Current Awakened IFS Trainings
for Coaches, Therapists, Spiritual Directors, Dietitians, and Other Healing Practitioners
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Awakened IFS-1
October 2026
A six-month foundational training for coaches, therapists, dietitians, and other practitioners seeking to offer the full protocol for Internal Family Systems. (Formerly Coaching with IFS-1)
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Awakened IFS Consultation Group
November 2026
A community of Internal Family Systems practitioners seeking a forum for discussion. Includes Q&A, demos, and case studies. Wednesdays, 12:00 - 1:30 pm Eastern Time (New York.)
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Awakened IFS-2
January 2027
A six-month intermediate training for IFS practitioners who are seeking greater competence and confidence working with complex systems.
You will learn how to work with Self-like parts, polarized parts, and legacy burdens.
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Awakened IFS-3
September 2027
A six-month advanced training for IFS practitioners seeking mastery. You will learn to work with unattached burdens, spiritual resources, and past lives. You will understand how IFS integrates with other models such as Polyvagal theory.
What Makes Awakened IFS Different?
Small cohort learning
Presence-based curriculum
Theory and experiential practices
Live demonstrations and Q&A
Personal support, peer connection, and direct access to IHA founders
Embodied relational learning
Live online
Who is Awakened IFS for?
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Therapists & Social Workers
Deepen your clinical work with an experiential approach that helps clients heal at the level of their inner system. Learn to work with protectors, exiles, and polarized parts while cultivating greater Presence, nervous system regulation, and compassionate witnessing.
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Coaches
Support clients in moving beyond self-sabotage, inner conflict, and limiting beliefs by helping them build a relationship with their internal world. Awakened IFS provides a powerful framework for creating the kind of transformation that is both profound and sustainable.
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Dietitians & Integrative Health Professionals
Food, health, and wellbeing are deeply connected to our emotional lives. Whether you work in nutrition, functional medicine, somatics, or holistic wellness, Awakened IFS offers a relational approach for understanding the protective patterns that influence healing and behavior change.
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Spiritual Directors
Expand your capacity to hold sacred, compassionate space while helping others connect more deeply with Presence, intuition, and their innate wisdom. Awakened IFS bridges psychological healing with spiritual awakening, supporting transformation at both levels.
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Holistic & Integrative Practitioners
This training welcomes somatic practitioners, bodyworkers, breathwork facilitators, yoga teachers, energy healers, and other helpers who want to bring a deeper understanding of the inner world into their work. If you're seeking more live practice, mentorship, and experiential learning, Awakened IFS can help you embody—not just understand—the model.
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Psychedelic Practitioners
Expanded states of consciousness often reveal the inner system with remarkable clarity. Awakened IFS provides a compassionate, Presence-centered framework for helping clients navigate what emerges before, during, and after psychedelic experiences. Learn to support healing, integration, and awakening while honoring the wisdom of each client's unique internal landscape.
Certification Pathway
Awakened IFS-1
Build a foundation in Internal Family Systems.
Awakened IFS-2
Explore advanced Internal Family Systems techniques.
Awakened IFS-3
Gaining mastery over Internal Family Systems.
Awakened IFS Certification
Gaining mastery over Internal Family Systems.
Learn from experienced IFS Facilitators and fellow finders on the path to awakening.
This training is led by IHA Founders, Guthrie Sayan and Barti Bourgault, who combine deep personal practice with decades of teaching, facilitation, mentoring, and transformational work. Their playful chemistry invites spirit into the room.
Guthrie Sayen, PhD, PCC
Guthrie trains practitioners worldwide. He is a former college-level academic and is the creator and lead teacher of this training. His style is clear, concise, relatable, and always 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 were deeply aware of the need to bring spirit, the divine, God, the light (fill in your word here) to healing practices. Together they want to support the evolution of global well-being by creating a college of light workers who are doing this needed 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. She helps hold 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 meditation, developmental theory, neuroscience, mystical teachings, somatics, mindfulness, and psycho-spiritual methods into the conversation and exploration.
To learn more about Barti go to the About page.
Frequently asked questions
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Our trainings provide you with the fundamental skills to work in healing relationship with another. In addition, you will acquire advanced skills that distinguish you from other practitioners.
Here is what sets us apart:
Our offerings are both personal development workshops and professional trainings. Your healing and awakening supports you in facilitating the healing and awakening in others.
We bring people like you, healers and seekers, into intimate and loving relationship with yourself and with Spirit.
