EQ LAB
Beyond Intellect
Evidence-based men’s emotional intelligence training, for change-making leaders who want to enhance their emotional resilience at work and at home.
8 Weeks | In-Person | January 31 - March 21 | Friday’s 8:30-10:30am
Unlocking Emotional Wisdom
When we deepen our relationship with our emotions, we expand our overall intelligence capacity—moving beyond the limits of our intellect, toward a heightened integrated, intelligence that enables us to:
Breakthrough emotional barriers that keep us feeling stuck and alone.
Navigate difficult challenges with increased clarity, turning stress into opportunities for growth.
Balance rational thinking, with intuitive emotional insight to enhance leadership and decision-making.
Create resilience and confidence to handle anything your life and career throws at you.
Overcome avoidance with clear and decisive action turning you into an empowered leader at home and work.
Gain a strategic emotional advantage in navigating the complexities of modern manhood.
This is what we will create together in the Lab.
We weave together brotherhood, emotional intelligence and mind-body exercises that guide participants through mental-emotional balance, nervous system regulation and self-inquiry practices designed to enhance:
Activating The IQ-EQ Connection
Connection
Experience a deep connection with like-minded men who share similar life experiences.
Intelligence
Learn new techniques to support your emotions as you navigate your challenges in your life.
Compassion
Learn to find empathy and love for yourself, your experiences and your family journey.
Integration
Experience an integration of your mind, body and spirit as a whole unit of health and wellbeing.
Balance
Find balance in the emotional overwhelm that can exist for today’s modern man.
Transformation
Experience new ideas and insights on what it means to be a leader, a provider and a man.
THE EQ LAB
APPROACH
We’re not here to “fix” each other, put on a show, or offer salvation. We’re here to cut through the bullsh*t, step into authenticity, and support each other in building lives filled with more fulfillment across the men’s leadership domain.
Inside You’ll Find:
We Go Deep: understanding the challenges of human behaviour, we put our education of psychology, emotional health and transformational disciplines to work to help you reach your full potential.
We Nurture Self-Knowledge: we support you in uncovering the inner blind spots holding you back—facilitating a new level of emotional growth and maturity.
We Share Systems: knowing that a lot of men think in systems, we provide you with proven processes to streamline your path to higher emotional awareness.
We Support One Another: in a safe group for men in our community to explore the transformative benefits of emotional intelligence—both for themselves and the men they care about. Absent of judgement and fuelled by accountability and confidentiality.
We Build Skills For Life: we recognize developing a strong, healthy, core relationship with your emotions is essential for growth and change—we create a space for those skills to become embedded into your day-to-day actions, behaviours and relationships.
HOW IT WORKS
The EQ Lab equips you with evidence-based techniques to master emotional intelligence and empowers you to turn everyday challenges into opportunities for growth—enhancing your ability to lead with clarity, empathy and strength.
Overview:
1x a week for 8 weeks starting January 31
Meet each Friday starting at 8:30am for 2 hours
At Fractal Workspace—623 Fortune Crescent, Kingston
Limit of 8 men
Whatsapp group
Commitment:
Joining this group requires commitment to:
Confidentiality – What’s shared here stays here.
Punctuality – Respect the time we’ve carved out together.
Consistency – Show up weekly or consciously check out if you can’t.
Safety – Call it out when something doesn’t feel right.
Authenticity – Lean into the discomfort of showing up as your true self.
Investment:
The cost of the 8 week training is $500.
That’s 8 weeks and 16 hours of support for the cost of two 1-hour therapy sessions. With the added bonus of access to synchronistic support between sessions.
Note:
$2000 worth of proceeds to this training will go to support the Integrative Care Hub and the work they do to support marginalized communities in Kingston.
MEET THE EQ LAB TEAM
CORY
FIRTH
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After overcoming a 20+ year battle with suicidal ideation, I have committed my career to a vision where the stigmatization of mental illness is replaced with compassion, transformation and community connection; a world where we work together to reunite with our innate abilities to heal, overcome and fulfill our true potential.
I was born with a suppressed gene that keeps me from regulating serotonin normally in my body. Because of this, I am more susceptible to things like anxiety, depression and suicidality; three things I struggled with deeply in my life. It also makes me a poor responder to things like antidepressants and talk therapy; the two primary methods for treating mental health in North America. I experienced my first suicidal thought when I was 10 and for 20 years I suffered in silence as I tried to work within the western healthcare system to find an answer.
While the healthcare system failed me, the experience empowered me. It forced me to move through obstacles, challenge the status quo and find alternative methods for fully understanding the relationship between my mind, body and spirit. Through this journey, I studied, I experienced, I sat with the most insightful and intelligent people I could find, I explored my inner world and I came back with a unique skill stack that has helped me to embrace and overcome my darkest days.
In 2018 I wanted to translate my journey into value in the world, so I gave up the global communications agency that I had built to take on a 5 year mission in mental healthcare reform. Over that time, I’ve built or helped lead 4 non-profit organizations in successfully advocating for legal psychedelic access across the world. I now work as a human-impact coach, consultant and facilitator helping to empower individuals, public health organizations, academic institutions and social-impact businesses in transforming the way we think, teach and experience wellbeing in our world.
My passion lies in the intersection between our biology, psychology, sociology and spirituality. I believe in using science to ask the questions and working with nature to find the answers. With this foundation, I share insights on how to work with psychedelics for empowered wellbeing, how to create optimal states of flow for performance and mindfulness, shifting habits to create health and longevity and embracing spirituality in an accessible and attainable way.
I am a Flow State Neuroscience Coach, trained by the Flow Research Collective
Flow State Optimization Coach
BRENT
ATKINSON
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I've walked the conventional path, excelling in academics, ascending the corporate ladder to executive status in a publicly traded company, and embracing the markers of success – a loving family, a house in the greater Toronto area, family trips to Disneyland, and the trappings of material achievement, from BMWs to a collection of suits and a TAG watch. I got things done.
Allow me to further the connection with you. The reality beneath the surface was different. I lived a financially strained life, my marriage teetered on fragility, and my connection with my son, Owen, was limited because I prioritized a career for material achievements. Even on weekends I struggled to be emotionally present despite being physically present with the family. I was far from healthy, living in perpetual fear, physically numb, and emotionally isolated.
When I arrived at a place where I could afford to leave my wife, I did, believing that I could balance my son’s life experience by stepping out of the conflict that was growing thick in the family home. What followed was nearly losing my mind while surviving a crushed heart trying unsuccessfully to get the courts to allow me my right to be my sons father.
After engaging with a global charity organization called The ManKind Project, I found deep healing through a community of Men from all walks of life. Men navigating the same journey of trying to understand what it is to be a man bounded by a world of chaos. What followed was a personal commitment to supporting men in the community with Emotional Intelligence support groups in Toronto, Eastern Ontario as well as Southern Ontario regions. This rewarding work led me to continued healing and education, that resulted in a series of weekly Men’s Emotional Intelligence Health and Wellness circles, as well as Men’s Retreats.
This journey offers me a community of men that is as deep and wide as I had never dreamed possible - a tribe in the truest definition. I am no longer alone. My health and wellness practice is a lifestyle, and best of all, I have been blessed with an opportunity to be an authentic man to my new Wife, Louise, our two beautiful daughters, River and Willow, and my Business Partner that just happens to also be my maternal brother, and my best friend, Joe. My journey with Owen continues to be a poetic healing experience.
Men’s Group Therapy Facilitator