The Team

The Team Behind The Ridge Intensive

Led by Simon Hitchcock.

The Ridge is led by Simon Hitchcock. On the scheduled Five-Day Ridge Intensive, the wider specialist team forms part of the programme as standard. On the Seven-Day Private Intensive and Private Weekend Intensive, specialist involvement is shaped around the person and the work rather than added automatically.

Simon Hitchcock, lead clinician at The Ridge Intensive
Lead Clinician

Simon Hitchcock

Simon Hitchcock is a British integrative psychotherapist with over fifteen years of clinical experience, working across private practice, residential clinics, and university level education. He has built and opened two private residential clinics from the ground up, designing the therapeutic programmes, training the clinical teams, and establishing every operational element from scratch. Both clinics treated addiction, trauma, eating disorders, and burnout. He has written therapeutic courses at university level and trained therapists entering the field. He appears weekly as a psychology presenter on Good Morning Spain.

He lives and works on a private ridge in the mountains above Málaga. The horses, the dogs, the outdoor gym, the landscape are not props or a hired venue. This is where he is.

Rather than asking what is wrong with you, he helps you discover what you have been trying to solve all these years. And then helps you build something better. Simon leads all therapeutic work at The Ridge personally. He leads the scheduled Five-Day Ridge Intensive, the Seven-Day Private Intensive and the Private Weekend Intensive. In the private formats, wider specialists are brought into the work where they genuinely serve the therapeutic process.

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Simon on the team behind The Ridge and the different practices that shape the work.
Simon on the team behind The Ridge and the different practices that shape the work.
How Simon works

Understanding the pattern is not the same as changing it.

Simon Hitchcock on why insight matters, and why it is only one part of meaningful therapeutic change.
Understanding where a pattern came from matters. But understanding it does not automatically change what your body, relationships and behaviour continue to do. Simon explains the difference between recognising a pattern and actually changing it.
Explore Trauma Therapy
From Simon Why Insight Isn't Enough
The wider team

Specialist practitioners around the work.

Verena
Equine Specialist and Programme Support

Verena

Verena is an experienced horsewoman who has spent years working with horses and guiding people into genuine relationship with them. She is part of the life of the ridge, bringing a quiet fluency with the land, the animals and the people who come here. On the scheduled Five-Day Ridge Intensive, her presence is woven into the programme rather than confined to a single session. Within private intensives, equine involvement is shaped around whether it genuinely serves the work.
Nando Brown
Behavioural Specialist and Physical Challenge Lead

Nando Brown

A behavioural specialist, former military trainer, and one of the world's leading figures in canine science and human performance. Nando has trained police and military dog handlers across multiple countries and built one of the most respected educational platforms in his field. He brings a forensic eye for behavioural patterns and the ability to ask the question that cuts through everything else. On the scheduled Five-Day Ridge Intensive, he leads physical, wilderness and challenge work designed around the group in front of him. Within private intensives, his involvement is added where it serves the individual therapeutic process.
Nuria
Breathwork and Nervous System Specialist

Nuria

Makai Clinic

Nuria is a Health Psychologist, Advanced Wim Hof Method Instructor, Functional Breathing Practitioner and Yoga Teacher, and the founder of Makai Clinic. She combines psychological insight with breath, movement and cold exposure to explore the relationship between mind, body and behaviour. On the scheduled Five-Day Ridge Intensive, her work forms part of the embodied side of the programme, using carefully supported physiological challenge to reach patterns that talking alone may not. Within private intensives, her involvement is shaped around the needs of the person and the work.
Dollar, Tsjango and Panuelo, the horses living at The Ridge
The Horses of the Ridge

Dollar, Tsjango and Panuelo.

They have been here longer than the programme and will be here long after it. They are not therapy horses. They are horses, and that distinction matters more than it sounds.

They respond to what you really bring, no matter what you try to present. They move toward or away from something real in you. They test boundaries without judgment and hold them without apology. They have been known to do things that have no clinical explanation and do not need one.

Time with them is not an exercise. It is an encounter. What happens in that encounter is different for everyone and tends to stay with people long after the intensive is over.

Three dogs walking along a trail at The Ridge
Also in Residence

Kai, Shakira, Bart, Fatty and Baby Cat.

Two German Shepherds, one ancient blind and deaf Spanish Water Dog, and two cats of uncertain temperament. Part of daily life at The Ridge. Unqualified. Unregulated. Entirely effective.

Bart has been on the ridge longer than anyone. He does not know you are there, but he appreciates the company.

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Ready to talk

Every conversation starts with Simon, personally.

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