Practitioner training in Somatic Intimacy Coaching, Somatic Intimacy Bodywork, Somatic Sex Education & Professional Supervision
We welcome you to visit our Relational Harmony Institute websites
First year: CSI - Certified Somatic Intimacy Coach Training Program
800+ hours of experiential community learning and practices. These include a foundation in REEF (Relational Erotic and Emotional Fluency) coaching, somatic sexology practices and education and client sessions facilitating 1-1 intimacy coaching. This training is conducted online, and CSI practitioners learn how to guide clients in self-touch, whether online or in person. The certification process included supervised and video-recorded client sessions to earn the required 20 learning credits, leading to certification as a Somatic Intimacy Coach (CSI)—one-year training commencing on 1st April each year.
There is a comprehensive tool kit
… for deepening embodiment with somatic assessment practices for enhancing the granularity of symbolic representation.
All practices involve using Body Poem to facilitate radical acceptance and the Wheel of Consent to take action. Practitioners are trained in the Right Use of Power to ensure consensual relationships between practitioners and clients.
Somatic Intimacy Coaches (CSI) facilitate self-touch to support personal empowerment. Somatic Intimacy Bodyworkers (CSIB) have the scope of practice to include a wide range of bodywork massage and mapping skills with intimate touch when appropriate including mindful self-pleasure practices, scar tissue remediation, external & internal genital and anal mapping and massage, belly massage, and breast massage and many new additions to the syllabus this year
Second year: CSIB - Certified Somatic Intimacy Bodywork Practitioner Training Program
- 800+ hours of experiential community learning, practices and education. This training includes working with practitioner touch, including genital and anal touch, and working with arousal in person. This training is offered online and in-person, and includes a 2-week retreat where practitioners receive live demos and one-on-one coaching during bodywork sessions. Practitioners will complete supervised client sessions and receive coaching via video to earn their 20 learning credits, leading to certification as a Somatic Intimacy Coach and Bodywork Practitioner (CSIB). A one-year training program commencing on April 1st each year is open to CSIs who have completed their first year with us. Small group size (approx 12 places only) to support your learning.
3rd & 4th year CSSE - Somatic Sex Education and Professional Supervisor Training Program
This is a 2-year experiential training in giving and receiving coaching and supervision, revisiting the CSI and CSIB curriculum, and deepening your practitioner skills. You will also develop educational materials as you step into leadership positions within your specialised area of this work. There are opportunities to teach and present during the first and second years, as well as to share your CPD offerings in our postgraduate program.
We also offer free, ongoing Continuing Professional Development and peer supervision through our monthly Postgraduate Program during your certification phase and beyond, in a thriving multi-year community that supports practitioners in maintaining ethical practice.
Why our training might be right for you.
“This training is without a doubt the most comprehensive, holistic, and ethically sound training I could have hoped to come across. I looked at many different training and coaching programs in the field of sexuality, tantra, + embodiment, and when I read through what was offered in this training, I was an immediate FULL BODY YES!
I’m so grateful and honoured; 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
Our comprehensive (800+ hour) training is the only certified training using our unique REEF coaching model:- a combination of The Wheel of Consent, The Right Use of Power and Body Poem taught in English. We are based in the UK with practitioners and faculty members worldwide in Ireland, Europe, the USA, Canada, Africa and India. The Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers recognises the CSB training, and graduates are eligible to apply for insurance specific to this modality.
Course Director Katie Sarra has been delivering this training since 2018 and has guided over 250 students to becoming Certified. Our free Postgraduate program offers continued support and CPD after certification. Our Second year includes teachings from the founder of Sexological Bodywork®, Joseph Kramer, plus world-renowned Betty Martin, the founder of the Wheel of Consent® and Ellen Heed of Scar Tissue Remediation Education and Management (STREAM). Dr Phoebe Garland, co-director of training leading the Professional Supervision track, brings her 30+ years of professional practice as a medical Doctor to the student experience, aligning our training with medical standards of ethical discipline with receptivity to all aspects of being human.
Professional Membership -Certification and Insurance
Upon completion of all requirements, The Institute for Relational Harmony Studies & Research awards the Certificate in Sexological Intimacy Coaching (CSI) in the First year, 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.
