Live •  Interactive •  Online

IFS For Self Healing

 A Trauma-Informed Practice For Healing Yourself 

With Lissa Rankin, MD

Live on Zoom • Once a week between June 25 and July 30, 2025
Wednesdays from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm Pacific Time • Six Two-Hour Sessions

* All sessions are recorded and can be viewed within ~24 hours.

Dr. Lissa Rankin

New York Times bestselling author, doctor, researcher, and teacher.

PRESENTS

IFS For Self Healing

Every one of us gets triggered or acts out sometimes. We also relate every day with other people who get triggered and act out, like our kids, our parents, our spouses, people we work with, and our closest friends. But what if you didn’t need to fear or avoid getting triggered because you knew it was a trailhead to deeper inner peace and healing? What if you and your loved ones knew how to speak on behalf of your triggered parts so you could communicate more lovingly and understand each other more compassionately? What if you could learn to work with parts of you that use your body to get your attention? What if you felt empowered to keep working on your mental health between therapy sessions or when you’re on breaks from therapy? 
 
IFS is a game-changer for many people. Learning to master IFS as a self-help tool requires four basic goals- 1)​ Liberating from the extreme rols they’ve been forced into by trauma, so they can express their naturally valuable qualities 2) Rebuilding trust between Self and parts so you can be a more trustworthy person 3) ​Reharmonizing your internal family system so there’s less polarization and confusion inside 4) Practicing Self-leadership in how you make your decisions in the world. 

When you can milk your inevitable triggers for all the healing potential contained within them and use that milk to heal yourself and others that you love, IFS can become a potent path for self-healing, whether we’re talking about physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual health. We know IFS therapy can be expensive and hard to access, but there’s a lot you can do to either accelerate your trauma therapy or do what it’s safe to do on your own. While it’s not the right medicine for everyone, IFS can offer most trauma survivors mental and physical health benefits, even for those who can’t afford or access an IFS therapist.

There are countless books, videos, trainings, and workshops about the increasingly popular IFS model, and many of them are wonderful! But you’re unlikely to get the full benefit of IFS-informed experiences if you don’t have the basics under your belt. In Internal Family Systems For Self-Healing, we’ll be giving you simple step-by-step instructions on how to make this as accessible and as safe as a daily practice, with safeguards in place so you know what it’s okay to do on your own and where you might be better off waiting for an IFS therapist.

“IFS gives us the tools traditional meditative paths often don’t. It’s the ‘how’ of how to deal with the ‘monkey mind.’ It’s a non-demonizing, non-pathologizing, non-bypassing path to radical Self love, healing, transformation, and compassion for all your many “parts.”
-Lissa Rankin, MD

Are you new to IFS?

  • Do you wanting to get up to speed on the IFS model but not needing a full-fledged therapist certification? 
  • Are you looking for self-help ways to deepen your personal growth, trauma healing, emotional intelligence, relational depth, preventive or therapeutic health interventions, and spiritual development?
  • Are you interested in being part of a community of practice, to benefit from the group healing influences of IFS?
  • Are you seeing an IFS therapist but would benefit from learning how to use IFS as a daily practice in between therapy sessions?
  • Are interested in knowing the basics of IFS so you can apply it to your professional life, but you don’t need a formal certification?

Why Learn & Practice IFS?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a beautiful lesson in how to love, not just other people, but even your own hard-to-love parts. Everyone talks about self love, but few people tell you the “how.” How do you love the parts of you that sabotage your dreams? Or the parts that make and then break New Years Resolutions? Or the parts that pick all the wrong people and get you betrayed and heartbroken- again? Or the parts that unwittingly hurt other people, like your kids, your spouse, or your best friend? Or the parts that can’t handle messing up and wind up getting defensive when it would be kinder to just own what you’ve done and make repairs?

IFS is the “how” of self love, self compassion, and healing parts that have been burdened by trauma and then reenact trauma in your adult life. And once you can hold compassionate space for your own parts, once you can stand up for your parts and have their backs, you can safely extend empathy and compassion to others without collapsing your boundaries or throwing your own parts under the bus to please others.

