The Institute for Interpersonal Embodied Healing
Interpersonal Embodied Healing is a somatic and attachment-oriented approach developed by trauma expert Syanna Wand, NTP, EHP, for addressing the psychobiological impacts and grief of complex and developmental trauma. This work is rooted in the belief that what has been ruptured in relationship must be healed in relationship, and that the body is central to that repair.
Our training is an 18-month program that combines education, embodiment, and practice. Students will spend twelve months in both group and individual training, followed by a six-month practicum for application and testing. By completion, you will be equipped to see individual clients, facilitate group support, and—if desired—apply to join our practice as a certified practitioner.
Our next training begins January, 23 2026.
What is Interpersonal Embodied Healing?
Interpersonal Embodied Healing is a somatic and relational approach to unwinding the layers of disconnection, adaptive protection, suppressed emotion, nervous system dysregulation, and survival-oriented patterns of relating that are at the heart of complex and developmental trauma.
Humans are inherently relational beings. Both our deepest fears and our deepest longings center around connection and disconnection—our ability to feel safe and secure with ourselves, with others, and within the world at large.
This is the interpersonal nature of healing: our fullest human expression is always shaped by, and shaping, the environments and contexts we live in—a truly biopsychosocial perspective.
Through Interpersonal Embodied Healing, we create safe, inquiry-based spaces where deeper needs, feelings, beliefs, and expressions can arise. Here, they are witnessed, contained, and integrated, so that developmental change can unfold and organic flow and movement can be restored after trauma.
Our goal is simple yet profound: to support, respect, and bring compassion to the human experience in all its many expressions—through the lens of secure, available relating and embodied presence.
Why this matters for practitioners:
As practitioners, we are often entrusted with holding others in their most vulnerable states. Interpersonal Embodied Healing provides a framework that is both deeply compassionate and practically grounded. It teaches us not only how to recognize the adaptive patterns born of trauma, but also how to create conditions where authentic change and healing can occur.
By learning this approach, you will be able to accompany clients into the tender terrain of grief, trauma, and repair with the skill, steadiness, and relational presence they need to feel truly met.
This training will equip you with the practical skills and embodied presence needed to hold space for trauma recovery and grief work.
Throughout the program, you will learn how to:
Sit with clients in a secure and embodied way, holding safe and grounded space.
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 both your nervous system, real life demands as an adult and your 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, supervised practice with clients, receiving feedback and guidance as you step into this work with integrity. 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 18 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: 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 others in their most tender places.
What begins as knowledge becomes embodied skill, and what begins as practice becomes 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.
Steadier presence: the ability to stay grounded and attuned, even when sessions feel intense.
Relational skill: Confidence to guide securely without rescuing and 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 and new patterns of safety and connection.
You’ll walk away with both knowledge and memory - work that lives inside of you, not just in a textbook.
Meet your Instructor
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Syanna Wand, NTP, EHP
Institute Director and 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 18 months of training 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 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 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 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.