P R O F E S S I O N A L C E R T I F I C A T I O N
SEXOLOGICAL INTIMACY COACHING
T R U S T I N G S P O N T A N E I T Y
for practising anywhere in the world
The next Certificate in Sexological Intimacy Coaching is scheduled
1st April 2025 - 30th October 2025 - Six Months (with August Holiday)
Followed by Three Months of Supervised Practicum in November, January & February (With December Holiday)
HARNESSING EROS ETHICALLY
Announcing the new Sexological Intimacy Coaching ~ Starting April - October 2025
We are announcing a new Certification in Sexological Intimacy Coaching starting April 2025.
Our Institute for Relational Harmony Studies & Research offers a comprehensive and ethical training pathway for practitioners called to work with sexuality.
Worldwide, it is acknowledged that the original sexological bodywork and other sexuality training alone do not equip practitioners with all the necessary skills and tools for ethical practice in our current climate. As practitioners in this highly skilled profession, we might inevitably have blind spots with power and consent without the structures, language, and framework to navigate these, and the absence of these in our field has led to multiple unintended impacts for clients and painful grievance processes for practitioners. This is fire medicine!
Our research has developed a unique syllabus integrating the Wheel of Consent skills, somatic assessment, intimacy training, Core Erotic themes explorations, trauma training, the Right Use of Power, Clean Language, and Body Poem. This syllabus provides you with these essential skills for facilitating clients updating versions of themselves. This ensures secure relationship agreements are in place before you potentially engage in erotic in-person bodywork.
The IRHS is the only school led by teachers trained and qualified as Wheel of Consent and the Right Use of Power facilitators.
This unique approach, backed by our research, provides a cost-effective path to becoming an ethical practitioner. We have learned that practitioners need time to integrate these skills in real-life supervised client sessions before moving on to practising in-person erotic bodywork.
By starting your training this year, you will gain access to this new paradigm of working with sexual expression and develop your unique creativity as a practitioner with in-depth experience coaching clients online in erotic embodiment practices. You will gain in-depth experience facilitating the Wheel of Consent to empower clients with voice and choice to request action for change and with Body Poem for facilitating radical acceptance - and knowing the difference and which to facilitate. You'll be well-prepared with the necessary practitioner skills for the Certification in Sexological Bodywork Practitioner training, which begins in April 2025, if this is a pathway you feel called into.
This CSI training offers geographical freedom and client privacy while practising online. It enables you to work with clients from anywhere worldwide and start generating income from your practice within your first year.
The first six months are intensive Sexological Intimacy Coach training, followed by three months of supervised client sessions with paying clients (we suggest you provide discounted sessions while you are in training) and certification as a CSI by the end of the first year. You are then eligible to continue on to the Certification in Sexological Bodywork Practitioner training.
The Certification in Sexological Intimacy training begins with two three-day online retreats in September 2024.
Two monthly live webinars and two weekly research explorations over six months.
Depending on the frequency of sessions you offer paying clients, you can earn certification at any point during the three months allocated for supervised practice. There is one coaching call after every five client sessions; a minimum of 20 client sessions is required for certification. We encourage you to cover these supervision fees from your client fees. Coaching fees during this practicum phase are set at a reduced fee of £60 per coaching call with one of our listed IRHS Approved Coaches, which you can see on our website.
Course fees for the 9-month Certification in Sexological Intimacy training are £4,300, with a £900 enrolment fee to secure your place (24 places available).
Bursary places are at our discretion and are offered to financially disadvantaged practitioners alongside our BIPOC scholarship, which offers a 30% discount.
Please book a 30-minute discovery call (Thursdays) if you are interested in joining the Certification in Sexological Intimacy training in April 2025)
Your Application and Enrolment Process
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STAGE 1 ~ DISCOVERY CALL / INTERVIEW
Meet with Katie Sarra and Dr Phoebe Garland directors of the training in a discovery call to get a feel for the ethos and the visionary purpose of the curriculum to illuminate ways this training might serve your professional development. Comrehensively learn about the course structures and time commitmenets required and the ethics of enroling on this training. Phoebe heads up the second year Certificate in Somatic Sex Education for practitioners training in becoming leaders and supervisors.
This is a meeting for you to ask questions and for us to meet you (30 minutes)
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STAGE 2 ~ After your interview
If we collectively decided this is a harmonious fit, we will write to you with an offer of place with your registration documents to complete and sign.
In the event of us not being in a position to offer you a place at this time, for example, if we have reached 20 ~ 24 capacity, we will offer you the opportunity of the first option next intake.
The 2024 Certificate in Sexological Intimacy Training Schedule & Dates for your diary.
