Three days of sustained attention to the experience of being yourself.
Edge City, Goa · 26–28 October 2026 · 10 participants · No fee
Psychological framework and clinical direction: Dr Shyam K. Bhat, MD, developer of Integral Self Therapy.
Why it might be worth three days
Most of us move through life identified with particular roles, stories and emotions, rarely noticing how much they shift from one situation to the next, or how strongly they shape what we experience.
The Lab sets aside three days to look at that directly — through the body, emotion, relationships, identity and awareness.
The aim isn't to understand yourself better in theory. It's to feel more integrated, and a little less defined by any single thought, emotion, role or identity.
Not only “who am I?” — but “what remains when I am no longer completely identified with the contents of my experience?”
The three days
Step out of the familiar.
Arrive. Change your clothes. Choose a name. Move, play, make sound, and begin noticing the patterns and roles you carry.
Go deeper into experience.
Body, sensation, emotion, memory, fear, protection. Then other people — how a different self appears in each relationship, and how familiar patterns repeat.
Return with what you found.
Recognise the different parts of yourself without rejecting some or letting others dominate. Then explore what remains when you are not identified with any of them.
Through movement, meditation, breath, bodywork, relational exercises, creative practice, conversation, time in nature and stillness.
The framework
Developed by Dr Shyam K. Bhat, IST is a framework for understanding the individual self in relation to a larger, transcendent dimension of being. Here it serves as an orientation for exploration, not a fixed therapeutic protocol.
Who it's for
We're looking for a deliberately mixed room. A founder, an artist, a doctor, a student, a scientist, someone who has never done anything like this. What matters is curiosity about yourself, willingness to take part rather than observe, comfort sitting with a question that doesn't resolve, respect for other ways of experiencing the world, and enough steadiness for an intensive three days in a group.
No experience of therapy, meditation or contemplative practice is needed. We'd rather the room wasn't full of people who already live in those worlds.
The record
Alongside the experience, each participant builds a record: what they report, what practitioners observe, physiology from wearables, behaviour and context — all on a single timeline.
What was happening · what was experienced · what was reported · what the body was doing
The technology is another lens, not an arbiter. It never overrules what a person says they felt.
Longer term, we want to know whether AI can find patterns across these streams that are hard to see any other way.
If building that interests you more than taking part, there's a separate way in.
Apply to buildPracticals
Parts of the Lab are recorded and some physiological data is collected, always with consent. The application sets out exactly what.
Ten people. Three days. No fee.
The application takes about ten minutes. It asks what draws you to this, what question about yourself you keep returning to, and what we should know to make the three days safe for you. Shortlisted applicants have a short confidential conversation before the final group is confirmed.
Apply to participateApplications close 11 October. The cohort is confirmed by 15 October.
