We train Somatic Intimacy Coaches & Bodywork Practitioners to coach a wide range of somatic (body-based) tools and practices to support you in developing your erotic and emotional fluency in relational intimacy.

Our methods have been tried and tested over 40 years of clinical practice & research.

All our practitioners undergo a rigorous training, assessment, and certification process. We feel confident in recommending all of our Certified Somatic Intimacy Coaches & Bodyworkers, as well as our certified Body Poets, to you. Our practitioners help you inhabit new ways of authentic being.

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Relational Harmony Institute Directors.

Katie Sarra and Dr Phoebe Garland each bring over 40 years of clinical practice and research across a range of specialisms, contributing to the unique weave of perspectives that inform the REEF™ (Relational Erotic and Emotional Fluency) Model, which uses Body Poem to facilitate phenomenological radical acceptance. These sessions trust in each person’s self-organising intelligence, the integration of exiled aspects of the self, and more confident embodied trust in spontaneity.

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Katie Sarra - Co -director of the RHI training programs & founder of Body Poem

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Dr Phoebe Garland - Co-director of the RHI training & Professional Supervision Programs

Our somatic Intimacy Coaches and Bodywork practitioners are trained to facilitate over 45 somatic practices to enhance your embodied decision-making in intimate relationships with yourself and others.

Our Somatic Intimacy coaches and bodywork practitioners (CSIB) can also include practitioner touch in your session, helping you update your somatic library as you learn different ways of touching and being touched. When we are touched, we are touching memories, and we may experience what are called somatic openings. This is where memories might arise that have no words but are felt. Receiving bodywork from an RHI trauma-informed bodywork practitioner can address healing emotional and physical scars held in the body. Your practitioner has training in scar tissue remediation to offer presence and guided, specific touch that releases what has been limiting your movement and fluidity in your emotions and body. 

Our practitioners are trained in power-informed, enthusiastic consent, and our coaching model is based on active receiving. This means that the embodiment practices are co-created, with clear plans aligned with your learning intentions. You will be guided every step of the way within our session structure.

“The Somatic Intimacy Coaching & Bodywork training programs of The Relational Harmony Institute are the most comprehensive sexuality training I have found. The syllabus is rich and covers an incredible breadth of subjects - neuroscience, embodied boundaries & consent, emotional command systems, somatic coaching techniques, rupture & repair processes, session structure, hygiene protocol, and of course, all the anatomy & physiology Sexological Bodywork tools.

This training teaches the core competencies of how to meet another Human in their wholeness - with radical acceptance of all of their parts, including their erotic & sexual expression. It encourages you as a practitioner to trust your spontaneity, creativity, and intuition while equipping you with everything you need to build an ethical, trauma-informed practice. Katie’s passion, skill, embodied experience, and wisdom are the essence of this training which makes it come alive with joy, love, care & laughter.” - Luzi Pods - 2023

Meet some of our RHI Graduates

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Katie Sarra and Phoebe Garland have developed a syllabus that incorporates Clean Language, Body Poem, Wheel of Consent, and Right Use of Power training into the curriculum to support ethical practice in a field where working with arousal and altered states has resulted in so many ruptures without these micro-skills in place

The curriculum facilitates participants in inhabiting ethics on the inside, developing practitioner core competencies, and understanding the “Right Use of Power” teachings, as defined by Dr Cedar Barstow, and applying them to Dr Betty Martin’s “The Wheel of Consent” coaching structures.

We are dedicated to creating, maintaining, and updating standards of ethical practice, supporting practitioners in realising their creative potential.

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.

Ethical inquiries are explored with recognition of the visible and invisible aspects of being human that influence our ability to belong and participate.

You will be guided through what we call ‘Somatic Assessments’ for enhancing your confidence in intimate decision-making. These include enhancing your somatic recognition of yes and no, and how to tell the difference.

These are invaluable practices that support learning to recognise and represent our limits in life and relationships before it's too late.

These practices include empowering your agency and building confidence through The Wheel of Consent to explore co-created relationship agreements we are all on board with; becoming fluent in navigating intimate space and distances; role-playing repair processes; becoming fluent in your creative self-expression; healing body image concerns; and many more.

We all carry culturally influenced internalised inhibitions that interrupt our receptivity and attunement for trusting our authentic spontaneity.

Meet some of our RHI Graduates

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A young woman with curly hair lying on sandy ground, smiling with her eyes slightly closed, wearing a plaid shirt and a knitted sweater.
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First Year - The 12-month Certificate in Somatic Intimacy Coaching (CSI)

Practitioners learn Somatic intimacy coaching skills that can be facilitated online or in person, which is inclusive of practitioners who are interested in coaching intimate and erotic self-touch somatic practices without “hands-on” engagement.

This also enables practitioners to practice somatic 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.

The curriculum is online, with a special focus on live, interactive learning in the community and in paired and triad practice groups with classmates.

Somatic Intimacy coaches deepen their in-person intimacy skills with two-way clothed wheel of consent practices and coaching non-touch erotic and intimate practices.

We are dedicated to creating, maintaining, and updating standards of ethical practice, supporting practitioners in realising their creative potential.