April 2025 - October 2025 - 6 Months (with August month holiday for integration)
Certificate in Sexological Intimacy Coaching - April 2025 - October 2025
The Wednesday webinars are twice a month, on the first and third Wednesday of each month, from 5 to 7.30 pm (UK, Ireland, and Lisbon time).
April
Webinar 1 - Wednesday 2nd April - 5 -7.30 pm
Online Foundations part one - 3-day intensive - Friday 4th April - Sunday 4-8.30 pm UK time
Online Foundations part two - 3-day intensive - Friday 11th April - Sunday 4-8.30 pm UK time
Webinar 2 - Wednesday 16th April - 5-7.30 pm
May
Webinar 3 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
Webinar 4 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
June
Webinar 5 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
Webinar 6 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
July
Webinar 7 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
Webinar 8 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
August Integration Month
September
Webinar 9 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm
Webinar 10 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
October
Webinar 11 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
Webinar 11 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm UK time
Three months of Supervised Practicum
November 2025, (December Integration Month), January 2026, February 2026
Depending on the frequency of sessions you offer paying clients, you can earn certification at any point during the three months of supervised practicum. There is one coaching call after every five client sessions; a minimum of 20 sessions is required for certification. We encourage you to cover these fees from your client fees. Coaching fees during this practicum phase are set at a reduced fee of £60 per coaching call with one of our listed IRHS Approved Coaches, which you can see on our website.
Graduates of this CSI training will then be eligible to enrol in the CSB training starting in May 2026.
As a Certified CSI & CSB practitioner or a student certifying during the three-month supervised practicum phase, you are invited to attend the Postgraduate CPD monthly webinars. These sessions provide a valuable opportunity to network, meet fellow practitioners, and engage in Community practice, Q&A, and Peer Supervision with a visiting teacher each month.
They are a consistent opportunity for continued community learning and growth, supporting the navigation of learning edges with kindness and celebrating your achievements. You will be invited to join our thriving multi-year community on the first Thursday every month from 5 to 8.30 pm UK time.
Embodied Community Learning & Practice
This is experiential training with somatic learning opportunities that emphasise erotic embodiment in communal online and in-person learning environments, co-creating our course container and relationship agreements to support inclusivity for everyone’s ability to participate.
Ethical enquiries are explored by understanding the visible and invisible aspects of human nature that influence our ability to belong and to participate.
Practitioners learn Sexological Intimacy coaching skills that can be facilitated online or in person. This certification is designed to support practitioners who are interested in coaching intimate and erotic self-touch somatic practices without “hands-on” engagement. This enables practitioners to practice sexological intimacy coaching in parts of the world where professional erotic touch is illegal or against the codes of ethics and professional conduct of existing modalities that practitioners wish to combine with Sexological Intimacy coaching.
The Wednesday webinars are twice a month on the first and third Wednesday of each month, 5 - 7.30 pm (UK, Ireland, and Lisbon time).
You will join a peer supervision pod group meeting twice monthly to support each other with your learning edges.
Each pod group has a coach for answering questions and guidance
You meet with your assigned coach individually once a month for supervision and reflective practice
Research explorations are a combination of:-
Solo practice
Practising with assigned classmates in pairs in the Client and Practitioner roles
Practicing with assigned classmates in triads in the Client, Practitioner, and Witness roles
Practicing with Client Volunteers with you in the practitioner role only
Sharing your reflections from the reading and videos in the curriculum.
Research Explorations are posted on the forum twice a week. You are required to post your reflections from your research in 300 words or self expression piece of your choice on:-
Mondays ~ responding to classmates by Wednesday
Fridays ~ responding to classmates by Sunday
Your Coach and the Teacher team will read and acknowledge your responses to your reflection pieces and write responses where a learning edge is being discovered or a question is being asked.
The Certificate in Sexological Bodywork Practitioner ~online & In-person Training Schedule & Dates for your diary ~2025
May - November 2025 Certificate in Sexological Bodywork Practitioner training:
April - May
Webinar 1 - Wednesday 30th April - 5-7.30 pm - To be confirmed
Embodiment in-person May 2025 in Europe
Webinar 2 - Wednesday, May - 5-7.30 pm
June
Webinar 3 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm
Webinar 4 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm
July
Webinar 5- Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm
Webinar 6- Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm
August (Integration Month Holiday)
September
Webinar 7 - Wednesday t - 5-7.30 pm
Webinar 8 - Wednesday - 5-7.30 pm
October
Webinar 9 - Wednesday - 5 - 7.30 pm
Webinar 10 - Wednesday - 5 - 7.30 pm
November
Webinar 11 - Wednesday - 5 - 7.30 pm
Webinar 12 - Wednesday - 5 - 7.30 pm
Supervised Practicum
December 2025 - (Integration Month Holiday) January, February, March
You can earn certification at any point during the three months of supervised practicum. There is one coaching call after every five client sessions; a minimum of 25 sessions is required for certification. We encourage you to cover these fees from your client fees. Coaching fees during this practicum phase are set at a reduced fee of £60 per coaching call with one of our listed IRHS Approved Coaches, which you can see on our website— Certification in December 2025.