We believe healing and awakening are relational processes. Therefore, we create safe and intimate circles where you are invited to take the risks necessary for foundational change. We limit our training cohorts to 36 students.
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Healing is about wholeness, finding the parts of us that have been hurt and loving them back to health.
Awakening is about shifting out of thought-based mind into the clarity of awake awareness.
Awareness is about disidentifying with the contents of consciousness -- thoughts, emotions, and sensations -- and realizing that you are consciousness itself, that which experiences thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
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Awakened IFS is a Presence-based training that teaches you how to safely use the IFS model in a healing relationship to support your clients in accessing their own confidence, calm and creativity – so they can be in choice in their lives, finding the answers they are seeking within themselves.
This is an ICF-approved training providing 40 CCEs – 32 core competency hours and 8 resource development hours.
It is also appropriate for therapists, spiritual directors, dietitians. or others who are experienced practitioners in the healing arts.
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Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic methodology that is in alignment with the principles of coaching — that we are already whole, wise, good, and fully resourced. It is a constraint-release model (removing obstacles) that does not pathologize the client.
IFS looks at a client’s system as being one made up of multiple parts. (For example, “A part of me is frightened about this, and a part of me is excited.”) When parts come into relationship with Self (with a capital S — your client’s true nature), they soften back and allow Self to lead. Self is naturally confident, calm, clear, courageous, connected, compassionate, creative, and curious.
The model was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, with whom Guthrie Sayen, the creator of Awakened IFS, has deep connection and great respect.
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Our programs go beyond teaching the basic skills of being in healing relationship with another. They offer you training in how to shift into full presence: equanimity, clarity, and confidence. We also show you how to amplify that in your clients.
We often have therapists, spiritual directors, dietitians, and other healing practitioners in our IFS trainings due to the range of topics we cover, the emphasis on Spirit, and the degree of safety and intimacy cultivated in our classes.
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You may call yourself an Awakened IFS practitioner.
For graduates of Awakened IFS-3, we are offering a certification program. If you complete this program, you may call yourself a Certified Awakened IFS Practitioner.
This is a professional training in all phases of the IFS protocol, including the unburdening of exiles. We also emphasize accessing and amplifying Self throughout the training.
We pride ourselves on the quality and depth of our trainings and strive to graduate highly skilled, Self-led practitioners.
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We limit our class size to 36 students to maintain a safe and intimate learning environment. We keep things small to ensure everyone gets the attention and support they need.
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The following outlines a typical day:
Presence practice
Teaching
Break
Demo and debrief
Meal break
Peer practice or group mentoring
Debrief and Q&A
Break
Teaching
Additional demo or Q&A
Crystallize the learning
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We recommend attending no less than 80% of class time to get the full benefit of each training.
If you need to miss more than 20% of live class time, please contact the program director for approval.
If you miss more than 50% of the live sessions, you will not be eligible for a certificate of completion.
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Awakened IFS provides group mentoring during class time where you will receive valuable feedback. We break into small groups in which the students coach each other with a qualified mentor present. The mentor's feedback is meant to build confidence and support your growth as a practitioner.
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In our trainings, you will practice with your peers during class in small groups with mentor feedback. These are followed by Q&A in the full class.
You will also be put in practice dyads that meet three times between training sessions.
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All cancellations up to one month before a program start date will receive a full refund, less a $150 cancellation fee.
Cancellations after one month before the start date and before the start of the second session will receive a refund of 75% of the total cost of the course.
No refunds are offered after the second session.
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We do not offer partial completion credit for our trainings. You must complete the entire training to receive your certificate of completion.
If you are unable to complete a training due to health or other emergency reasons, please contact the program director. We will do our best to include you in the next training to complete the course at no additional charge.
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We strive to co-create a spirit of belonging. We want each of you to feel empowered to use your voice and participate fully by agreeing to:
Maintain confidentiality. Whatever is learned about another is not shared with anyone without express permission.
Practice your freedom of choice. All activities are an invitation not a requirement.
Practice your own right to privacy, sharing only what feels right and safe to you.
Take care of yourself in whatever way you need, including asking for what you need.
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We ask for mutual respect within our cohorts. This includes:
Arriving on time to all sessions.
Having your camera on for live virtual sessions as much as possible.
Being prepared for the session, assuming responsibility for your learning, and contributing to the learning of others.
Engaging in discussions with integrity.
Being respectful of the learning space, fellow participants, and instructors, including ensuring your space is one where you won’t be interrupted.
Embracing the dignity and humanity of all others.
Still have questions?

