Awakened IFS Practitioner Certification Program
Embodying Awakened IFS in Practice
Awakened IFS Practitioner Certification is a six-month advanced training and developmental process designed to support experienced practitioners in embodying Awakened IFS.
It is for healing practitioners who have completed AIFS-3 and are actively using IFS or parts work in their professional practice.
In the certification program, all that you have learned and experienced in Awakened IFS comes together in your practice. Certification recognizes practitioners who understand themselves as part of the healing instrument: grounded in Presence, fluent in IFS, aware of their own parts, discerning in the unknown, and able to trust the wisdom of the client’s system.
Successful completion of the program and demonstration of the Awakened IFS Core Competencies leads to the credential of Certified Awakened IFS Practitioner.
Note: The Institute for Healing and Awakening is not affiliated with the IFS Institute. We are, however, deeply indebted to IFS developer Richard C. Schwartz. His teachings have inspired us, and we are grateful for his generosity in sharing the model. Internal Family Systems and IFS are trademarks of the IFS Institute and used here with authorization.
AIFS Certification Progam Overview
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12 full-day classes on Zoom presented as six monthly two-day modules.
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Live practicum and observed practice.
Supervised experiential learning groups: Triads with 1 Coach, 1 Client, 1 Observer.
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To create a safe and intimate container that allows for vulnerability and healing, we limit the number of students to 12.
Relationships among the cohort and with the trainers and mentors flourish. Community is created.
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AIFS-3 develops advanced capability. Certification observes you using it, gives you sustained feedback, helps you refine it, and ultimately recognizes demonstrated competency.
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$4,250 full price
Why become an Awakened IFS Practitioner?
In a world that needs practitioners who are committed to their own healing and awakening, Awakened IFS asks you to go beyond learning a model. It asks you to become the kind of practitioner whose Presence itself becomes part of the healing.
Being certified by The Institute for Healing and Awakening as an Awakened IFS practitioner signifies your capacity to practice IFS from a state of awake awareness, and your commitment to evolving global wellbeing through your practice.
Through the certification process, you will:
Operate more consistently from awake awareness
Deepen your capacity to access Self directly, connect with Spirit, and create and relate from Presence.
Trust the model, and trust the client’s system
Let your mastery of IFS become more fluid and effortless. Rather than directing the process, trust the wisdom of the client’s system to reveal where it wants to go and how it wants to heal.
Become comfortable beyond the map
Learn to work with greater trust when spiritual beings, liminal spaces, or energies outside the client’s system emerge.
Strengthen discernment and intuition
Deepen your ability to sense what the moment is asking for. Know when to stay with what is emerging, when to slow down, when to intervene, and when to trust your intuition.
Understand yourself as part of the instrument
Recognize the practitioner parts that arise while you facilitate and deepen your capacity to return to Presence rather than unconsciously lead from them.
Make Awakened IFS your own
Integrate your authentic gifts, intuition, and way of being so the model becomes increasingly fluid, responsive, and alive in your hands.
As your own healing and awakening deepen, you become less focused on being the one who is “doing” the healing and more available as a conduit for Divine energy.
Becoming an Awakened IFS Practitioner means committing not only to greater skill, but to your own continued healing and awakening through an intimate, hands-on process of practice, reflection, feedback, and transformation.
The Certification Journey
Six months of practice, reflection, feedback, and increasing mastery.
The capacities listed above are not learned or demonstrated in a single session. They develop through sustained practice, self-awareness, reflection, study, and feedback.
Over six months, you will work intentionally with your own strengths and developmental edges, continually asking: What needs my attention? What happened when I practiced it? What became activated in me? What is the feedback showing me? What do I need to revisit? What will I try next?
By staying in relationship with these questions, you deepen the self-awareness, discernment, and responsiveness that allow Presence to become not just something you access, but the place from which you practice.
Stage 1: Orientation & Baseline
Identify your strengths, developmental areas, practitioner parts, and individual learning goals. These become the foundation of your Certification Development Plan.
Stage 2: Practitioner Awareness & Deliberate Practice
Bring greater intention to your professional practice. Notice what happens in you while facilitating, work directly with practitioner activation, and receive feedback on your work.
