NOW ENROLLING
2 Year Intensive: September 16th 2026 - May 24th 2028
Inner Relationship Focusing Certification
Become a Certified Focusing Professional in two years of advanced training, mentorship, and case consultation with Dr. Maureen Gallagher.
This offers two years of supervised clinical development in IRF,
with Dr. Gallagher to directly support your growth in private practice.
For clinicians who are ready to go deeper:
If you've done the foundation work in IRF and felt what this practice can open up in your clients, you already know this isn't a technique. It's a way of being with someone.
This certification is for therapists, coaches, and somatic practitioners in active private practice who are ready to bring that depth into every session, with the skills, consultation, and confidence to back it up.
In IRF, I found a practice that changed the shape of my relationship to myself, and as a result, changed the way I show up for every client I work with.
I've been practicing and teaching this work for decades. What I know is that understanding it conceptually is not the same as being able to hold it for someone else in a moment of real clinical complexity. That's what this program trains.
Over 4 semesters, you'll work directly with me, bring your real clients, and develop the kind of embodied clinical fluency that’s possible with personalized, skilled guidance.
Your clients come to you with complex presentations….
Complex trauma. Developmental attachment wounds. Inner critics that won't quiet. States of shutdown, freeze, and collapse. Action blocks that have resisted every other approach.
You already have the foundation in somatically informed IRF. This program trains you to meet it with greater skill, greater presence, and the clinical depth that comes from direct, intimate mentorship and collaborative peer support.
This Program is Designed for YOU if:
You have a one-to-one practice and work in psychotherapy, coaching, somatic therapy, or similar fields.
You have completed a foundation program in Focusing with any TIFI Certified trainer
You maintain an active private practice with a minimum of four individual client hours per week.
You have completed at least 18 sessions of IRF training through IRF Parts 1 and 2 with an IRF trainer (previously 1,2,3 and 4), or equivalent programs such as the SAT program with Maureen Gallagher or the EP Mind-Body Certificate (when taught by Maureen Gallagher).
You’re interested in diversified intervention strategies for navigating your clients' most complex presentations with greater range, depth, and confidence.
You want to support your clients in building a genuinely trusting relationship with their own inner states.
When you complete all program requirements, you will receive a Certificate of Completion. With videotaped demonstration and approval of your skills, you can achieve Certification as a Focusing Professional from The International Focusing Institute (TIFI), the international nonprofit organization.
Ann Weiser Cornell, Phd, will be the TIFI Certifying Coordinator for this training, along with myself, Maureen Gallagher PhD, as TIFI Coordinator in Training.
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This work allows much deeper access to difficult and unknown material in the patient. Maureen’s model and teaching creates a safe and effective approach to the work. Thorough and passionate are key words to how I experienced learning with Maureen. I am capable of listening for and providing adequate support for the patient to stay with and explore rich and healing therapuetic moments.
— Vincent, Psychotherapist
What sets this program apart is….
Learn by watching and practicing the work in real time
You will be immersed in practical live and taped demonstrations, exercises and feedback from peers and Maureen directly, allowing for immediate application and refinement in your skillset.Individual consultation with Maureen, every semester
Bring your recorded client sessions for direct review and feedback. This is where the real clinical development happens, in the specifics of your work.Advanced skills for the hardest presentations
Inner critics, shutdown and collapsed states, freeze, non-verbal states, blocks to action. You'll develop the range to meet clients where general training leaves off.
Throughout, we hold the big picture: how somatically informed IRF supports the felt sense, addresses attachment, meets presenting problems, and makes change last.
You will walk away knowing how to introduce any client to IRF and guide them progressively deeper into the therapeutic process.
More About Your Instructors:
Licensed Psychologist, Somatic Psychotherapy, SEI Faculty, TIFI Trainer and Coordinator in Training
Maureen Gallagher, PhD
What Inner Relationship Focusing has meant to me:
I knew I was searching for something and I knew that I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. Even with such vague parameters, I found the support I’d always craved inside Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing.
After getting to know and trying many psychological theories, spiritual and meditative practices, I quickly and deeply understood that this was my practice. It was like coming home.
Why did this practice stand out from all the others? Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing truly, dramatically changed my relationship to myself for life, and I’ve watched my clients achieve similar results over and over again throughout my decades long career.
