Anyone who hasn’t experienced a self-development workshop might have images ranging from mass therapy or mass indoctrination, or at the other extreme, a nice set of how-to rules being handed out for simple no-fuss living.

The reality lies somewhere in between. If you’re at a crossroads in your life, if you feel stuck or confused, if you’ve come out of a relationship or wonder why you can never get into one, you’ll find yourself being led to such a day, weekend, or even holiday.

The advantage of combining a workshop with a long weekend or holiday is that you’re away from your usual surroundings or distractions, so it’s conducive to thinking about your life and you’ve got time to loll around and think about whatever it is you’re working through. It’s also a good way of getting away from it all without being alone.

Describing what happens and how is difficult as there are no set activities. There’s no timetable with convenient headings because self-development trainers work with the group. Even if the workshop is called ‘How to get one over on your boss’ it could turn into ‘How to get your leg over more often’. It depends what people in the group come up with - and it’s the trainer’s level of skills and intuition that harnesses and guides that. So you can never predict what happens on this sort of weekend.

Asked to pick out a card with everybody’s name from the group of 20, I’d hesitated, searching out one in particular which looked like it wanted to escape. When I turned that card over, it had my name on it. So I was ‘it’ - the focus of the group’s work.

The other thing you can never predict is what comes out of your mouth.You thought you couldn’t control your words after several pints of lager or a couple of bottles of vino? Wait until you’re in a room full of strangers. Which is how I ended up in the ‘spin dryer’. During the questions which took place before the strange rite that followed, I couldn’t get the words out about why I was on this weekend, what was going on inside, what I was feeling. Usually the personal-development trainer will work with the person talking, doing a kind of on-the-spot-instant-therapy using the rest of the group for added input, getting them to play out roles (eg from the family or previous relationships) or even to represent the person’s goals (eg a successful career person, a happy person, a confident person).

‘Some things you can talk about,’ says Ann Marie Woodall, the 49-year-old Mancunian leading this workshop from her house-healing centre in Littlehampton. ‘But sometimes there aren’t any words. Our ancestors knew this. Our modern society doesn’t have any rituals, but we need them.’ And so I find myself going through this bizarre shamanic ritual in which I’m wrapped in blankets, surrounded by the group crouching over me, tapping every part of my body, rhythmically and instinctively, the sound of a Native American CD with drumming and chanting in the background. It’s one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve ever had, all the more extraordinary because it was real, ordinary people doing most of the ‘therapeutic’ work.

Time stopped.

Imagine that state of dreaming, and being aware that you’re in a dream. But you’re asleep. Wherever pain was identified in my body (mostly around my heart), the tapping intensified. It felt like a skewer going through me. As the group counted down from ten, at zero the tapping would be suspended, and as I felt their arms leave my body (they were shaking off the energy), it was like being propelled into space. Even when I opened my eyes periodically, I was moving.

According to Ann Marie, this sort of thing is instinctive, and part of the point of her workshops is to teach people techniques they can practice at home. ‘You get kids to do this stuff, and they don’t need to be told how. They just tap away.’ US-trained Ann Marie has been in the self-development world for nine years. She also facilitates group psychodrama, often involving role-playing, ‘guided visualisations’, and other kinds of therapy which can involve work with children’s toys. Her Littlehampton workshops do away with the usual format (and expense) for this kind of day or weekend. Setting people up in B&Bs along the beach front, taking some of the sessions out on to the beach, and heading for the pub at the end of it all (and letting you keep your mobile as long as it’s switched off during sessions), makes it more like a mini holiday.

In between sessions we all hang out on the beach, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, drinking filter coffee out of polystyrene cups, eating chips and bacon sarnies, and gorging Magnums. The evening after my tapping ritual, I look a mess and I couldn’t care less. Instead I sling on my metallic pink shoes with clashing pink bows because I feel like it. There’s no one to pass judgement on how this ensemble looks, least of all my style-conscious self. I then drink two pints of lager and have a full-blown roast dinner. (I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t like beer, incidentally.)

Cynics might ponder that there’s absolutely no point in all of this. And yes, if you’re always 100 per cent satisfied with your life, if all your relationships (friends, lovers, family, work) are trouble-free, and if you never have any self doubts, then maybe there is absolutely no point.

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