The Team

The Ridge Intensive is led by Simon Hitchcock.

The wider team is small, carefully selected, and changes depending on the group. Every practitioner who works at The Ridge does so because they are genuinely the best person for that specific role.

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.

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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 and present throughout the programme, bringing a quiet fluency with the land, the animals, and the people who come here. Her presence is woven into the fabric of the week rather than confined to a single session.

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. He joins the programme for the physical, wilderness, and challenge work, designing each session around the specific group in front of him.

Breathwork, Breath and Nervous System Specialist

Nuria

Makai Clinic

Health Psychologist, Advanced Wim Hof Method instructor, Functional Breathing Practitioner and Yoga teacher. Nuria works directly with the nervous system — using breath, cold and movement to reach what talking alone cannot. Her sessions are not relaxation exercises. They are structured exposure to the edges of your own physiology, carefully supported throughout. She brings the integrative clinical framework of her practice at Makai Clinic — CBT, ACT, mindfulness and somatic work — to the embodied side of the programme. The nervous system learns things in cold water that it cannot learn in a chair.

Nuria — Health Psychologist and breathwork specialist

Two horses walking together on 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 week is over.

The dogs of the ridge on a trail through the olive trees

Also in Residence

Kai, Shakira, Bart, Fatty and Baby Cat.

Three German Shepherds, one ancient blind and deaf Spanish Water Dog, and two cats of uncertain temperament. Present throughout the programme. 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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