The Relational Harmony Institute
Trusting Spontaneity
The RHI provides professional training in Somatic Intimacy Coaching (CSI) and Somatic Intimacy Bodywork (CSIB - previously called Sexological Bodywork) online and in-person in UK.
Year 1 CSI training is for practitioners who want to develop ethical, embodied skills for working with intimacy, relationships, sexuality and the body, working online or in-person with guided client self-touch.
Year 2 CSIB training is for CSI practitioners who want to include practitioner touch in their in-person sessions.
Our training combines somatic practice, relational awareness, power informed consent, emotional and erotic fluency, practitioner ethics and embodied decision-making.
Katie Sarra and Dr Phoebe Garland each bring over 40 years of clinical experience and research to the Relational Harmony Institute and have developed and updated the original one year Sexological Bodywork training to create a robust, in-depth, ethical and professional training pathway consisting of:
Somatic Intimacy Coach - Year 1 - an online training for practitioners who want to develop skills to support embodied intimacy, self-awareness, boundaries, consent and relational choice. Somatic sexology practices are facilitated using guided client self-touch in online or in-person sessions.
Somatic Intimacy Bodywork - Year 2 (previously called Sexological Bodywork) - an online and in-person training open to CSI practitioners who have graduated with RHI who wish to deepen their skills and facilitate erotic embodiment practices which can include practitioner touch.
CSSE (year 3) - open to CSIB practitioners who have graduated with RHI and who wish to deepen their professional practice, develop their leadership and group facilitation skills, explore their niche areas of interest and learn coaching and supervision skills.
Supervisor (year 4) - a professional supervision training open to CSSEs who have graduated with RHI and who wish to develop as professional supervisors for practitioners in the field of sexuality.
Our unique REEF coaching model and session structure have been developed to provide practitioners with an effective and ethical foundation for facilitating somatic and erotic embodiment practices.
We have translated the somatic sexology and wheel of consent practices so that practitioners can facilitate these in both online and in-person client sessions, providing step by step practitioner guidance.
Our training includes live coaching tutorials where we witness students facilitating practices and sessions with their classmates and provide coaching along with detailed coaching from video recorded sessions with volunteer clients.
This ensures that every practitioner in training is ready to work with clients during their supervised practicum and meets our ethical standards for certification.
The RHI training brings together relational embodiment practices with power informed consent facilitated with our unique REEF coaching model within our RHI session structure. Our professional training pathway includes:
Katie Sarra and Dr Phoebe Garland are passionate about providing an education that supports excellent and ethical practice for practitioners in the field of somatic sexuality.
Our REEF coaching model incorporates Clean Language, Body Focusing and Body Poem. It allows a practitioner to support a client to participate in somatic enquiries and practices in a way that is truly led by the client.
Our unique weave of Wheel of Consent and Right Use of Power practices brings further awareness of power informed consent and how to use our power wisely as practitioners. This includes repair processes for when we experience unintended impact or rupture.
The RHI session structure provides an ethical framework for the sessions which further supports client agency and choice and supports practitioners in effective and ethical practice.
The CSI curriculum includes 44 somatic practices facilitated with guided client self-touch. The CSIB curriculum revisits these practices in greater depth and facilitated with practitioner touch.
We are dedicated to creating, maintaining, and updating standards of ethical practice and to supporting practitioners to realise their creative potential.
We train practitioners to develop their own self-awareness, response flexibility and erotic and emotional fluency first in order to equip them to hold space for clients.
The CSI and CSIB somatic practices involve practitioners holding space with radical acceptance of the self-organising intelligence inherent in all of us. Our unique coaching model using Body Focusing, Body Poem, and Clean Language supports us and our clients to be with things just as they are.
Practitioners are supported in their professional and personal growth throughout the CSI and CSIB training. The ability to make attuned, receptive, kind decisions and to be in choice, while experiencing intensity of affect, is a core competency that the micro-skills in this training support. This is essential 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. The CSI and CSIB curriculum includes a study of relational neuroscience that has informed the development of the training as well as a non-binary approach to anatomy and gender identity. We hope this supports everyone to participate.
We welcome participants from all over the world and we are learning how to better support all participants, especially the who do not find themselves well represented in this or in the training.
Where a practitioner may need additional support we will work together to find a way to support them to participate to certification. In this way we hope to contribute to greater diversity in the field of sexuality.
“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
“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.”
Certified CSI CSIB CSSE Practitioner 2023-5 Cohort
Watch an interview with Katie Sarra, describing and unpacking how to understand Body Poem™ and why it works in Sexological Bodywork & Somatic Intimacy Coaching.
RHI somatic Intimacy Coaches and Bodywork practitioners are trained to facilitate 44 somatic practices to enhance embodied decision-making in intimate relationships with yourself and others.
SOMATIC SEXOLOGY is a term that includes the study and research of the sensate body and 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.