It’s the how of learning to contain parts that might cross boundaries or allow others to cross your boundaries without consequences. It’s the how of dealing with your inner polarizations, like the parts that want you to fulfill your big dream and the parts that are hell bent on making sure you don’t. Or the parts that desperately want intimate connection with others, as well as the parts that want you to be a nun or a monk hiding away in a cave.

“Crawl inside this body—find me where I am most ruined, love me there.” -Rune Lazuli

IFS is a lifesaver for survivors of relational trauma who might be confused about your own behavior, yet trying to understand why relationships might be so hard for you. Daily IFS practice can help you learn to communicate more honestly and authentically with others. It can also increase your shame resilience, so you can actually do your shadow work with Self-compassion, without collapsing into a shame spiral that makes it impossible for you to go inside and understand your own behaviors.

A Gentle Way To Do Your Shadow Work 

So You Can Live In Greater Integrity

The goal of this program is to help you deepen your self-help IFS practice, as well as learn how to share IFS relationally and communally. It will help you become more intimate with yourself and your own parts, so you can become more intimate with others- safely, without intimacy avoidance and without unhealthy enmeshment. As a daily meditation practice, a relational healing tool, a communication method aimed at creating more compassion between you and others you relate with, a negotiating tool for creating healthy boundaries, and a way to know what you need and have the courage to ask for it, IFS is likely to divide your life into “Before IFS” and “After IFS.”

Because IFS helps us have compassion for the ways we’ve learned to adapt in a not entirely benign world, it also helps us extend more compassion outwards, at a time when the world is desperately in need of more compassion. 

YOU are the one you’ve been waiting for. But the YOU you’ve been waiting for might not quite know how to be the healer your parts need…yet. 

This 6-Week Workshop Will Help You

  • Learn how to work with your “protector parts” to get to know them so you can help them relax their extreme behaviors;
  • Develop more presence, psychological depth, capacity for intimacy, sensitivity, empathy, and personal accountability in how you show up with others;
  • Depolarize the inner conflicts we feel from parts that carry different opinions about how we live our lives;
  • ​Know when it’s safe to go inward—and when to seek external support with a licensed therapist;
  • ​Understand how to connect with parts through emotion, imagery, sensation, art, dreams, and more;
  • Learn how and begin to practice peer-to-peer parts processing (if desired).
  • Make a daily practice with pre-recorded IFS meditations you can use, until you don’t need them anymore and can do daily IFS meditations solo;
  • Get to know your inner parts with curiosity, compassion, and consent;
  • Identify parts that self-sabotage—and learn how to lead them from Self;
  • ​Befriend your protector parts and help them soften their grip on extreme behaviors;
  • ​Begin to rewire your nervous system to support healing and integration.
  • Access more Self energy—calm, clear, compassionate, and connected;
  • Understand your needs and make courageous, boundaried asks;
  • Unblend from spiritual bypassing parts and get real about what hurts so you can practice a more authentic spirituality;
  • ​Reparent yourself with fierce love and gentle structure;
  • ​Practice daily IFS meditations safely, without overwhelming your system;
  • Cultivate a spiritual practice rooted in presence, not avoidance.

“Your protectors’ goals for your life revolve around keeping you away from all that pain, shame, loneliness, and fear, and they use a wide array of tools to meet those goals—achievements, substances, food, entertainment, shopping, sex, obsession with your appearance, caretaking, meditation, money, and so on.” -Dick Schwartz, founder of IFS

Doing The YOU-Turn

In IFS For Self-Healing, we’ll teach you how to do the “YOU-Turn,” practicing IFS meditation together and you’ll learn how to “go inside” so you can get to know your own parts on a daily basis. You’ll learn to be the compassionate healer for your own parts, as well as learning the limits of what’s safe to do on your own- versus where you might need professional support, like a trained IFS therapist or a community of practice. 

You’ll discover the best way to work with your parts, since we all connect with our parts in different ways- through imagery, through bodily sensations, through emotions, through art or music, through dreamwork, and many other ways of developing Self-to-parts connection. You’ll learn how to do “peer to peer” parts processing with another IFS practitioner, should you wish to. The workshop will arm you with recorded IFS meditations you can use on your own or in small group gatherings as a way to kick off group parts processing. 

