Step Out of the Routine.
Step Onto a New Path.
Second Path Productions
Retreats and gatherings for men.
Time outside your roles. Conversations with depth. Room to laugh, reflect, and say something honest you might not say anywhere else.
Second Path Retreats bring good men together to bring out the best in each other through conversation, music, storytelling, shared ritual, and time away from the everyday. Each gathering has its own character, but is always grounded in three things: Humility, Humor, and Humanity.
The phrase “men’s retreat” might induce cringe. It might conjure images of lame corporate team-building, pseudo-military ordeal theater, or Advanced Linen Feelings Camp. But these gatherings aim for something else: sincere but allergic to corniness, ritual without cosplay, mythopoetic but the poets are the Beastie Boys and with the ghost of George Carlin hanging over the whole thing.
What happens when good men get together?
Sometimes another man gives voice to something you’ve carried quietly for years. Sometimes you discover what you thought was yours alone has the whole room nodding. Sometimes you laugh at a problem and finally step outside of it.
Small-group conversations, talking-stick council, silent reflection, and unique shared experiences give those moments somewhere to happen.
You don’t need experience with men’s work, a polished story, or a particular belief system. These events bring together white-collar and blue-collar men, Boomers and Zoomers, the happily married and bitterly divorced, gay and straight, jocks and nerds—to keep it real in a way regular life doesn’t allow.
Sincerity that survives irony.
Intergenerational cohesion.
Curated collision.
“You don’t have to hide around these great men.” (Brian S.)
“It’s rare someone can have that deep of an impact upon other men without indoctrination, religiousness, or toxic dogma.” (Mick K.)
About Mike
I’m Michael Lynch. I’m a therapist, a writer, and the person putting these gatherings together.
Before becoming a marriage and family therapist, I worked in comedy, television, radio, podcasting and books. That background still shapes how I work: I pay attention to language, timing, music, and the moment when laughter opens the door to something honest.
Today, I run Men’s Center New England, my private practice in Burlington, Massachusetts. Through Second Path Productions, I create retreats and gatherings that draw on my experience with men and my own years participating in this work.
I care about the details—the food, the playlist, the objects in the room, the welcome when you arrive. This is because I care about creating a space for guys to surprise themselves and one another.
These gatherings are separate from my clinical practice and are not psychotherapy or treatment. You don’t have to know me or anyone else beforehand to have a place here. Strangers become friends when they connect with authenticity. But I rely on a word-of-mouth and referral approach, rather than a like-and-subscribe, influencer model to ensure that the men in the room are ready to show up in the right way.
The Path to Second Path
In 2010, I attended my first retreat with the Men’s Center Los Angeles. After walking across hot coals, I went to my mentor, Dr. Stephen Johnson, and told him, “I want to be a leader.”
“You already are,” he replied.
That exchange stayed with me. So did the experience of men gathering with honesty, generosity, and a willingness to be surprised. Over the years that followed, MCLA gave me mentors, friendships, and experiences that changed my life. I always knew I wanted to bring that work home to New England.
Dr. Johnson created the Sacred Path retreats. But I’m a little more profane than sacred. I knew in order to get men to drop the act and be radically themselves I had to create something with respect for the tradition but in my own voice. A meaningful ritual made accessible with an irreverent joke. An old story finding new life through an unexpected song. An adamant refusal to be put on a pedestal.
That sensibility shapes Second Path. In October 2026, years of learning, imagining, and planning became our first Day of Fellowship and Council.
Our first gathering
On October 17, 2026, forty men gathered at Nobscot Scout Reservation in Sudbury, Massachusetts, for a day of conversation, introspection, laughter, and fire.
The photographs and participants’ reflections offer a small glimpse of what happened when we stepped out of our routines and into the lodge together.