Officially…
Maureen Gallagher, PhD is a licensed psychologist, somatic psychotherapist, and faculty member at Somatic Experiencing International (SEI). She has spent decades integrating Somatic Experiencing and Inner Relationship Focusing into a distinct clinical modality, Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing (S/IRF), which she teaches and supervises across her certification and training programs. She is a Licensed Psychologist, Somatic Psychotherapist, SEI Faculty Member and brings both the rigor of her clinical background and the depth of her personal practice to every student she trains.
With special guest…
Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD
Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD, is an author, educator, and worldwide authority on Focusing, the emotional self-healing method developed by her close colleague, Eugene Gendlin. She has taught Focusing in more than 20 countries over the past 30 years.
With her colleague Barbara McGavin, Ann developed a system and technique called Inner Relationship Focusing. She has given presentations and trainings in Inner Relationship Focusing at the Esalen Institute, the Psychotherapy Networker Conference, the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Person-Centered Experiential Psychotherapy, the Cape Cod Institute, and Embody Lab, as well as offering privately organized workshops and online seminars.
Ann is the President and CEO of Focusing Resources, Inc., whose mission is to meaningfully contribute to personal, community, and global emotional health. Her books include the bestselling The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing, her book for therapists: Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change, and with Barbara McGavin, Untangling: How You Can Transform What's impossibly Stuck.
Course modules
Class runs on Wednesdays from 1-3pm EDT
Semester 1:
Bringing Inner Relationship Focusing Into Your Work
September 16th 2026 - Dec 16th 2026 [12 sessions]
In this first semester, we will look at ways bringing SIRF into your work; how to introduce clients to the process, using psychoeducation, talking your way in and moving from story to supporting a Felt Sense. The felt sense is a bodily felt experience, one that is returned to over and over in Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing (SIRF). You’ll start your year one project of working with another student tracking a presenting problem while working with an issue with a focusing process, and introduce two to three clients to SIRF.
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September 2026 — Welcome to Certification
9/16/26 Welcome class!
9/23/26 Topic: Introduction to Focusing Professional Practice
9/30/26 Group Case Consult: Introducing your clients to Focusing
October 2026 Introducing Focusing to Clients
10/7/26 Topic: Presenting Problems, Regulation and Resource – Finding where and when to Use Focusing with Client, Use of Brief Psychoeducation and Experiential Sensing with Clients
10/14/26 Exercise: Exercise in Introducing Clients to Focusing and Interoception
10/21/26 No Class
10/28/26 Group Case Consult
November 2026 Talking Your Way In with Clients
11/4/26 Topic: Talking your way in with Clients
11/11/26 Demo and Exercise: Talking your way in
11/18/26 Group Case Consult: Talking your way in11/25/26 No Class
December 2026 From Story to Felt Sense with Clients
12/2/26 Topic: Inviting a Felt Sense from story with Clients
12/9/26 Demo and Exercise: Inviting a Felt Sense with Clients
12/16/26 Group Case Consult: Inviting a Felt Sense with Clients
Semester 2:
Facilitating Contact with a Felt Sense
Feb 3rd 2027 - May 19th 2027 [14 sessions]
In this semester we’re going to be looking at facilitating contact with a felt sense with your clients. Clients often need step by step support in noticing and being with the felt sense; noticing bodily felt experience, and then supporting clients to stay with what they are experiencing. We will begin to look at interruptions and obstacles to turning toward and deepening contact with the felt sense with your clients. We’ll work with different client presentations and ways to support clients when they become overwhelmed, flood with emotion, struggle with presence as they experience strong emotion, as well as clients that struggle to stay in touch with their experience, tend toward fleeting or ephemeral experiences, and ways to support clients to both stay with and deepen their experience. You’ll complete your year one project with another student, exploring what has changed in your and their process. Continue to track your progress in using SIRF with your focusing clients.
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February 2027 Facilitating Contact
2/3/27 Topic: Reflecting and Suggesting
2/10/27 Group Case Consult
2/17/27 Demo and Exercise
2/24/27 Group Case Consult
March 2027
3/3/27 Topic: Working with the Unclear Edge3/10/27 No Class
3/17/27 Group Case Consult Demo and Exercise
3/24/27 Demo and Exercise
3/31/27 Meeting in Triads
April 2027
4/7/27 Topic: Working with Overwhelm and Flooding
4/14/27 Demo and Exercise: Close Process
4/21/27 Group Case Consult
4/28/27 No Class
May 2027
5/5/27 Working with Freeze, Shutdown, Confusion and Sleepiness and Focusing Practice Partnership
5/12/27 Demo and Exercise
5/19/27 Group Case consult
Semester 3:
Deepening Contact with a Felt Sense, Working with Inner Critics
September 15 2027 - December 15th 2027 [12 sessions]
In this semester, we continue the process of supporting clients to deepen contact with the felt sense, identifying and working with obstacles and partial self states that emerge in the process. We notice protector parts and inner critics, and look at ways to work with Inner Critical states and parts that are receiving and identifying with criticism.
