Disclaimer

This page describes the nature and the limits of what we offer. It applies to our websites, our writing, our emails, our courses and digital products, our guidance and coaching sessions, our live group calls, our workshops, ceremonies, and retreats, and any app or membership we may offer. Together, these are the "Services."

1. What we offer is spiritual guidance, coaching, and counsel

We are both ordained, and we offer this work as clergy. Michael Trachtman was ordained a rabbi after many years at theological seminary. Penny Gold is ordained in the Shamanic Breathwork tradition through Linda Star Wolf. We are both trained in Shamanic Breathwork.

What we offer sits in the tradition of pastoral and spiritual counsel: ceremony, ritual, blessing, breathwork, contemplation, coaching, and honest conversation about love and commitment. It is spiritual, educational, and experiential, offered to help two people in a long relationship pay closer attention to each other. We call it guidance, coaching, and counsel, which is what clergy have always offered, and we mean those words in their ordinary sense: walking alongside you, asking better questions, and pointing at what we see. We never mean therapy.

Everything we publish or say is for general information and personal reflection. None of it is professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and none of it should be relied on in place of care from a licensed professional who knows your situation. Neither of us offers this work as a licensed mental health professional, physician, or attorney. Michael holds no clinical license of any kind.

2. Penny Gold's work with us is not psychotherapy

Penny Gold is licensed as a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts, where her licence is registered under the name Dr. Penelope Goldmuntz. She has held it since 1991, and thirty-five years of clinical work, with couples, with trauma, and with conditions as demanding as dissociative identity disorder, informs everything she does. She is also an ordained minister in the Shamanic Breathwork tradition, and it is in that capacity, as clergy offering spiritual guidance, coaching, and counsel, that she works through Michael & Penny. Her work here is informed by that career but is not psychotherapy, and she is not acting as your psychologist. It is not clinical assessment, diagnosis, or treatment.

No therapist–patient relationship is created by reading this website, attending a live group call, booking a session, joining a course, or coming on a retreat. Because there is no therapist–patient relationship, the legal protections that come with one do not apply, including therapist–patient privilege and the confidentiality duties that govern licensed clinical practice. We treat what you tell us with care, and our Privacy Policy describes how we handle it. But it is not privileged, and it is not protected health information under HIPAA.

If at some point you want clinical psychotherapy with Penny and she agrees to provide it, that is a separate relationship with a separate beginning. It starts only with a written agreement between you and her, signed before any clinical work does, and it is governed by that agreement and by the obligations of her license rather than by these policies. Until such an agreement exists and is signed, nothing we do together is psychotherapy.

Penny keeps a small clinical practice of her own, entirely separate from this business, with its own clients and its own records. The two are deliberately kept apart. Being a client of one does not make you a client of the other, and coming to us for spiritual guidance does not put you in her clinical practice or give you any of the rights that come with being there.

3. Not medical or mental health care

We do not diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any physical, mental, or emotional condition. Nothing we say is a reason to start, stop, or change any medication or treatment. Those decisions belong between you and your prescriber.

If you are in crisis, please do not wait for us. In the United States, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or call 911 if someone is in immediate danger. We are not an emergency service and we do not monitor email, forms, or messages around the clock.

4. Emotional intensity, and your own pace

Our work asks people to look at things they have been avoiding. Grief, old memory, anger, and conflict between partners can surface, sometimes during a session or a retreat, sometimes days afterward. That is ordinary, and it is part of why the work matters. It is also a real risk you should weigh before joining.

Participation is voluntary throughout. You may decline any exercise, step out of any room, or stop at any point, and you never owe us an explanation. You are responsible for your own decisions and for getting appropriate support when you need it.

5. No guarantees, and how to read our testimonials

We do not promise any particular result. What you get out of this depends on you, your partner, your circumstances, and a good deal that none of us controls.

The people in our testimonials were not paid and received nothing of value for speaking. They told us what happened for them. Their experience is theirs, and it is not a prediction of yours.

6. Not legal, financial, or tax advice

Conversations about a relationship sometimes touch marriage, separation, money, or property. We are not lawyers, accountants, or financial advisors, and nothing we say is advice on those subjects. Speak to a professional licensed in your state before acting on anything in that territory.

7. Other people's content

We sometimes link to or mention other people's writing, tools, retreat centers, and services. We do not control them and we are not responsible for what they say, do, or charge. Where we have a financial relationship with someone we recommend, we will tell you.

8. Limits on our responsibility

The limits on our liability, and the way we handle disagreements, are set out in our Terms & Conditions and apply to everything on this page.

9. Reaching us

Questions about this page are welcome at mp@michaelandpenny.com.