How were you parented? How has that affected your physical and mental health today? How has that impacted how you view yourself and others?  Did you get your needs met as a child? Did you feel safe and loved? Was there predictability and empathy?” 

The Workshop Program*

Six LIVE 2-hour Zoom Sessions with Lissa Rankin

All sessions will be recorded and are available within 24 hours of each session.

* Session content subject to adjustment.

11 am - 1 pm Pacific Time

1 pm - 3 pm Central Time

2 pm - 4 pm Eastern Time

Session One
Wednesday, June 25th. 2025
11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time
Getting Started With IFS
We’ll start with an opening circle to create safety, trust, and buy in from our parts. 

Without bullying or overriding parts that might be scared to explore IFS, we’ll learn how to get consent (or not) from our inner systems, so they can start to build trust, inside and out. We’ll review the basics of the IFS model so your intellectual parts can understand what will happen and why we’ll be going on this journey. We’ll teach you about the different categories of parts, how the function with each other, and what the goals of IFS inner work are. 

But we won’t stop at the intellectual. We’ll guide you through IFS inner work during each class, so you can get to know your parts as we go. Then we’ll help you process what arises when you go inside, so we can hold space for each other and develop trust with our group process. Each session will include a creative prompt to help you write to heal, or you can use the prompts to create however you prefer- songwriting, making art, or any other way your creative parts express.

You’ll have homework between sessions so you can deepen your journey in between, with the goal that every day, you can access just a little bit more Self energy so you can feel more clear, curious, confident, compassionate, courageous, creative, calm, and connected, not just with yourself, but with others.

Session Two
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025
11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time
Finding The Razor’s Edge
Your safety is our #1 priority. Psyches are delicate systems of parts that have found a way to generally cope with whatever has happened in the past and is happening now. 

Because safety is so crucial, there are those who will say you can only do IFS one-on-one with a therapist, and there’s a reason they say that. Our inner worlds can be powder kegs, and you don’t want to play with fire if you don’t have the skills to contain or put out the fire. No doubt, doing IFS work with a trained therapist is always the safest option. 

But we also care about health equity, and not everyone can afford or access one-on-one therapy. And if they can, 50 minutes per week is not usually enough to enjoy the potential benefits of IFS daily practice in an expedited fashion. Our goal is to support you with learning a daily practice that can sustain you between therapy sessions or in lieu of the- without undue risk. 

This means learning the sequencing of how to work with your parts, knowing what’s safe as a self-help practice and what’s not, and knowing when to stop if you get overwhelmed. As “hope merchants for hopeless parts,” we’ll give you hope for healing, courage for stretching yourself, and most importantly, a container for what’s safe and what’s not, so your system can relax, grow, heal, and avoid “backlash,” which can happen if you go too fast or take unnecessary risks. As Karen Drucker sings, “I will only go as fast as the slowest parts of me feel safe to go.”
Session Three
Wednesday, July 9th, 2025
11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time
Get To Know Your Protectors
We all, every single one of us, have many parts that have adapted to help us survive. We have inner critic parts, parts that manage our schedules, our “to do” lists, and the finances, and parts that want us to improve, like the part that might sign you up for this IFS course! We also have parts that might try to avoid feeling emotional pain by employing a variety of addictions, like substance abuse, workaholism, sex and love addiction, disordered eating, compulsive caregiving, excessive exercising, or pretty much any 12-steppable addiction or compulsion. All of these parts have one goal- to prevent us from feeling parts inside that might feel deeply vulnerable and hurt, feeling betrayed, worthless, helpless, hopeless, powerless, ashamed, or terrified. Because those emotions are so uncomfortable, our parts may pull out all the stops to keep those parts exiled in inner prisons, so their emotions don’t bleed through.