We deepen into parts work by working with Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin’s Untangling Process.
You’ll start your year 2 project of using SIRF in depth with a single client, videotaping sessions and tracking their process. You’ll continue to track your progress in using SIRF with several clients with or without video.
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September 2027
9/15/27 Topic: Working with Inner Critics and Focusing Practice
9/22/27 Demo and Exercise
9/29/27 Group Case Consult
October 2027
10/6/27 Topic: Working with Criticized Parts
10/13/27 Demo and Exercise
10/20/27 No Class
10/27/27 Group Case Consult
November 2027
11/3/27 Working with Rebel Parts
11/10/27 Group Case Consult
11/17/27 Focusing Practice Partnership
11/24/27 No Class
December 2027
12/1/27 When Criticism is deep
12/8/27 GCC
12/15/27 Focusing Practice Partnership
Semester 4:
Working with Self Sabotage, Blocks to Action and Procrastination + Teaching SIRF to small groups
February 2nd 2028 - May 24th 2028 [12 sessions]
In this semester, we identify and work with difficulties taking actions, including Self Sabotage, Procrastination and Blocks to Actions. We will support you to lead an introductory SIRF Training for a small group.
You will identify areas where your clients feel stuck, have difficulty moving toward actions wanted and not wanted, the partial self states involved, their underlying unmet needs and the relationship of parts with one another. We’ll dive deeper with getting to know the role of partial self states such as Inner Critics and criticized parts play in difficulties taking action.
You’ll complete your year 2 project of tracking a process and changes with a client where you have been using SIRF. You’ll continue to track your progress in using focusing oriented therapy with several clients.
You’ll plan and hold a class where you teach SIRF to a small group.
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February 2028
2/2/2028 Topic: Inner Critics, Shame and Developmental Trauma and Focusing Practice
Partnership2/9/2028 Demo and Exercise
2/16/2028 GCC
2/23/2028 Teaching Focusing to Groups
March 2028
3/1/2028 Topic: Blocks to Action and Focusing Practice Partnership
3/8/2028 Demo and Exercise
3/15/2028 NO CLASS
3/22/2028 Planning Your Group
3/29/2028 GCC
April 2028
4/5/2028 Procrastination, Blocks to Action and Habit Change and Focusing Practice
Partnership4/12/2028 Demo and Exercise
4/19/2028 GCC
4/26/2028 Planning your Agenda for groups
May 2028
5/3/2028 No Class
5/10/2028 Topic: Group Project Discussion
5/17/2028 Final Meeting and Goodbyes/ Focusing Practice Partnership
Get started on
your application today
NOW ENROLLING
1
Review Tuition Details & Complete Your Application:
Approx 15 min:
2
If accepted:
You will be invited to schedule a 30 -45 min. conversation with Maureen
3
You’re ready to Register for the Program!
You will receive your payment link and get started.
Inside the course, you will receive:
2 years of comprehensive training and professional peer support consisting of…
Live Group Sessions
25-27 weekly meetings in Year One
25-27 weekly meetings in Year Two
13 Demonstrations with Discussion by Maureen Gallagher
An Introduction to ‘untangling’ with a full semester on working with Inner Critics and Self Sabotage
15 Experiential Exercise Sessions
Live Case Consultation
Individual Mentorship
Up to 8 Individual Consultations for review and feedback on your recorded sessions
1 to 2 individual consultations per semester with Maureen Gallagher to review client video. (Individual consults can not be carried over to subsequent semesters)
You’ll receive a discounted rate on additional private consultation sessions, if available and desired.
Package of Course Materials
Manuals, and additional resources in PDF format
Anne Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin’s book on the Untangling process, an advanced IRF skill (will be delivered to your inbox in PDF format)
The Focusing Manual by Anne Weiser Cornell, PhD (PDF files), Focusing in Clinical Practice by Anne Weiser Cornell, PhD, and Untangling by Anne Weiser Cornell, PhD, and Barbara McGavin
Course student area [circle space, access each other privately, administrative support.]