As a Certified CSI & CSB practitioner or a student certifying in the six-month supervised practicum phase-
You are invited to attend the Postgraduate CPD monthly webinars. These sessions provide a valuable opportunity to network, meet fellow practitioners, and engage in Community practice, Q&A, and Peer Supervision with a visiting teacher each month.
They are a consistent opportunity for continued community learning and growth, supporting the navigation of learning edges with kindness and celebrating your achievements. You will be invited to join our thriving multi-year community on the first Thursday every month from 5 to 8.30 pm UK time.
Course fees
- £5,280 - £900 enrolment fee to secure your place
Bursary places have a 30% discount
After Certification as a Sexological Bodywork Practitioner, you can:-
Join ACSB as a full member with permission for Insurance and be included on the Practitioner listing
Your updated qualification is included on the IRHS website practitioner listing
Be included on the Sea School of Embodiment Practitioner listing
Join the IRHS Postgraduate program
As a registered student on this IRHS training, you can register for Student membership of ASIS for Insurance and become a student member of the ACSB
Overview
This training focuses on integrating exiled aspects of humanity and enhancing personal and role power through radical self-acceptance. By bridging our worlds out of loneliness and inhabiting personal power, we can be curious, notice, value, trust, and voice what matters. The training also involves updating our internal and external versions of ourselves to live more authentically.
The curriculum facilitates participants inhabiting ethics on the inside, developing practitioner core competencies and understanding the “Right Use of Power” teachings, as defined by Dr. Cedar Barstow, applied to Dr. Betty Martin’s “The Wheel of Consent” coaching structures. The practices involve radical acceptance of the self-organising intelligence inherent in us all, using Body-Focusing, Body Poem, and Clean Language as our coaching models.
The ability to make attuned, receptive, kind decisions and be in choice while experiencing the intensity of affect is also a core competency that the micro-skills in this training support. These are essential competencies for ethical practice when working in the altered state realms of intimate and erotic self-expression and arousal. We refer to this as our emotional and erotic fluency with response flexibility. These embodiment practices are designed to contribute to our attuned radical acceptance and belonging, enriching the granularity of touch with metaphorical self-reflection. These foundations of self-acceptance practices are choreographed to support your curiosity, self-care, and growth toward becoming more of yourself in service as a practitioner representing the voices of humanity and learning to be listened to and heard.
During the training, we will explore various topics, including:
Co-creating Wheel of Consent relationship agreements to take action and change what cannot be radically accepted.
Becoming more indigenous with ourselves to support the exiled aspects of humanity in finding their way home.
Engaging in somatic embodiment practices to learn ethical play, trust spontaneity, and inhabit our power.
Awareness of power dynamics and your relationship with power, understanding intention impact mismatch, and tracking impact
Role power responsibilities and vulnerabilities in the power differential
The Clean Language and Body Poem Coaching model - that supports you as a practitioner being at the precipice of presence with your clients with radical acceptance limiting your vulnerability of premature clarity and biased reframing of a client’s experience
Facilitating the Wheel of Consent online and in-person - Power and Consent with relationship agreements when working with altered states
The ethics of self-care
Shame responses, deactivating shame and trauma-informed practice and first-aid for both practitioner and client
The navigation of Dual role relationships and developing your professional boundaries
The ethics of Somatic assessment and Session structure in co-creating attuned relationship agreements
Awareness of individual patterns of reactivity when receiving difficult feedback
Rupture and repair processes in up-power roles as a practitioner and down-power roles as a service provider and the healing edge of ruptures
The difference between Reflections and Feedback - How to facilitate client feedback
Conclusion
This training offers professionals the opportunity to deepen their intimacy skills, enhance their emotional and erotic fluency, and develop a greater understanding of themselves and others. By embracing radical self-acceptance and learning to navigate power dynamics, participants can create more authentic and fulfilling connections in both their personal and professional lives.
“This training is without a doubt the most comprehensive, holistic, and ethically sound I could have hoped to come across. I looked at many different trainings and coaching programs in the fields of sexuality, tantra, and embodiment, and when I read through what was offered in this training, I was an immediate FULL BODY YES!