Sometimes these strategies work for decades. But life has a way of forcing us to heal what hasn’t been healed in the past. Something happens- a divorce, losing our job, failing to fulfill a long held dream, estrangement from our child, a health crisis, winding up in jail or rehab, a big betrayal like an affair- and suddenly all of our past pain breaks through our defenses. Once we know how to do the self-help work of getting to know our protectors, we can begin to compassionately understand why our protectors do what they do, even if they’re causing us harm or causing us to harm others. Once we can lovingly extend Self energy and reunite with these burdened parts we can begin to get a handle on how to change our behaviors in a Self-led way.
Session Four
Wednesday, July 16th, 2025
11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time
Reuniting With Our Exiles
Our most hurt, wounded inner children typically have been exiled into inner prisons of our psyches, buried away from conscious awareness, even though their pain bleeds through from time to time. Keeping these parts pushed down takes a tremendous amount of physical and psychic energy, which is why freeing them from their inner jails can release bursts of energy and help us rewire our nervous systems to support better healing and recovery. Some people are not able to safely or effectively do the deeper “exile unburdening” work of IFS without a therapist. But if you’ve been in therapy or you’ve been practicing IFS for a while, you may find this within the realm of possibility for yourself.

At the very least, you can learn about the unburdening process, the “how’s” and “why’s” and “what’s” of it, so it’s not a mystery. And most people can effectively reunite Self energy with the hurt inner children. Those reunions can be very healing, even if parts of the unburdening work might need someone else to help you hold sacred space in order to witness the depth of the pain these parts carry. 

We’ll guide you to find and reunite with these hurt wounded parts as safely as can be done in a group process or self-help practice. Many people can then start a daily writing practice that can be deeply healing, back and forth with these wounded parts, until trust builds and Self can help reparent these parts.


Session Five
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025
11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time
Having Our Own Backs

Many trauma survivors struggle to trust other humans, often because our parts haven’t been able to trust us to have our parts’ backs. Rebuilding inner trust can help us discern who in our outer world is trustworthy and who is not. Once we begin strengthening the bonds with our most wounded parts, once they learn to trust that we’ve got their backs, we can find out what they need from us, as their healers, caregivers, and new parents. We can courageously stand up for them, be more assertive in setting boundaries, making requests, and speaking up for what our parts need, from ourselves and from other people. 

Once trust is restored inside, it’s so much easier to trust others on the outside. If we no longer have young parts picking who to relate with, if we have some Self energy involved when we’re deciding who to let close, we can screen other people in a more adult way, choosing and testing out (in ethical ways) who is trustworthy and who is not. This helps us create safe, brave community, so we don’t have to care for our parts alone. We can rely on others who are safe enough, attach securely to those we discern are trustworthy, be vulnerable about what our parts need, and learn what the parts of others we can about need too. This builds secure interdependence, so we’re not navigating a scary world on our own. This sense of belonging gives us courage, so we can live in integrity, fulfill our purpose and our dreams, and build meaningful connections. 

Session Six
Wednesday, July 30th, 2025
11:00 am to 1:00 pm Pacific Time
 Creating A Daily IFS Practice

Once you’ve learned the basics of IFS, practice makes “good enough” mastery, without perfectionism. Nobody is Self-led 100% of the time. The great news is there are no perfect humans, so we can relax in our perfect imperfections! But we can strive towards a deeper degree of Self-leadership, rather than “blending” with parts that can be destructive to ourselves or other people we don’t intend to harm. With more Self-leadership, we can get more of a handle on addictive parts, hold ourselves to account when we have dreams we’re trying to fulfill, relate with others more lovingly, and develop spiritually by connecting more with Self energy.

Every one of us will practice IFS differently, so it might take some fine tuning to find a practice that works for you. But we’ll teach you many options of how you can work with the IFS model as a daily or even weekly self-healing tool, both individually and with other IFS practitioners you might meet during the course. We’ll share the outline of how you can work with your parts using memoir writing. We’ll also teach you how to do “peer to peer parts processing” with someone else who is also getting to know their own parts. Not only does this help you deepen your inner work, even if you’re doing therapy once a week. It also teaches you empathy if trauma has caused you to be self-absorbed and struggling to feel empathy for what others go through. Empathy is teachable, both empathy for your own parts and empathy for someone else’s. When you can extend more love to your parts, you can extend more love to other people. And right now, that’s what’s desperately needed in our world- more love.

