Welcome to
The Boom Room
Overcome your biggest communication blockers through live response practice
Your needs don’t disappear just because someone else’s needs are in the room.
Here is where you practice staying with yourself, even when things get uncomfortable.
Who Challenges You The Most?
The Bully
Someone loud, interrupting, or dominating the space
The Steamroller
Someone who keeps pushing even after you’ve made your position clear.
The Cold Shoulder
Someone cold, distant, or difficult to read.
The Manipulator
Someone who uses guilt, passive aggressiveness, or emotional pressure to influence others.
“[The Boom Room] has given me a great sense of confidence in terms of how much power I hold in a conversation. Whether I exert them or not, I have so many options available to me. I felt reminded that I owe nothing to others.”
Toni, Toronto—Artistic Producer
Carli, Chico—Kinesiology Professor
“The simulation was practice for a real life zoom call I had the next day. It is exactly what I deal with in my job.
From our initial warm up to the time in the scenarios with the actors I was blown away.”
How a Live Online Session Works
Meet Your Coach
01
Ground your communication. Identify the specific patterns that trip you up and prepare to step into the encounter.
Practice Different Approaches Under Real Pressure
02
Go live in a bespoke scenario with a professional actor who pushes back exactly like your real life. Guided by your coach, you'll adjust and keep swinging.
Gain New Evidence of How Capable You Are
03
Leave with tactical proof that you can handle high pressure moments. The patterns shift in you when you experience a different response.
Credentialed professionals who guide your practice, help you navigate the pressure, and support you in discovering what you're capable of in the moment.
Choose Your Coach
Ashley Curiel, Psy.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist · Somatic Experiencing Practitioner
Body under pressure · Boundaries & consent · Reading relational dynamics · Staying present when activated · Real-time response· Trauma-trained
Ashley works with capable people who’ve become experts at keeping everyone else comfortable. They’re often the ones others turn to, yet when someone pushes back, they may freeze, over-accommodate, or back down. She helps clients notice what happens in their body in those moments and practice a different response, live, with support.
She’s particularly interested in conversations where clients need to ask for something, hold their position, set a boundary, or say no when someone keeps pushing.
With specialised training in trauma, she works at the pace of the client's nervous system and keeps the choices in their hands.
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Ashley Curiel, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, former actor, and certified intimacy coordinator for film and television. Before becoming a psychologist, she worked in television and theatre, so she knows from both sides what it takes to stay present and truthful when someone is pushing back.
As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Alexander Technique teacher trainee, Ashley brings a body-centred approach to her work. Trauma is one of Ashley's clinical specialities, and she is trauma-trained through her work in Somatic Experiencing and EMDR. She supports people when a conversation becomes activating by working at the pace of their nervous system and helping them stay connected to themselves.
Her background in intimacy coordination also informs her understanding of boundaries and consent, including what it takes to communicate a yes, no, or not yet in a high-stakes moment.
Atara Vogelstein, MA, LCAT
Licensed Creative Arts Therapist & Drama Therapist
Relational dynamics · Body & regulation · Voice & agency · Boundaries · Attachment patterns · Self-trust· Trauma-trained
Atara brings an embodied, relational approach to difficult interactions, helping clients stay connected to their needs, emotions, intuition, and voice under pressure.
She is especially drawn to working with people navigating harmful relationship patterns, feeling silenced or dismissed, or moving through relationship and identity changes.
Her work supports clients in reclaiming their voice and agency, reconnecting with their own needs, and developing greater self-trust.
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Atara is a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist & Drama Therapist who brings embodied and expressive approaches to clients navigating anxiety, traumatic experience, and stressful situations and relationships. She gently and intuitively guides clients toward noticing what’s happening in their bodies and emotions so they can access more choices in how they respond.
Her work draws on interpersonal dynamics, somatic and emotional attunement, and creative expression to empower clients to connect with themselves, find their center, and their voice. A creator and facilitator of local and global experiential healing initiatives, Atara brings a strong instinct for creating spaces where people can explore and connect more deeply with themselves and others.
“I felt a lot more emboldened to defend myself and my rights... I am not to be fucked with.”
Jessica, Toronto— Media Arts Professional
“The whole program is cohesive. I was surprised how immersed I became.”
Ben, Los Angeles— Director Of Photography
The Boom Room Progression:
Week One
Start by seeing what happens when pressure enters the conversation. You may know exactly what you want to say, but what happens when the other person pushes back?
With your dedicated coach, you’ll begin to notice your default responses and experiment with what else is possible.
See Yourself
Week Two
Build on what you discovered. You’ll face new pressure from a new actor, apply what you practiced, and experiment with staying present when your instincts want to take over.
Push Your Limits
Week Three
The pressure builds. You’ll draw on everything you’ve learned and practiced so far as you navigate a new, more demanding conversation.
Put It Into Practice
Overcome The Moments You Usually Back Down
SINGLE SESSION
$545 USD
90 Minutes
One encounter, built around your real-life needs.
Ideal to practice responding in a specific conversation you know you have coming up, or the one you’ll inevitably face.
3 PROGRESSIVE WEEKLY SESSIONS
$1530 USD
Three 90-Minute Sessions
Designed to work on the patterns that you recognise you have but are difficult to shift.
Through enough repetition, you can actually change what your body does under pressure.
Miriam, Munich— Accounts Manager
“I had to tell my colleague I was uncomfortable with a decision he had made. I was very confident in these moments... It felt like a weight off my chest. Once I had those tools from The Boom Room, my confidence truly grew.”
Build Your Boom Room
Jessie,Washington— Senior Program Manager
“This gave me grounding for a difficult conversation with a team member who is not meeting expectations. Both to give me confidence in holding space for difficult emotions and to not mitigate them with unearned smiles.”
“The Boom Room was like First Aid training for communication... You'd train for a marathon, you'd train for a driver's test. Why not train for your most nerve-wracking conversations?”
Leo, Milan—Media Relations Specialist
Meet the Founders
Joe Lawther & Julia Pileggi
Living in a New Country and the Pressure to Practice
We knew moving to Italy would be hard. We didn’t know it would be this lonely.
Back home, we were used to being our full selves around other people. Here, everyone was forming a first impression of us, and we couldn’t seem to escape it. And since every interaction felt like it counted, we found ourselves practicing all the time, whether we meant to or not.
That’s how we learned that knowing who you are and being able to access it under pressure are two different beasts, and it’s doing intentional reps that bridge that gap. Because the reps you stumble into are slow and random and costly when they go wrong, we started building a way to practice on purpose. You encounter a professional actor who pushes back like the person in your life, a coach beside you, and a conversation designed around what you actually face.
We still practice, especially when it feels inconsequential. Julia is learning to say “I have to go.” Joe is learning to say no when he means no. It doesn’t always feel comfortable, but we just stay with ourselves anyway.
Our Founders Bring Presenting and Performing Experience From:
