Next cohort begins: September 2026.
The Institute for Interpersonal Embodied Healing
Advanced Practitioner Training
Interpersonal Embodied Healing (IEH) is a humanistic approach to trauma healing grounded in nervous system science, embodiment, attachment, and grief work.
Developed by Syanna Wand, this work addresses the relational and psychobiological impacts of complex and developmental trauma by restoring the conditions where human experience can be felt, integrated, and lived again.
At its heart, IEH recognizes that trauma does not simply affect one aspect of living — it affects the whole human life. Healing therefore happens not only through regulation or insight, but through relational presence, emotional integration, and the restoration of agency.
What is Interpersonal Embodied Healing?
Interpersonal Embodied Healing is a relational and humanistic approach to working with trauma.
It recognizes that human beings are inherently relational and that many of the deepest wounds we carry occur within the context of relationship, belonging, and disconnection.
Through embodied awareness, relational presence, and compassionate inquiry, IEH creates spaces where previously suppressed emotions, unmet needs, and adaptive survival patterns can safely emerge.
Rather than forcing change, the work supports the natural processes through which human systems reorganize when given enough safety, presence, and time.
In this way, healing becomes less about fixing symptoms and more about restoring a person’s capacity to live, feel, and relate fully again.
Why this matters for practitioners:
In IEH, practitioners are not trained simply to apply techniques.
They are trained to become a steady relational presence capable of accompanying human beings through experiences that require both capacity and skill.
Students learn to:
• recognize adaptive trauma patterns in the nervous system and relational field
• remain regulated and present during intense emotional processes
• support grief, attachment repair, and developmental integration
• cultivate the relational safety required for authentic healing to unfold
The goal of the training is not only professional competency, but the development of practitioners who can hold the complexity of human life with steadiness, compassion, and humility.
“Trauma work is the restoration of our capacity to live fully human lives.”
Throughout the program, you will learn how to:
Sit with clients in a secure and embodied way, holding safe and grounded space.
Support clients in building earned secure attachment and shifting internal lenses of survival and stress.
Attune to the subtle embodied signals of both client and practitioner to guide and deepen the work.
Track unconscious experience as it shows up in the body and is expressed through the mind.
Distinguish between story and state, and support your clients in making this distinction for themselves.
Create intentional client contracts and establish consent in every interaction, reinforcing safety and agency after trauma.
Guide and nurture the therapeutic process without falling into rescuing or overly directive roles.
Set and maintain clear, compassionate boundaries both within and outside clinical settings.
Work with trauma from a present-moment, embodied-state perspective.
Invite clients into their embodied experience in ways that build capacity without overwhelming their nervous systems.
Understand and feel confident addressing the neurobiological impacts, symptoms, and adaptations of early life trauma.
Repair rupture within the therapeutic container when it (necessarily and importantly) arises.
Engage with diverse populations from an informed, professional, and sensitive stance.
Recognize and work through personal biases or limitations that may inhibit connection or growth in the client-practitioner relationship.
A Flipped Model Classroom:
Designed for both self and live study.
This training is intentionally paced to honor real life demands as an adult learner and growth as a practitioner.
We use a flipped classroom model — so you’ll move through lessons on your own time, and then come together live to bring the material to life through practice, dialogue, and application.
PROGRAM STRUCTURE:
Self-Study Modules
Each month you’ll receive guided lessons, readings, and practices that lay the foundation through your student portal. These modules and lessons cover everything from fundamental knowledge to learning the embodied healing model and the practicing the art of practitioner presence. You’ll be able to revisit them as often as you need, letting the material settle at your own rhythm.Live Study & Application
Once a month in the beginning — and later twice monthly — we gather as a full group. These sessions are where theory becomes practice. Through demonstrations, experiential labs, and case explorations, you’ll learn what it feels like to sit with another human being in safety, attunement, and clarity.Relational Practice Labs
Our live time is interactive. You’ll practice witnessing, exploring, containing, and integrating in real time, supported by peers and guided by your teachers. These practice spaces are where confidence and embodied skill truly deepen.Reflection & Integration
Each module includes reflective questions and exercises to help you notice your edges, celebrate your growth, and integrate insights back into your client work.Practicum & Supervision
Over the course of twelve months, you’ll engage in practice sessions with your teacher and supervised practice with clients, receiving feedback and guidance as you step into this work. This is where learning moves from the classroom into lived practice.Community Support
Between calls, you’ll have access to a private space for peer connection and shared resources. You’ll be walking alongside a circle of practitioners committed to the same depth and integrity you are.
The Arc of Your Training Journey
This program isn’t about rushing information into your head — it’s about walking a steady, embodied path that transforms how you show up as a practitioner. Over 12 months, the material unfolds in a sequence that mirrors the healing process itself: beginning with safety, layering in knowledge, and moving into deeper application, practice, and integration.