“Complex PTSD, in its most basic form, is a relational violation that disrupts our sense of trust and safety in the world and limits access to our Self-energy. Healing relational trauma puts us back in touch with our natural core and permits us to love and connect again with others.” ― Frank Anderson, MD

++ BonuS PROGRAMS

Recorded Workshop
# 1 Healing The Trauma That Surrounds Medical Syndromes
A Two-Day Live Recorded IFS Masterclass with Dr. Lissa Rankin and Richard Schwartz, Ph.D
If you’re seeking self-healing for medical issues, this 16 hour prerecorded weekend workshop combining IFS and Lissa’s Six Steps To Healing Yourself from Mind Over Medicine might be just what the doctor ordered. 

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.
Workbook
# 2 Write To Heal Workbook
This self-help manual Lissa co-created with Frank Anderson instructs you on how to guide your IFS practice through memoir writing.
We know that many of us have had parts that have been torn apart when we dared to be creative, and we seek to heal any parts of you that might have gotten hurt in the past when you dared to write, paint, sing, create songs, play an instrument, draw, act, or otherwise express yourself. You are so welcome here, as are all your creative parts, muse parts, vulnerable parts, brave parts, inner critic parts, scared parts, wise parts, goofy parts, perfectionist parts, fun parts, and anyone else who wants to show up and create!

++ BonuS RESOURCES

Pre-Recorded
Lissa Rankin’s IFS Meditations For Daily Practice
with Dr. Lissa Rankin
Lissa created these guided meditations just for this course, so you can listen in the comfort of your own home to Lissa’s voice guiding you to get to know your parts. We’ll work with these meditations during live sessions so your system can get familiar with them. You’ll then be able to bring the safe, brave container of the group Self energy home with you, to extend and deepen your IFS practice between sessions.

"What brought me here was a desire to live fully...wounds and all. I love the support of your community, Lissa. What better place to learn, love, and grow". – Donna, workshop participant

Advisory #1: There are many professional development programs through the IFS Institute and elsewhere, and for those of you longing to deepen your IFS education professionally, we recommend getting on the long waiting lists for IFS certification through official IFS channels. But there are so many of you yearning to benefit from the personal development aspects of IFS who don’t need a full certification process designed for therapists. Internal Family Systems For Self-Healing is designed for trauma survivors, spiritual seekers, people with chronic illness, and anyone who feels called to deepen your IFS practice for the purposes of personal development.

Advisory #2: If you have parts that severely dissociate, a group practice like this might not be the right medicine for you. We all dissociate sometimes, but some people dissociate more than others, which can make IFS inner work more risky, if you’re not being supported one-on-one. If you’re not sure whether you dissociate a lot, you can screen yourself with the DES-II, a 28 question screening tool. Take the DES-II here. If you have been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder or severe Complex-PTSD, please talk to your therapist or psychiatrist before participating in this group program.

IFS For Self Healing

EARLY BIRD PRICE IS ACTIVE
$297 Save $100
Only $197
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.

About Lissa Rankin, M.D.

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 in 2013. 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. Lissa has published 7 books, 3 of which include Internal Family Systems. Her 8th book, Relationsick, about the health impacts of narcissistic abuse, will come out in Spring 2026. 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 has since taught dozens of IFS workshops, in person at national and international retreat centers, as well as on Zoom. She and IFS founder Dick Schwartz presented a sold out full day workshop at the IFS conference in Denver in 2019. She has since taught two more IFS workshops with Dick Schwartz and three IFS workshops with IFS lead trainer and Harvard trained psychiatrist Frank Anderson, MD. 
Even before finding the IFS model, Lissa had a daily practice of writing The Daily Flame, a daily email love letter from her "Inner Pilot Light" to her wounded parts. This dovetailed perfectly into her IFS practice. She became an IFS therapy client in 2014 and started a daily peer-to-peer parts processing practice with her friend Emma in 2018, a practice she now teaches to others who can't access or afford one-on-one IFS therapy or want to deepen their practice between therapy sessions.

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 while addressing the public health epidemic of loneliness, bringing IFS therapy 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 Sonoma County with her partner Jeffrey Rediger, her daughter Mira when she's not at art school in NYC, and their dog Gaia, also known as "The Moose." 
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 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
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