Recorded Workshop

Healing The Trauma That Surrounds Medical Syndromes

A Two-Day Live Recorded IFS Masterclass with Dr. Lissa Rankin and Richard Schwartz, Ph.D

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, 
I am large, I contain multitudes."   Walt Whitman

Join Drs. Lissa Rankin and Richard Schwartz for a weekend of learning, teaching and healing

Lissa Rankin and Dick Schwartz co-taught the sold-out IFS As Medical Treatment workshop at the last in-person IFS Conference and are expanding on what was taught there to learn an IFS-informed approach to working with the 6 Steps To Healing Yourself from Mind Over Medicine so you can help your patients, clients, yourself, or your loved ones optimize your chance for the best medical outcome.

Who will benefit from this workshop?

  • You have a basic understanding of Internal Family Systems (IFS);
  • You sense that there's more to optimal health outcomes than just drugs, surgeries, diet, exercise, avoiding toxic substances, and following doctor's orders;
  • You're interested in learning to facilitate an IFS-informed approach to parts that might be using the body as a trailhead for underlying traumas in need of healing as part of a comprehensive medical treatment plan;
  • ​You're in the helping professions working with anyone who identifies as being in recovery from illness, injury, or trauma (therapists, doctors, nurses, complementary and alternative medicine practitioners, health coaches, life coaches, yoga instructors, etc.) and you're interested in making your practice more trauma-informed and safer for patients and clients;
  • ​You or a loved one is sick and you're interested in learning this material for self-help purposes or to support a loved one who might benefit from this trauma-informed approach to illness.
This workshop will offer experiential exercises to help you learn to listen to the parts that are affecting your body and to those who know how to heal it and increase your access to healing Self energy.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand the science behind trauma-informed medicine- how trauma predisposes the body to illness and the physiology and neurobiology of how treating your traumas might cure disease.
  • Learn an IFS-informed approach to working with the 6 Steps To Healing Yourself from Mind Over Medicine so you can help your patients, clients, yourself, or your loved ones optimize your chance for the best medical outcome.
  • Witness Dick Schwartz performing an IFS demo on the parts of someone with a physical illness.
  • ​Learn the basics of how to work with protectors that might be impacting the body somatically until the exiles they protect are unburdened.
  • ​Have the opportunity to do some Self-healing work with your own physical symptoms using IFS and the 6 Steps To Healing Yourself.
  • ​Learn an IFS practice to work with somatic symptoms in yourself or help clients and patients get insight into their own protector parts.
I have loved this. I will go in quiet and stillness. Love to you all! Collaboration has indeed been lovely. My system is so glad to have been here and thankful to both the facilitators and all my fellow students for your leadership, vulnerability and sharing. (Ruth L.)
The scientific evidence linking childhood trauma to both pediatric and adult onset disease is ironclad at this point, as evidenced by the mountain of data that came out of the CDC/ Kaiser Permanente study on Adverse Childhood Experiences in the 1990's and the Harvard Mastery of Stress study from the 1950's. 

The cutting edge of trauma-informed medicine focuses on whether effective trauma treatment might actually reverse diseases we might think of as "incurable" or even "terminal." Early evidence and countless anecdotes suggest it might.
 
The trauma healing modality Internal Family Systems (IFS) has proven effective with medical syndromes (Shaddick et al., 2013), and more research is ongoing. Dick Schwartz’s years of clinical practice and available research supports that IFS can have an effect on medical syndromes. "Parts" might be using the body to communicate about unhealed traumas or unmet needs and these "parts" can affect our bodies when they have no other route to get through to us. IFS can help those parts realize they don’t have to do that.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) has been hailed by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the world's leading expert in trauma, as "the treatment method that all clinicians should know to treat clients effectively."

About Richard Schwartz Ph.D.

IFS founder and family therapist Dick Schwartz initially developed IFS as an effective treatment for hard-to-treat eating disorders, but it has since been proven to be an evidence-based treatment for many mental illnesses, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. 
Richard Schwartz Ph.D. began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. 

He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.

A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has published many books and over fifty articles about IFS.
IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and more recently, corporations and classrooms.
Big Gratitude to Lissa, Dick and the whole village. Bravo!! This is the holy grail of our new futures (Marian B.)

About Lissa Rankin, MD

Doctor, author, and trauma-informed medicine teacher Lissa Rankin, MD was on a decade-long quest to research her seventh book Sacred Medicine: A Doctor's Quest To Unravel The Mysteries of Healing when she bumped into the IFS model. Anecdote after anecdote from IFS therapists and their clients who were treating their traumas using IFS revealed a curious phenomenon: when people's traumas were getting treated with this cutting-edge treatment, at least sometimes, their mystery illnesses and chronic symptoms seemed to be improving.
 
Lissa's deep dive into IFS was a complete game-changer in her search for answers to why some people seem to have radical remissions from seemingly "incurable" or "terminal" illnesses- and others don't. This insight led her to write a revised edition of Mind Over Medicine, the New York Times bestseller published in 35 languages that was the centerpiece for a PBS special and several TEDx talks. She now trains physicians and therapists in the Whole Health Medicine Institute, using an IFS-informed approach to helping patients and clinicians optimize their chances of becoming "miracle prone." 
Lissa Rankin, MD believes that writing and healing can be intimately related and teaches writing workshops infused with trauma healing and spiritual healing, both in person and virtually. Lissa agrees with Nancy Aronie that trauma is memoir-making material, and we can alchemize our pain into the most beautiful story-telling when we feel safe for the muse to come out to play, in a community of other writers who also feel safe and can help us hold our story while we rewrite it as art. 

