Embodied Parts-Work Academy:
Train in Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing
Start with the Body. Transform lives with Trust.
PART 1 BEGINS Tuesday April 22nd
Get beneath the surface:
Befriend all that’s alive inside.
If you’re here, you likely already know how to track a nervous system. Words like ‘titrate’ and ‘regulation’ aren’t theory — they’re part of how you live and support others. Now, you’re ready to go farther, and learn to heal inner conflict in a way that’s relational, somatic, and rooted in real trust building.
My job as a focusing-oriented therapist is to use the tools at my disposal to help YOU reveal what’s holding you back or pushing you in a direction you don’t want to go. In this program, I will do that through modelling what connection, curiosity, and care for your many different parts looks and feels like.
Inner Relationship Focusing is a life-long practice for companioning your parts and the parts of those you serve with presence and compassion.
Beginning on Tuesday April 22nd, join me in the art of softening into what the body already knows, and together, truly transform lives. (Starting with your own!)
Welcome
I’m Maureen,
S/IRF is my practice for personal and professional self-care. I use these practices EVERY DAY and it’s brought more peace, contentment, and resilience than I ever thought possible.
If you’re looking for a technology of transformation, this is it.
My 20+ years of experience in this field has taught me that we all have what we need to change. Many of us just never learned to listen for it.
But I also know how it feels to try be holding the pieces of embodiment work, somatic practices, and more traditional cognitive therapy — and still feel like something is missing.
To sit across from someone and sense a part of you has gone offline.
To care deeply, but not know how to reach the part of them that’s stuck.
To carry the pressure to get it right — and continuously feel like you’re failing.
This is why I designed this program to be rigorous, and still spacious.
Your focus will be on deepening your relationship and companioning your many parts, along with learning what it means to companion another’s.
Instead of forcing change, you’ll learn how to gently invite it —and as a result, create the freedom to move forward, evolve, and live more of your life like the unravelling adventure it truly is.
A toolkit for compassionate care
Every one of us, including our clients, carries a universe within — realms of thoughts, feelings, and somatic experiences.
This course is your invitation to explore the integration of your many selves, and to learn to create that kind of integration space for others. Marrying the insights of Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF) with the embodied wisdom of Somatic Experiencing® creates a space where every thought and sensation, is felt, heard, and given a chance to transform your life.
We can tell our own stories while discovering the story our body tells, and begin a fresh conversation.
Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF):
IRF is a gentle, body-based process of accessing and building relationships with our inner states.
Learned first in our own systems, this approach can be woven into our work to support greater awareness, self-trust, and compassion — both for ourselves and for those we work with.
IRF was originally developed by Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin, drawing on the foundational work of Eugene Gendlin.
Somatic Experiencing® (SE™)
SE™ is a body-oriented approach to resolving the impacts of stress, shock, and trauma and the way your past lives on in your presently felt experience
Developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine, this modality has been clinically applied for more than four decades across therapeutic and professional contexts.
‘I can be with all of you - and also all of me.’
How settling is that to hear?
Your clinical practice will benefit from...
An Integrated
Approach to Healing:
The past preoccupies us. SE together with IRF brings about a recalibration to the Now — so that we can experience the fullness of our relationships in the present.
Diversified
Intervention Strategies:
Whether you're navigating a client's trauma or helping them build self-awareness, you'll have tailored strategies at hand.
Enhanced
Presence over time:
IRF strengthens your ability to stay with what’s happening — helping clients feel seen, safe, and understood.
Toolkit for more
Authentic Client Relationships:
S/IRF cultivates inner trust in clients. It deepens the therapeutic relationship from the inside out.
Stronger
Resilience:
This isn’t just about client care.This work supports your own sustainability as a practitioner.
Community of
Empowered Practitioners:
Join a circle of thoughtful, skilled practitioners dedicated to doing this work with depth, clarity, and heart.
To truly serve others, you must first offer yourself:
The gift of compassionate care.
The more we push against our struggles —
the tighter they grip.
I wrestled for years with the challenge of understanding the boundaries around my own emotional fluctuations and triggers in clinical practice. It wasn't until I embraced somatically informed Inner Relationship Focusing (S/IRF) that I discovered a transformative path forward for me, and my clients.