Stage 3: Feedback & Increasing Mastery
Apply faculty feedback, revisit relevant teachings, participate in live practicums, and continue strengthening your practice.
Stage 4: Integration & Certification
Bring together what you have developed across the six months. Demonstrate your ability to facilitate Awakened IFS with competence, Presence, discernment, and integrity.
How Certification Is Earned
Certification is based on your demonstrated competency across the full six-month experience.
Faculty evaluates your development against the 10 Awakened IFS Practitioner Core Competencies, drawing on evidence gathered throughout the program.
Your development unfolds over time.
Certification reflects the full body of your work across the six-month program. Your live practicums, professional practice, self-reflection, faculty feedback, final submitted session, case reflection, and knowledge and application assessment all contribute to the certification decision. No single assignment determines whether you become certified.
The rubric becomes a guide for your growth.
The Awakened IFS Practitioner Certification Rubric helps you see where you are strong and where there is more to deepen. Throughout the program, you use the rubric alongside the Certification Manual to guide your practice, study, and development.
Feedback shows you what to deepen.
Around the midpoint of the program, faculty reflects back what they are seeing in your practice and where greater attention may be needed. You then have the remainder of the program to work intentionally with those areas and continue developing your capacity.
Your growth can continue beyond the program.
If you complete the program and need more development in one or more competencies, you may receive a focused development plan and an opportunity to demonstrate your growth through reassessment.
Certification signifies more than completing a course. It reflects your demonstrated capacity to bring competence, Presence, discernment, self-awareness, and professional integrity to your work as a Certified Awakened IFS Practitioner.
Certification Credentials
Certification is awarded to practitioners who complete the program requirements and demonstrate the competencies expected of an Awakened IFS Practitioner. You must:
Attend and participate in the live sessions.
Complete required professional practice, reflection, and self-assessment.
Participate in required observed practice sessions and practicums.
Submit a recorded professional session with reflection.
Complete the case reflection and knowledge/application assessment.
Demonstrate competency across the Awakened IFS Practitioner Core Competencies.
Completion of the six-month program does not automatically guarantee certification. Certification is based on demonstrated competency across the full body of your work.
Your place in the College of Lightworkers
Certification is not the end of your journey with The Institute for Healing and Awakening. It deepens your place within our growing College of Lightworkers, a community of healing practitioners committed to their own healing and awakening as they support the healing and awakening of others.
As a Certified Awakened IFS Practitioner, you remain connected to the Institute, the work, and a community of practitioners continuing to learn, practice, heal, and awaken together.
Carry the Awakened IFS Practitioner credential: Receive an IHA-issued designation and badge recognizing your completion of the certification process and demonstrated embodiment of the Awakened IFS competencies.
Be visible within the IHA practitioner community: Join the IHA Practitioner Directory so people seeking this approach can find practitioners who have completed the full Awakened IFS pathway.
Stay connected to your College of Lightworkers: Remain part of an ongoing community of certified practitioners who continue learning, sharing, and supporting one another.
Continue practicing and deepening together: Participate in ongoing Awakened IFS consultation and community gatherings to explore challenging client work, practitioner parts, discernment, liminal experiences, and continued growth.
Be guided by practitioners who live the work.
IHA Founders Guthrie Sayen and Barti Bourgault bring decades of experience in teaching, facilitation, mentoring, and transformational practice to the certification process. Their work is grounded in deep personal practice, Presence, and a willingness to follow what is emerging
Guthrie Sayen, PhD, PCC
Guthrie trains practitioners worldwide. He is a former university professor and is the creator and lead teacher of this training. His style is clear, concise, relatable, and playful.
His humility allows for the cohort circle itself to participate in the teaching. We learn from each other. His access to transmitted wisdom is a result of his open loving Presence.
He co-founded The Institute for Healing and Awakening with Barti in 2024 because they felt the call to bring Spirit and the light of love to healing practices.
Together they want to support the evolution of global wellbeing by creating a college of light workers who are dedicated to this work. This is their passion.
To learn more about Guthrie go to the About page.