Months 1–2: Foundations & Orientation
We begin by slowing down. You’ll be welcomed into the community, introduced to the Interpersonal Embodied Healing (IEH) model, and grounded in the values and principles that will guide us. This is where you establish the safety, presence, and trust and the high-level overview needed for your journey ahead.Months 3–6: Fundamental Knowledge
Here we build the scaffolding of understanding. You’ll explore anatomy, physiology, embodiment and neurobiology through a trauma-informed lens; deepen into attachment theory and early development; foundations of psychology, grief work, spirituality and worldview and trauma. This is where you begin to see how soma, psyche, and relationship weave together.Months 7–9: The Practitioner’s Role
Attention turns to you. We’ll explore the qualities of equanimity, self-awareness, and ethical presence. You’ll learn to notice your own adaptive strategies, biases, and edges, and discover how your very way of being can become a resource for clients.Months 10–12: From Knowledge to Practice
With foundations in place, you’ll move into structured application. You’ll study session flow, the four pillars of experience, and the three primary relationships inside every therapeutic encounter. In live practice labs, you’ll begin trying these on with peers and receiving feedback in real time.Months 13–18: OPTIONAL - Practicum & Supervision
Finally, you bring it all into the room with clients. Over a six-month practicum, you’ll begin working with practice clients under supervision. Here, skills are refined, your presence deepens, and your capacity to guide emotional completion and integration takes root. By the end, you’ll have not just learned — but lived — the work.
The structure of this program is important — but what truly matters is how the journey will shape you.
This isn’t just a series of modules to complete; it’s a living process that unfolds in layers, each one deepening your capacity to sit with yourself and others in the most tender places.
What begins as knowledge becomes embodied skill, and what begins as practice becomes easeful presence.
Who is this training for?
This program is for practitioners who long to sit with others in a deeper, safer and more embodied way.
It’s for you if you:
Already hold space - as a therapist, coach, bodyworker, healer or guide - and feel the called to a more embodied, relational way of working beyond the limits of insight based work.
Are just beginning your path as a practitioner - you feel called to trauma-informed work but want a strong, ethical and embodied foundation before you begin seeing clients. This training will help you build both knowledge and confidence step by step.
Desire to integrate a somatic, attachment-based and neurobiological understanding into your work.
Value relational integrity and want to bring more presence, clarity and attunement into every session.
Are wanting and willing to engage in your own growth as a person and practitioner while you learn to support others.
After the Training
When you complete your training, you won’t just have a certificate - you’ll have a new way of being in the room with clients.
For current therapists, CEU’s are available.
Steadier presence: the ability to stay grounded and attuned, even when sessions feel intense.
Relational skill: confidence to guide securely without counter-transferring and the ability to repair ruptures when they happen.
Somatic fluency: comfort noticing and working with the body’s cue (yours and your clients’) for deeper, more integrated sessions.
Ethical clarity: understanding how to hold consent, capacity and boundaries with compassion.
Integration: a lived practice of helping clients move toward emotional completion of historical experiences and new patterns of safety and connection.
Meet your Instructor
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Syanna Wand, NTP, EHP
Institute Founder and Lead Instructor
Syanna Wand is an Interpersonal Embodied Healing Practitioner and creator of the Interpersonal Embodied Healing method. With a decade of clinical experience in the fields of health, wellness and trauma work, she has brought together her experience from various holistic approaches and trainings to create an integrated model for working with clients from all backgrounds and walks of life.
Requirements:
The nature of this program is depth-oriented and rigorous. Because of the nature of the content and the experiential aspect of the program, you will be required to obtain and maintain professional support from an individual therapist or trauma-informed coach that you see at least once monthly for the duration of the program.
While the nature of the program encourages you to understand and connect with any traumatic material you may be carrying as a way to more fully understand and connect with your clients, it is not a substitute for or form of therapy, medical advice or personal coaching and, as such, you will be required to work through any challenges, triggers or personal experiences related to the course material outside of class.
In order to engage in the program to completion, you must be actively working with or intending to work with clients in a 1:1 or group basis. You will need at least three practice clients to work with during the year and at least five paying clients in order to complete your practicum hours should you decide to pursue certification.
*The Interpersonal Embodied Healing Institute will not supply clients to any students.
Tuition:
Tuition for the full 12 months of training (including the optional 6-month practicum at no extra cost) is $6300.00 plus a non-refundable application fee of $100.00 that will be applied toward total tuition costs.
At this time, no scholarships or discounted tuition rates exist for equity and inclusion but we are actively working toward that option in the future.
Pay In Full Option:
$5895.00 paid once at upon registration.
12-month training and optional 6-month practicum for The Institute of Interpersonal Embodied Healing Practitioner Training Program.
Pay in full option is discounted 5% from the total cost. One $100 non-refundable application fee included in total cost.
Payment Plan Option 1:
$2,100.00 every 3 months for 9 months
12-month training and optional 6-month practicum for the Institute of Interpersonal Embodied Healing Practitioner Training Program.
Three payments of $2,100.00 each. One non-refundable $100.00 application fee included in total cost of $6,300.00. Payments will be automatically drawn three months apart beginning at date of first payment.
Payment Plan Option 2:
$1,050.00 every 3 months for 18 months
12-month training and optional 6-month practicum for the Institute of Interpersonal Embodied Healing Practitioner Training Program.
Six payments of $1,050.00 each. One non-refundable $100.00 application fee included in total cost of $6,300.00. Payments will be automatically drawn three months apart beginning at date of first payment.
FAQs
We understand you may have questions. Please browse through our Frequently Asked Questions section to see if we’ve already provided an answer(s), but feel free to reach out at sy@syannawand.com if you don’t find what you’re needing.