I know that compassion for self goes against the grain. It contradicts the cultural mantra "You have a problem? What are you doing about it?"
…and instead says: Let’s bring compassion, interest, and curiosity to understanding to it.
S/IRF offers an acknowledgment of the knots within, AND empowers our individual self-responsibility for unravelling them.
“Already I am more aware of my own embodiment and draw on tools from IRF and SE in my teaching and my individual pastoral encounters.”
— Leah, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care
The program offers immense healing on an individual level:
Before You Offer This to Others…You’ll Feel It Yourself
Compassionate Self-Respect
Self-acceptance that doesn’t bypass what’s hard — but grows from being with it.
Clarity on long-term goals
When parts are understood and heard, forward movement becomes possible — without force.
Overcoming Procrastination
Procrastination often hides a protector. When we meet it with care, action becomes easier.
Authentic Living (instead of scared, or rebellious living)
IRF and SE help you choose from a place of clarity, over unconscious self-protection.
‘‘
Her knowledge is exquisite with the material.”
— Shideh Lennon, Ph.D., SEP, Faculty Member, SEI
Curriculum —
This program is split into two parts.
You can choose to complete them both or begin with Part 1.
The first part is 9 sessions, and is focused on internalizing this model for yourself.
The second part is an additional 9 sessions and is an intermediate level of training that walks you into the role of companioning another, and opens the door to certification in the IRF model.
Part 1 | Tuesdays from 5-7pm EST
Internalizing the model
Beginner Level
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You will develop:
The ability to bring attention into the body (body sensing) and to describe bodily felt experiences without judging or labeling them.
The ability to use the phrases “I am sensing” and “something in me” with emotional states and feel the difference between “I am” and “I am sensing something in me”.
Being able to set aside what is already “known,” and sense freshly.
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You will….
Be able to start with a life issue and get a “felt sense” of it, bringing together experiences that include emotion, sensation, image, memory.
Once in contact with “something,” being able to sense how *it* feels from *its* point of view, especially *its* emotion.
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You will…
Be able to stay at the unclear edge without breaking away or coming up with what it means.
Develop the ability to understand that an attitude of interested, curious, compassionate. Listening fosters secure attachment with self
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You will…
Knowing how to cultivate Self-in-Presence by:
Being aware of body grounding
Using Presence language
Saying “I am here” to your “somethings”
The ability to understand the relationship between self in presence and social engagement, a condition for the development of a secure base and potential bonding
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You will develop…
The ability to understand how slowing down fosters the possibility of availability to self for an interested, curious relationship with all self states, including those we are uncomfortable with.
The ability to notice when you are identified with a feeling or a part and to dis-identify (using Presence language, time, space and support).
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Learning to support the process of others as a Companion, listening for and saying back the Focuser’s presently felt experience (rather than what is not felt, and rather than past feelings)
As Companion, changing the order of what the Focuser said, so that the presently felt experience – including descriptions of emotions and body sensations
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Knowing the difference between a “reflection” and a “reminder”;
And that reminder is an invitation to take a next step.Being able to add a “cushion” to a reminder to make invitations gentler, and easier in IRF to adapt or ignore.
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The Bottle Model allows one to know where one is in the session so that when something doesn’t go well, one can go back up the Bottle to a previous stage instead of trying to go further.
Trouble or feeling stuck in any stage usually means that the previous stage wasn’t given enough time.
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The Not-Wanting/Wanting Process is a way to offer empathy for the deeper needs and feelings of parts that avoids getting caught in the parts’ repetitive strategies.Knowing how to phrase the sequence of Not Wanting invitations (“going down the stairs”) so that each one goes deeper.
2. The Not-Wanting/Wanting Process can lead to the transformation of the Protector from “critic” to “ally” and even to its dissolution.
Knowing how to phrase the sequence of Wanting invitations, starting with “You might sense what it is wanting for you from _____________.”
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Part 2 | Tuesdays from 5-7pm EST
Move into companioning
Intermediate Level
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Being able to define Close Process as having easily felt emotions and a tendency to get overwhelmed and to support with greater access to self.
Being able to define Distant Process as feeling very little or having feelings that easily disappear, and to support with greater time and space.