Barti Bourgault, MA, PCC
Barti has been working with Guthrie since 2018. Guthrie was her teacher, coach, and mentor before becoming her business partner in this journey of purpose.
She created and holds the infrastructure for the Institute. In class, she holds the room — often noticing what is landing and what is not. She ensures there is understanding. What she adds to the teaching answers the unasked questions.
She often plays the muse, supporting the evolution of the what is offered as she feels into what is being called forth. Her clarity of knowing is one of her greatest gifts. She can see the big picture while holding the details.
Both she and Guthrie have traveled a similar path of learning. Jointly, they bring the influences of mindfulness, developmental theory, cognitive psychology, consciousness studies, and embodiment into the conversation.
To learn more about Barti go to the About page.
Our most intimate cohort yet, limited to 12 students.
Have questions? Email us to see if the training is right for you.
programs@healingandawakening.institute
Enrollment opens September 2027
Frequently asked questions
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No. Awakened IFS Practitioner Certification is an independent credential issued by The Institute for Healing and Awakening. It is separate from certification issued by IFS Institute and does not confer an IFS Institute credential or designation.
Awakened IFS Practitioner Certification recognizes a practitioner’s demonstrated capacity to bring Awakened IFS into their professional practice, with particular emphasis on awake awareness, Presence, practitioner self-awareness, discernment, and the integration of healing and awakening.
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Awakened IFS Certification is designed to complement other IFS training and certification by focusing specifically on the practitioner’s capacity to work from awake awareness.
In addition to demonstrating competency with IFS, participants develop and demonstrate Presence, discernment, intuition, awareness of their own practitioner parts, and the ability to work with spiritual resources, liminal spaces, and what emerges beyond the familiar map of the model.
The emphasis is not only on whether you can use IFS skillfully, but who you are while you are using it. Certification asks whether you can trust the client’s system, follow how it wants to heal, and bring your own authentic gifts into the work while remaining grounded in Presence.
This makes Awakened IFS Certification distinct from competency-based IFS certification pathways that primarily assess advanced application of the IFS model. For example, IFS Institute certification focuses on demonstrated competency, documented IFS practice, consultation, continuing education, and formal session review.
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It is for practitioners who want to move toward mastery, bring Spiritual support into their work, and stabilize in awaken awareness.
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Participants must have completed AIFS-3 and be actively using IFS or parts work in their professional practice.
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Our offerings are not only professional trainings, they are personal development workshops in which you will be transformed.
We help you step into the magic of Presence, where you are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole.
From here, you can facilitate healing and awakening in others.
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Practitioners who successfully complete the requirements and demonstrate the required competencies earn the credential Certified Awakened IFS Practitioner and receive an official certification badge for approved professional use.
The Institute for Healing and Awakening is not affiliated with the IFS Institute, which has their own training programs and requirements for certification.
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We ask that you attend at least 80% of live class time.
Missing more than 20% requires approval. Missing more than 50% makes you ineligible for a certificate of completion and CCEs.
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No partial completion credit is offered. Students unable to finish because of health or emergencies should contact us about joining a future cohort.
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Our agreements are as follows:
Maintain confidentiality. Anything you learn about another is treated as sacred and not to be shared without explicit permission. Recorded materials may not be shared outside the cohort.
You have freedom of choice. Participate at the level that feels safe to you.
You have the right to privacy. Share only what you want.
Practice self-care. You are responsible for your own comfort. Ask for what you need.
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Yes. We ask students to arrive on time, keep cameras on when possible, come to class prepared, respect the learning space, and honor the dignity and humanity of others.
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We offer the option of enrolling with one half the tuition as a deposit. The balance is due one week prior to the second module. Payment must be current to attend the second module.
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We have a limited number of scholarships for each training. They are awarded according to need on a first-come, first-served basis. Inquire here.
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If you withdraw up to two weeks before the training starts you will receive a full refund less $150 cancellation fee. (This provides us time to fill your spot.)
If you withdraw two weeks prior to the start of the training, you receive a 75% refund.If you withdraw after the first module but before the second, you receive a 75% refund.
No refunds are provided after the second module.