is not grounded in any religion whatsoever. Some of our clients are lifelong atheists and get as much from it as anyone who belongs to a tradition.
Rabbi · Coach
Michael has been a rabbi since his early twenties, and that training permeates who he is, how he thinks, and how he leads. He comes from a long lineage of rabbis.
Michael’s early career was spent as a trainer, teaching leadership and creativity in high-tech companies and as an inventor with multiple patents to his name. However, even in the high-tech world, Michael was always teaching people how to grow "on the inside". This last part was always what nourished his soul’s purpose. Helping people truly love themselves and be fully expressed is now his life’s work.
Clients and friends started calling him the Shaman Rabbi and it stuck. He brings mysticism and shamanic energy to the tradition he grew up in, and much of what he says in a session arrives as he says it.
Coach · Shamanic Minister · ISTA faculty
Penny has been a licensed psychologist for over 35 years. Having worked with over 500 people, she has seen people in all phases of life, with the full range of hopes, traumas and challenges.
Penny is ordained as a Shamanic Minister in Shamanic Breathwork and brings those practices to her work.
She is a faculty member of ISTA, the International School of Temple Arts, and leads the week long Spiritual, Sexual and Shamanic Experience retreat all over the world.
Currently, Penny blends these and many other spiritual, heart centered modalities together. Her work is unique and can no longer be described as being "therapy".
Clients and friends call her the Oracle, for the wisdom she channels. She did not pick the name.
Together
We lead retreats, workshops and cacao ceremonies all over the world. Themes include sacred sexuality, communication, and shadow work. Much of what we know we learned by repairing our own marriage ourselves, without a therapist and without a manual.
What this is
What we offer is heart-centered coaching and spiritual guidance. It is not therapy, and it is not a substitute for medical or mental health care. If you are in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
Straight, gay, lesbian, married or not, together five years or fifty.
Nothing here assumes a shape your relationship has to fit.
We live outside Boston, Massachusetts. We meet couples on Zoom from wherever you are.
The location of our retreats is always somewhere beautiful and romantic.
The easiest way to find out whether any of this is for you is to write to us. Tell us as much or as little as you want about where your relationship is and what you would like to be different. We read every message ourselves and one of us writes back. Nothing gets pushed at you, and we answer honestly, including when we think we are not the right people for you.
Write to usOr read about The Relationship Alchemy Couples Retreat in Costa Rica, or watch what couples say afterwards. Or email us directly at mp@michaelandpenny.com.