Students of this professional training can become Student members (and on certification, Professional members) of The Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers (ACSB), 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.
Katie Sarra Founder and Co-Director of the Sea School of Embodiment, has certified 200+ Sexological Bodyworkers and welcomes our historically trained CSBs and CSSEs from the Sea School of Embodiment to join our 3rd and 4th years if you want to widen your influence and train to be a professional supervisor for our profession.
REEF™ Relational Erotic & Emotional Fluency Coaching and Bodywork was developed by Katie Sarra and Phoebe Garland and has its foundations in Mindfulness, Sexological Bodywork®, Body Poem™ , Wheel of consent® and Right Use Of Power® and Affective Relational Neuroscience teachings and practices.
Each practitioner engages in unique ways to transform the literal into poetry. We are all welcomed wherever we are; however, we are to be a balm and bridges with each other’s loneliness as facilitators of radical acceptance.
The Relational Harmony Institute was co-founded in 2022 by Katie Sarra and Dr Phoebe Garland with the development of the REEF™ Coaching model.
This training evolved from The Sea School of Embodiment with Katie Sarra, who trained and certified 200+ Practitioners in Sexological Bodywork between the years 2014-2022
The original Sexological Bodywork training has been developed into a two-year program to equip practitioners to work with and without practitioner touch, either online or in person. The REEF™ coaching model supports practitioners to work with emotional and erotic fluency when working with eros, intimacy training and sex education.
2024-2025 MADHURYA BALAN - India
“What this training softens to cascade change inside the self is priceless, surprising and delightfully pleasurable. I am in deep gratitude and fierce appreciation of the ethics of the course created and facilitated by Katie and Phoebe. Truly incredible! I look forward to deepening in this work with the school and weaving in the practices I am in self-scholarship around. This is the change each cell of the universe has been calling for. Love and creative power.”
Career Development
As a qualified CSI and CSIB, having experienced all the taught modalities in your own body and undergone your growth and transformation, means that when working with clients, your presence and knowledge stem from real, embodied experience, rather than theory alone.
The Certificate in Somatic Intimacy Coaching (CSI) offers the flexibility of working from anywhere in the world, providing essential intimacy skills for loving relationships to people in the privacy of their own homes. Being professionally touched intimately by another, for other than medical examination and treatment reasons, outside of an intimate relationship, for many people, is outside of comfort and, in some countries, illegal.
Graduates have over 45 Somatic practices laid out in a practitioner manual for step by step guidance to support your facilitation in your chosen areas of specialisation: for example, by focussing on a particular interest group and their belonging, sexual freedom and acceptance, e.g. older people, young people and consent, specific cultures, non-binary, heterosexual & queer-identified, women identified, men identified, couples and other relationship configurations, group work; presenting concerns, e.g. overcoming fears of intimacy, loss of libido, body image confidence, genital pain, health related body functioning changes, recovery after surgery, genital reconfiguration preparation and post rerouting orgasmic pathways, emotional and physical pain, loss of sensation, interrupted decision making, not knowing what to want, developing ejaculatory choice, sex & porn addiction, erotic expression confidence, fetish entrapment, troublesome ‘turn-ons’, recovery after giving birth, becoming orgasmic, expanding repertoire, changing outdated patterns, sexuality during menopause, relationship grief, intimacy training for the inexperienced and recovery from historical traumas that impact intimacy confidence.
Return on Investment
A typical hourly rate for many CSIs is £90 - £250 per hour in the UK, and a typical session time is 2 hours, given the highly specialised nature of this work. This varies across the world, particularly in economically disadvantaged regions. Hourly rates for online sessions vary by area, typically between £75 and £150. Given those figures, you could recoup your training investment in just a few months.
The training includes support for envisioning and planning your career development, with postgraduate backing.
All students begin earning before the course ends by charging a reduced rate for sessions while completing certification during the Supervised Practicum Phase of the training.
Historical Video Testimonials from the Sea School of Embodiment 2018 Training.
I am sharing these here as this was one of the first trainings where I introduced Affective Relational Neuroscience and Body Poem to the curriculum in addition to The Wheel of Consent. I am particularly fond of this as the late Sue Sutherland is featured here, who we all miss.