Our Somatic Intimacy coaches and bodywork practitioners (CSIB) are trained in power-informed, enthusiastic consent and our coaching model is based on active receiving. This means that the embodiment practices are always co-created and aligned with a client’s learning intentions.
The training includes skills to coach response flexibility, somatic assessment and tracking impact so that the practitioner remains alongside the client throughout the sessions.
Practitioners learn about trauma responses and co-create a toolkit with every client so that a client can be supported throughout a session.
These embodiment practices can open the realms to altered states and somatic openings can occur during a session, whether touch is included or not.
Our practitioners learn to offer titrated experiences that a client feels ready to explore and that meet a client’s learning intention for the session.
Wherever a client experiences intensity of affect within a session, our practitioners have the skills to be alongside the client and to support them to integrate the experience.
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 as we overcome the fear of losing our sense of belonging in the hologram.
Building your professional practice as a certified practitioner.
You will be supported during the CSI and CSIB training as you prepare to work with clients and to build your practice.
That support continues after certification as you are invited to join our RHI postgraduate community and our monthly postgraduate meetings.
All our RHI practitioners agree to engage in professional supervision and peer supervision to support their ongoing professional development.
At certification you are eligible to become a member of a professional body such as the ACSB or SSEAA.
Early in the training you will begin creating your intake assessment process and professional boundary statement as you create invitations for your volunteer clients.
This prepares you to start working with volunteer clients in the 3rd month of the training. You will receive in-depth coaching from recorded sessions with volunteer clients to support your learning and confidence.
During the supervised practicum you facilitate 20 sessions with clients with supervision after every 5 sessions. You are encouraged to charge clients a reduced session rate for these sessions to cover the costs of your supervision calls. This supports you stepping into professional practice.
You will be supported as you learn to describe this work to find potential clients, create your intake assessment process, professional boundary statement and your preferred channel of communication.
Webinars by Kat Byles (PR with Heart) and our RHI supervisors will inspire you and support you in this tender process of setting up your own practice.
The RHI encourages all its practitioners to find their own unique style of facilitation and to discover which aspects of this work and which aspects of humanity they feel drawn to work with at this time.
“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 - CSI - CSB STUDENT - 2023 COHORT
The Relational Harmony Institute's Somatic Intimacy Coaching and Bodywork Practitioner trainings do not include facilitating immersive Erotic Massage sessions or commodifying the practitioner to meet goal-oriented ‘hedonistic‘ intentions.
Timed segments of a session might consist of aspects of sensation play and an adaptation of 'active receiving' erotic massage online or in-person, attuning to the affective state of the client following our coaching model and session structure within an educational-therapeutic practitioner-client relationship agreement.
These experiences involve the practitioner being attuned to the waters of eros while simultaneously being on the grounding shore of the agreement and holding the duty of care. This practice requires erotic and emotional fluency and an understanding of self-interest when it arises in the practitioner role.
In altered states, there is scope for 'following intuition' without recognised conscious awareness. In altered states, slippage from the Serve quadrant is common for practitioners not trained in the Right use of Power and Wheel of Consent, which we have introduced to this field of practice.
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.
Your Application and Enrolment Process
Meet some of our RHI Graduates & Teacher Team
Aisha Paris Smith CSI, CSIB, CSSE & Somatic Sex Educator & Supervisor
Luzi Pods CSI, CSIB, CSSE & Somatic Sex Educator & Supervisor
Emerald May CSI, CSIB, CSSE & Somatic Sex Educator & Supervisor in training
Karen Egan CSI, CSIB, CSSE & Somatic Sex Educator & Supervisor
Marin Marie CSI, CSIB, CSSE & Somatic Sex Educator & Supervisor
Arantxa Joseph CSI, CSIB, CSSE & Somatic Sex Educator & Supervisor
The RHI training structure supports practitioners to develop their own erotic and emotional fluency and regulation first.
Then whatever arises in a client session can be welcomed and navigated together, including trauma responses.
During your training you will be learning to explore, and try out, discovering new, self-expressive ways of being as you experience the somatic practices in research explorations in both client and practitioner role.
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.
As a CSI or CSIB practitioner you will be supporting others to feel more confident in co-creating informed, intimate decision-making and helping them heal from the emotional hangovers of times when they have been in endurance and suffered from decisions that have not worked well for them.
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.
There may be aspects of your life you feel some shame or shyness about and want to be liberated from. Most of us have experienced unwanted touch, have internalised external judgements about ourselves and our bodies and have been subjected to miseducation and cultural conditioning when it comes to our relationship with our bodies and sexuality.
As practitioners we will be alongside clients, helping them out of the loneliness that is so common when we are experiencing shame.
You are likely to experience an intense period of personal growth as you experience each of these 44 practices in the client and practitioner role during your training.
You may need time to integrate this learning and once you have walked the path you will have a map for navigating this challenging terrain and you will be in a position to lead others who are just setting out, at the start of their journey.