Lissa has been writing since kindergarten and was offered her first book deal when she was 12, which she turned down, since they were her private stories. She was a creative writing major at Duke University and wrote her first fiction book as her thesis on African American women's literature while in college. Throughout her medical training while becoming an OB/GYN, she wrote stories inspired by her patients and used writing to heal the moral injury she felt while working within a corrupt medical system. 

When she quit her job as a doctor in 2007, she finally succumbed to her lifelong desire to be a career writer. Her first book Broken, a memoir about her journey through the wounded health care system, never got published because she didn't have an audience. So at the urging of her literary agent, in 2009, Lissa began blogging and publishing The Daily Flame, a daily email love letter from your "Inner Pilot Light" to your wounded parts, based on the healing model Internal Family Systems (IFS), a trauma healing spiritual path which Lissa incorporates into all the healing and writing workshops she facilitates. 

Because her blog and Daily Flame emails quickly garnered a large readership, she was able to publish her first book in 2010 and has been blessed to have her last 7 books published. Her third book, the New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine, has sold over 300,000 copies in 28 languages. 
In addition to putting in her 100,000 hours and writing every day, in 2012, Lissa founded the Whole Health Medicine Institute, where she and a team of luminary faculty train physicians and other health care providers about “Whole Health” and the “6 Steps to Healing Yourself.” 

Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials, her TEDx talks have been viewed over 5 million times, and she leads workshops, both online and at retreat centers like Esalen, 1440, Omega, and Kripalu. 

Her latest health equity project is non-profit work committed to democratizing trauma healing and spiritual healing while eliminating the public health epidemic of loneliness, bringing Sacred Medicine out of its current status as a luxury good to anyone who needs it and is open to it, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or gender identity. 

Lissa lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her daughter Mira, who is also a writer, and her puppy Gaia, who would tell great stories if only she knew how.
Thank you Lissa, Dick and Jeff for the compassion and love you bring to the world and have brought to our community this weekend. It has been marvelous. You are masterfully subverting the dominant paradigm and I am confident you will succeed in overthrowing it! And thanks to all support folks, too! (Kathy K.)

Bonus Programs

  Healing Medical Trauma with Nancy Morgan

Dr. Morgan received her license in Psychedelic-Assisted Facilitation from the State of Oregon, her Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research certification from the California Institute of Integral Studies, her Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy training through the Ketamine Training Center in San Anselmo, California, and her MDMA training Parts A-D through the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

Intro to Internal Family Systems (IFS) with Lissa Rankin

For those new to Internal Family Systems (IFS), this online class about The Basics of Internal Family Systems (IFS) outlines the IFS model and teaches the difference between protector parts (managers and firefighters,) wounded exiles, and the wise, mature Self that heals all parts. It also describes the 6F's of "Getting To Know Your Protectors" and teaches the steps of "Unburdening The Exiles." It also offers a lens on trauma-informed medicine and how IFS might be used to help treat difficult medical and psychiatric conditions that conventional medicine might struggle to cure.

Healing The Trauma That Surrounds Medical Syndromes

Only $97
USD
including all bonuses
If the cost of this workshop presents a financial hardship, we hope you will contact us for tuition adjustment options. Please write to support@lissarankin.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I contact customer service?
Please contact us by sending an email to support@lissarankin.com
What kind of technology will I need in order to participate?
In order to participate in this course, you will need to:
a. Access Zoom for the live calls for a live workshop and 
b. Access our learning platform through a web browser like Chrome or Safari. Teachable is a platform that hosts all the material for the course, including class recordings. 

You will need a good connection to the internet. You can use a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone.
Do you offer stipends or adjustments?
We believe that money should not be an obstacle to healing. If you currently do not have the means please write to support@lissarankin.com
I can't make some or any of the live calls
Many participants do not come to the live calls for many reasons ranging from time zones to work schedules or emergencies. For some its simply a choice. All classes are recorded and made available together with any material indefinitely on our teaching site.  Chose what is best for you. You will not miss out on any content.
I am visually impaired
A person who is visually impaired will be able to navigate our content using a reader and other common navigational tools. We do not rely on slides or other visual representations.
Screenshot of Lissa Rankin teaching in a video
Where can I access the recorded calls?
Once you have signed up you will log in to our learning platform where you will find all recordings and material. It takes time to provide the content after a call. Usually we will post within 24 hours. You will have access to everything for the indefinite future.
Can you call me?
We are not resourced to make calls to individuals. You can reach us by email at support@lissarankin.com.
I don't have Facebook!
If there is an associated private Facebook group, we recommend you join. It is optional but not critical for the course so don't worry if you don't have Facebook.
Can I cancel?
Once you make a payment it triggers a series of events and expenses on our side from payment processing costs to adding you to lists and platforms. If you cancel, we cannot recoup those costs and will have to pass them on to you. Please read our terms carefully before you make a purchase. Terms
© 2025 Lissa Rankin INC ·  All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

Join this interactive online workshop. Limited special offer $397.
$197
Starting in
countdown
00 Years 00 Months 00 Weeks 00 Days 00 Hours 00 Minutes 00 Seconds

If  the cost of this program presents a financial hardship then we hope you will contact us for a sliding scale option. Please write to support@lissarankin.com