Collaborative Learning
A consistent group of students to share and support you in your learning process.
Support in forming partnerships with other in the program for Focusing, for consultative support, for other kinds of peer support.
You will be assigned a Triad Practice Group to consistently practice with (option to switch or maintain group after year one)
There will be occasional guest lectures by IRF practitioners.
Year 1 and Year 2 Projects:
Deepening Your Practice
Year 1 Project
Peer Collaboration and Self-Reflection
In the first year, you will collaborate with a fellow student to trade focusing sessions and track presenting problems. This involves:
Personal Tracking:
Identify and track one of your own presenting problems, noting changes in perception and experience over the year.Peer Tracking:
Companion your peer, observing shifts in their presenting problem and perception.Monthly Summaries:
Keep a monthly log of your progress to use for your Year 1 paper.Final Paper:
Write a short paper at the end of Year 1, detailing the evolution of your peer’s presenting problem and your observations.
This project enhances your understanding of focusing and tracking therapeutic progress.
Year 2 Project
Applying Inner Relationship Focusing with Clients
In the second year, you will apply Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF) with a client from your practice. Key elements include:
Client Tracking:
Work with a client, using IRF to address a specific issue and observe its evolution.Monthly Notes:
Keep a monthly log to your progress to use for your Year 2 project Paper.Final Paper:
Write a short paper at the end of Year 2, detailing the evolution of your peer’s presenting problem and your observations (2 to 4 pages).
By the end of the program, you'll have a solid grasp of integrating IRF into your practice, supported by detailed documentation of its effectiveness.
What past students of S/IRF have to say:
"Finding myself stuck with certain clients, despite years of deep work, I first met Maureen at The Embody Lab where she taught IRF 1 and 2. I immediately found Inner Relationship Focusing deeply helpful in working with my clients to begin to access previously blocked parts. It has made my work much more rich and helped me grow so much, both personally and professionally."
— Elisabeth, LMFT in private practice
“I hear your voice so often when I am working with clients and my clients are benefiting from my knowledge of IRF (with somatics, EMDR and parts work). It was just the missing piece I needed. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with the world."
— Christine Monroe, Marriage and Family Therapist
"Studying S/IRF with Maureen led me to do my own personal S/IRF work which shifted my sense of myself considerably, leading to clearer and more organic ways of living my life and doing my work. Studying SE with her has shifted the course of my career and the way I work with clients."
— Shideh, Psychologist, Educator
FAQs:
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You can assist one of my classes currently or with prior written permission, you may assist another Certified Trainer in Inner Relationship Focusing, with at least 80% attendance (7 classes for each part). You can complete this requirement in Year 1, 2 or after the completion of your formal program (but prior to your certification). I hold a class on Tuesdays 12 to 2pm eastern and Thursdays 2 to 4pm Eastern each year.
Your client sessions can be completed throughout the year, and do not need to be completed during the academic year.
You can meet with me for individual consultation one to two times each semester to review client videotape (up to eight over two years). You are not required to videotape all sessions but do need to show videotape a minimum of four times over two years for a Certificate of Completion. Additional videotape will be required for TIFI Certification.
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You must have an active 1:1 practice with individual clients with a minimum of four client hours per week. You will need one to two clients to work with and video tape with your SIRF work.
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There is a cap on the cohort size of 18 and most cohorts are smaller than that.
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You do not need to be licensed, but must have either a Certificate or License in a helping and healing modality.
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No, Certification does not change your licensure to practice, but rather adds skill to practice.
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Any student may withdraw from the Training within one week (7 days) after the first training class meeting (request must be made by Wednesday Sept 22nd, 2026 at 12:00pm EST.) and receive a eighty (80) percent refund of the tuition. This refers to the total tuition payable including by instalment plan. No refunds will be granted after the first week of training.
Students will be held to this agreement, regardless of future attendance and/or completion of the training. In extraordinary circumstances, we will consider requests for release from the payment contract or rolling admission to the following cohort. However, the final decision in such matters will rest with Maureen Gallagher, Phd.
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If you can complete the project with another student that is preferable, but it is possible as an alternative to complete the Year 1 project with a focusing partner.
Your partner will need to submit paragraph descriptions of the change in your presenting problem as well as their own.
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No, you will not need to assist IRF 1 and 2 again if you have already assisted at these two trainings.