Meet some of our RHI Graduates

A woman with long brown hair, wearing a black turtleneck, black pants, and large earrings, sitting on a yellow sofa in a cozy room with green plants, a lamp, and wooden blinds in the background.
A woman with long blonde hair, wearing a brown fuzzy hat and coat, smiling outdoors among rocks and greenery with sunlight shining behind her.
A woman with dark hair styled in an updo and bangs, wearing earrings, a necklace, and a sleeveless top, standing in a forested area with green foliage in the background.
A woman with long light brown hair smiling and wearing a reddish-brown dress with buttons, standing indoors against a plain white background.
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Second Year - The 12-month Certification in Somatic Intimacy Bodywork Practitioner Program (CSIB)

This training includes an 11-day in-person embodiment retreat for practitioners wishing to learn and practice hands-on Bodywork skills and practices.

During this time, participants learn a variety of modalities supporting body identity acceptance, gender identity acceptance, mapping & massage, anal acceptance, mapping & massage, scar tissue remediation, chest acceptance mapping & massage, belly acceptance mapping & massage, active receiving self-directed erotic massage and practising radical acceptance with erotic embodiment self-pleasuring solo practices.

During these explorations, aspects of the self are touched and awakened into awareness, illuminating core erotic themes that may be emerging that can prepare the ground for understanding your unique purpose as a practitioner in service.

During the online parts of the training, we are joined by Marin Marie, who guides our understanding of genital anatomy, and by Ellen Heed, who guides our practice working with scars and emotional and physical repair processes.

It is estimated that 15-25 hours of study time per week are required for the online waves of both training programs.

Learning to explore, and try out, discovering new, self-expressive ways of being.

Practice in privacy before coming out.

These are journeys into deeper self-acceptance that build your confidence to make changes in your relationships and life choices, moving away from what is not right for you and towards what brings you a sense of gratitude.

Your practitioner is trained to support your confidence in co-creating informed, intimate decision-making and to help you heal from the emotional hangovers of times when you might have been in endurance or suffered from decisions that have not worked well for you.

Deepening our attuned relationship with our body supports being informed by it, rather than by our mind’s projections, as we navigate agreements in intimate relationships.

We are most disabled when we are unable to represent ourselves. This may be due to not knowing what we want, losing sensory awareness or sensation. Part of the problem when we do not have enough sensory input for our decision-making is that we will invariably feel anxious or lose confidence.

Our practitioners are trained to support you with erotic and emotional fluency and regulation so that whatever arises in a session can be welcomed and navigated together - including trauma responses. There may be aspects of your life you feel some shame or shyness about and want to be liberated from, and your practitioner can be alongside you, helping you out of loneliness that is so common when we are experiencing shame.

Your Application and Enrolment Process

  • Stage 1 ~ Discovery meeting

    Meet with Katie Sarra, director of training, for a discovery call to get a feel for the curriculum's ethos and visionary purpose, and to illuminate ways this training might serve your professional development. This is an opportunity to learn about the course structures.

    This is a meeting for you to ask questions and for us to meet and feel our resonances with each other to inform next steps. (Please set aside 30 - 50 minutes for this call)

    Book a Discovery Call / Interview with Katie Sarra

  • Stage 2 - Enrolment meeting

    We welcome you to arrange an Enrolment meeting with Katie Sarra and Dr Phoebe Garland to ensure this is the right training for you at the right time. We will explore and reflect on your readiness to join the training; this includes financial readiness, availability for the study and practice time commitments, and having an external person available to support you during periods when you may be updating versions of yourself. In this meeting, we will explore ways this training might weave into your life and reflect together on your visionary purpose and ethics, enhancing your service as you deliver your gifts to the aspects of humanity you want to serve.

    Arrange an Enrolment Meeting

  • Stage 3 - Formal offer of place

    After your Enrolment interview, and we have decided this is a harmonious fit, we will write to you with a formal offer of a place in the upcoming cohort, along with guidance on the next steps towards enrolment. Your enrolment is secured with an enrolment deposit, payable within 7 days of your offer of place letter, which is 1/3 of the full cost of the training program you are enrolling in.

    If we are not in a position to offer you a place at this time, for example, if we have reached capacity, we will offer you the opportunity to take the first available place in the next intake.

Arrange your Discovery call

Professional Membership Certification & Insurance

Students of the Relational Harmony Institute professional training can become Student members (and, upon certification, Associate (CSI) or Professional (CSIB) members) of The Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers (ACSB) and appear on the Practitioner listing pages. We have a historical agreement for your inclusion with the Somatic Sex Educators’ Association of Australasia (SSEAA) and the Association of Somatic and Integrative Sexologists (ASIS). Certified graduates can 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 a training of sufficient depth for practitioners to be eligible for insurance for their work. See the-asis.org for more details.

Upon completion of all requirements, The Relational Harmony Institute awards the Certificate in Somatic Intimacy Coaching (CSI) in the First year, The Somatic Intimacy Bodywork Practitioner (CSIB) with dual certification as a Sexological Bodywork (CSB) in the second year, and in the third year the Coaching Certificate of Somatic Sex Education (CSSE) and in the fourth year the advanced CSSE Professional Supervisor Certificate of Somatic Sex Education.

SOMATIC SEXOLOGY is the meeting of somatics, which relates to the sensate body, with sexology, which relates to the scientific study of human sexuality.

This includes practices informed by ancient wisdom teachings from Africa, India, and Asia, as well as leading-edge research in affective relational neuroscience, philosophy, and biology.

The Relational Harmony Institute is contributing to the collective wave of embodiment practitioners in service to opening receptivity with radical acceptance in the emergence of living as an antidote to the projections of separation in the reflections of living.

Expansions of consciousness involve us feeling more of our emergent, creative, and intuitive selves as part of nature's ecosystems, and updating our versions of ourselves. This invariably involves shedding our skins and showing kindness when overcoming the fear of losing our sense of belonging in the hologram.