I’m so grateful I honoured that yes as this has been such a rich, profound, and transformational journey. I’m growing in ways that bring me immense joy, knowing that I’m receiving so much more of my authentic liberated self, which is coming back online from participating in this training.
Through this first-hand experience of updating so many new versions of myself, I am blooming with excitement to be able to share this with my clients. The course is delivered in a very considerate and digestible manner. This is the kind of healing work that will help change the world. Thank you, Katie & Phoebe”
TESTIMONIAL - A CSB Student practitioner part of the 2023-4 Cohort
IRHS Faculty for the Sexological Bodywork, Sexological Intimacy Coaching & Somatic Sex Education professional training.
The Organizational core team choreographs and administrates the training, designing structures that support and facilitate everybody’s ability to participate and learn with ease and inspiration from enrolment through certification and beyond into the postgraduate program.
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Arantxa is dancer, singer, performing artist & mother of 3, and communicates fluently in English, Spanish & Portuguese.
She is a CSB & CSSE awaiting completion.
She has dedicated 20 years to teaching Laban Creative Dance & West African Dance in the Community, & to performing with various companies around Europe.
Arantxa cultivates a deep passion for guiding others into connecting deeper with their bodies, their natural joy and erotic expression & encourages them to develop the parts of themselves that are fully alive, where their deepest truth and wisdom reside, ripening their relationship to Eros, Life force Intelligence & the innocence of their pleasure & bodies.
She has created a modality called ESSENSUAL Movement & Expression, that weaves together principles from CSB training with Creative & Authentic Dance practices, inspiring others to express pleasure through movement & their bodies, unapologetically.
Empathy, compassion, curiosity and ethical integrity are qualities she embodies as a facilitator/practitioner & she offers these & other gifts in service to the emergence of future practitioners, that n turn are too in service to the love of life & the love for humanity.
Certified Sexological Intimacy Coach, Sexological Bodyworker, & Somatic Sex Educator
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Katie Sarra is the founder of the Institute of Relational Harmony Studies where she choreographs and teaches professional certification in Body Poem, Sexological Intimacy, Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Bodywork, training in the UK, Ireland and Portugal with an international team of leading-edge educators. She follows the Code of Ethics of the Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers (ACSB).
Katie has developed her practice over 35 years of professional clinical practice. She specialises in facilitating radical acceptance and integration of exiled aspects of ourselves. She is an Art Psychotherapist, Founder of Body Poem, Artist, Certified Wheel of Consent facilitator, Certified Somatic Sex Educator, Certified Sexological Bodyworker, and Playback Theatre Practitioner.
I believe every human being has gifts to share and that these are often grown from where we have suffered the most. Our self-acceptance, kindness and ease with ourselves, when we have felt witnessed, can ripple out to support ease with others.
Certified Sexological Intimacy Coach, Sexological Bodyworker, & Somatic Sex Educator
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Dr Phoebe Garland is a certified CSB and CSSE. She brings over 30 years of experience as a GP and mindfulness teacher as well as her own life-long journey of seeking and personal growth practices, including working with Dr Claudio Naranjo in the SAT program.
Her passion is to bring her expertise to the profession of somatic sex education, developing the curriculum, supervision and continued professional development structures and resources to support excellence in the profession.
At the Institute of Relational Harmony Studies Phoebe is developing and leading the 2nd year CSSE training, bringing teachings from The Right Use of Power to the CSB and CSSE curriculum, developing Core Competency assessment and providing supervision for practitioners.
Certified Sexological Intimacy Coach, Sexological Bodyworker, & Somatic Sex Educator
“I really appreciate how safe & self-expressive I felt in this container. I was able to shed layers I wasn’t even aware of thanks to the supporting & accepting space co-created together with the guidance of the team.”
TESTIMONIAL - CSI CSB STUDENT in the 2023 Cohort
C E R T I F I C A T I O N & I N S U R A N C E
Upon completion of all requirements, students will be awarded the Certificate in Sexological Intimacy Coaching (CSIC)
Graduates from this professional training can become members of The Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers (ACSB), the Somatic Sex Educators’ Association of Australasia (SSEAA) and apply for membership of the Association of Somatic and Integrative Sexologists (ASIS) and be admitted to the World Association of Sex Coaches (WASC) with no further requirements.
This course is recognised by The Association of Somatic and Integrative Sexologists as offering training of sufficient depth for practitioners to be eligible for insurance for their work. See the-asis.org for more details.
“My body is learning that it is safe to take care of myself. That I can say no and honour my limits & still belong.” - Adriana
TESTIMONIAL - CSB STUDENT - 2023 COHORT