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Being able to recognize when someone doing IRF has a Feeling About a Feeling
Being able to offer a reflection that includes both a Feeling and a Feeling About a Feeling, and being able to give appropriate reminders for a Focuser who is aware of two “somethings”
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You will…
Learning to describe and discern between Presence and partial Self states.
Learning how to create relationship with different types of parts
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An inner criticizing part, which we call a “Protector,” can show up verbally (seeming to be a thought), or through images, or through body constriction.
Being able to acknowledge a Protector part with: “I/you are sensing something in me/you says…”Being able to invite a Protector part to reveal what it is worried about.
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You will learn…
How to notice and disidentify from worried and concerned and frightened states.
How to create relationship with worried states and protective parts.
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How to notice and disidentify from bodily felt and non-verbal partial self states.
How to create relationship with non-verbal parts
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How to notice and disidentify from them
Being able to add a “cushion” to a reminder to make invitations gentler, and easier in IRF to adapt or ignore.
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The Not-Wanting/Wanting Process can lead to the transformation of partial self states and even to their dissolution.
Knowing how to phrase the sequence of Not-Wanting invitations, starting with “You might sense what it is not wanting for you from _____________.”
Identifying ways to offer empathy for the deeper needs and feelings of parts that avoids getting caught in the parts’ repetitive strategies.
Recognizing and empathizing what each of these states is not wanting for the person to go through
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The Wanting Process can lead to the transformation of partial self states and even to their dissolution.
Identifying ways to offer empathy for the deeper needs and feelings of parts that avoids getting caught in the parts’ repetitive strategies.
Knowing how to phrase the sequence of Wanting invitations, starting with “You might sense what it is wanting for you from _____________.”
Recognizing and empathizing what each of these states is wanting for the person to be able to experience
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Integrate S/IRF into your existing practice
Over time, S/IRF becomes a powerful complement to your current modalities — whether you work in psychotherapy, coaching, art therapy, addictions recovery, or another healing field.
It takes time — beyond the walls of this course — to truly embody this work.
That’s why I provide resources you can return to for years to come.
You’ll be invited to engage, shape, and adapt this model to suit your clients, your context, and your capacity.
Once you understand it in your own system, there’s incredible freedom in how you bring it to others.
Pricing
You can register for:
Part 1 only: 9 weeks of foundational training. A beautiful starting place.
Part 1 + Part 2: A full 18-week training that prepares you to companion
others and pursue IRF certification in the future.By registering for this program, you agree to the Terms of Service and Program Policies.
Cancellation Policy:
91+ days before start: 90% refund
61–90 days: 75% refund
31–60 days: 50% refund
Less than 30 days: no refund
Part 1
9 Sessions
Internalizing the model
Part 1 is offered in weekly sessions from April 22nd - June 24th
Receive the IRF toolkit and practice embodying this skill for yourself
You’ll receive the live sessions & weekly recordings & community platform
$1200
Part 1+2
18 Sessions
Internalize the model & practice companioning
Completion of both parts 1 & 2 opens the door to IRF certification
Part 1 is offered from April 22nd - June 24th - then there is a break before beginning Part 2 from Sept 30th - Dec 9th
You’ll receive the live sessions & weekly recordings & community platform
$2400
$2000
Part 2
9 Sessions
Practice companioning
Part 2 is offered in weekly sessions from Sept 30th - Dec 9th
**You must Part 1 in order to register separately for part 2
You’ll receive the live sessions & weekly recordings & community platform
$1200
“Maureen's teachings are clear and meticulous, safeguarding the integrity of the material she teaches. Her teachings are practical and can be integrated into my work seamlessly.
Studying IRF with Maureen led me to do my own personal 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 to course of my career and the way I work with clients.”
— Shideh, Psychologist, Educator
Profound change is possible when you…
Practice bearing witness to, and being with.
Reflect back the internal process without influencing it or jumping ahead of it.
Listen and notice before making a part of you “wrong” or “bad”.
Return to the sensation present in the body and relate to it compassionately.
Ready to free yourself up?
Instead of managing symptoms and battling inner conflicts
change your relationship to what’s underneath, for good.