The Curriculum

The Roots of iSōma


I — the animating force.

Sōma — the vessel of listening.

Meditation — the embodiment of both.

Before psychology, before technique, before modalities — there was movement, story, land, ritual, and community.

Right relationship wasn’t taught. It was the structure of life. This is the deeper ground we return to.

iSōma is one way to repair the frays in the larger fabric and revive it to ordinary life.

Something to consider.
In this work, we don’t bypass the pain of the world, and we don’t drown in it either.
We won’t rise above it — and we won’t be taken out by it.

What plays out on a global scale lives inside us, too.
So we start there.

This path is a commitment to staying relational—with yourself, with others,

with the world—even when it’s uncomfortable, unclear, or uncertain.
Especially then.

  • The iSōma Practitioner Path invites you to walk through the architecture of real change — not as theory, but as practice:

    • Elemental and seasonal cycles — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether, Void, Vibration, Light

    • Somatic education rooted in nervous system literacy, clinical application and energetic attunement

    • Archetypal development — an arc from seeker to steward to elder

    • Contact work and relational presence, inspired by Martin Buber’s philosophy

    • Story, myth, symbol, and metaphor as tools of integration

    • Ritual and ceremony as part of daily life, not performance

    • Body-based repair work — personal, cultural, and systemic

    • Land-based wisdom rooted in life on unceded Australian soil

    • Ongoing relational learning and guest teaching with Indigenous knowledge holders

    • Guest teachers in movement, integrated therapy, mythology, and clinical practice

These are elemental, energetic, and developmental layers that shape the backbone of your facilitation capacity.

Each layer corresponds to a specific element — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether, Vibration, Void and Light — and is accompanied by an archetype.

The archetypes are not here to be identified with, but to give form to a particular flavour of elemental expression.

They help us track how these forces move through the body, the psyche, and our relational field.

Each one activates a specific kind of capacity: in your nervous system, your relationships, your body, and your service.

They build on one another, looping and deepening over time — from Earth to Void — with Ceremony as the field that surrounds them all.

Ether and Vibration are explored as one fluid layer of subtle perception and responsiveness.

It’s a developmental arc. Each layer brings new challenges, new clarity, and new ways of relating to yourself and others.

The 7 Elemental Layers of Facilitation (with Archetypal Companions)

Core Skill Element Archetye Capacities
1. Embodied Presence Earth The Anchor Steady, grounded presence. Trustable. This is the foundation, and the archetype supports containment and embodied presence under pressure.
2. Intimacy/Deep Contact Water The Bridge Contact that’s real, felt, honest. The Bridge is the one who knows how to meet another with clarity and depth without collapsing or bypassing.
3. Discernment/Threshold Facilitation Fire The Guardian This archetype brings the fierce steadiness and maturity required to sit at the edge of rupture, grief, death, and change. Guardian of initiation.
4. Humility/Relational Integrity Air The Custodian Clean agreements, reverence for lineages, and real-time accountability. The Custodian is the one who knows the weight of what they carry and moves in respect.
5. Living Attunement Vibration & Ether The Weaver The most subtle of all — this is presence that listens through all dimensions. The Weaver hears what others miss and responds without performance.
6. Trust/Descent & the Underworld Void The Initiate This is the one who’s walked the dark, been undone, and survived. Not spiritualised shadow work — this is embodied humility forged in descent.
7. Integration/Ritual Capacity Light The Vessel The one who knows how to move with timing, rhythm, and reverence. Holds the sacred without theatre.
8. Quintessence Spirit, Aliveness, the Animating Force ✨ The Flame in the Centre Not a layer, but the field that holds them all. The animating force. Spirit. Aliveness. Mystery. It’s not something you learn. It’s something you remember.

The Four Directions Framework

DIRECTION SEASON ELEMENT ANIMAL TOPICS
EAST SPRING WATER HUMPBACK WHALE ANIMACY, FIRE, LISTENING
NORTH SUMMER FIRE GOLDEN ORB SPIDER MIND, ANCESTORS, AXIS
WEST AUTUMN AIR MASKED OWL (AUSTRALIA) VESSEL, DEVOTION, THE VOID
SOUTH WINTER EARTH RED-BELLIED BLACK SNAKE WATER + FASTING, RIGHT RELATIONSHIP, SOMATICS / WAVE DYNAMICS

The iSōma curriculum is divided into four semesters of lived study, topics, practices, application and lived experiences.

A direction, an element, and a seasonal rhythm shape each phase. These aren’t symbolic themes — they’re real conditions to work with in your body, relationships, and practice.

This program follows the Southern Hemisphere cycle, beginning in Spring (East) and progressing through Summer (North), Autumn (West), and Winter (South).

This work is rooted in functional skills — the kind you can practise, track, and refine in real time.

While each practitioner will integrate these in their own way — depending on your context, background, and nervous system — these are objective, embodied capacities. They are not personality traits or abstract concepts. They’re skills. And they can be learned.

Core Practitioner capacities

    • Track your own nervous system state in the moment — not just in hindsight.

    • Recognise “yes,” “no,” and “not now” signals in others.

    • Stay embodied during activation without spiralling or shutting down.

    • Use movement, breath, and rhythm to widen your own capacity (not suppress symptoms).

    • Spot signs of shutdown, overwhelm, or dissociation — and respond appropriately.

    • Shift your own state without overriding or bypassing your system.

    • Distinguish between discomfort and danger, and respond accordingly.

    • Support someone to re-regulate without using techniques that override autonomy.

    • Understand basic nervous system patterns (e.g. fawn, freeze, collapse) without diagnosing.

    • Practise real-time listening — without planning your next response.

    • Build attunement that’s felt (not performed or performative).

    • Stay connected through tension or conflict — without collapsing or dominating.

    • Track power, consent, and subtle relational dynamics.

    • Stay present when you're being projected onto, idealised, or resisted — without reacting.

    • Use clear language that reflects rather than interprets someone else’s experience.

    • Ask clear, non-agenda-based questions to create openings.

    • Sense when to pause, mirror, or sit in silence.

    • Discern when someone is seeking to be seen vs. seeking to be rescued.

    • Track the emotional and energetic field in a group (not just the words).

    • Notice somatic cues like posture, tone, breath, and pacing — and respond to them.

    • Practise coherence between how you speak, move, and hold presence.

    • Adjust the pace or frame of a space based on real-time feedback (not preference).

    • Recognise when a group is escalating, numbing, or splitting — and recalibrate with clarity.

    • Work with symbolic and energetic cues without assigning fixed meaning or story.

    • Sense when a group needs containment, amplification, or stillness.

    • Work with both the individual and the collective, without favouring one over the other.

    • Use your own body, tone and breath to reset or redirect group tone.

    • Identify when someone is approaching a threshold (emotionally or somatically).

    • Stay with the process — without rushing, numbing, or rescuing.

    • Use breath, movement, repetition, and stillness to mark change or integration.

    • Hold space for grief, clarity, or descent — without trying to resolve it.

    • Facilitate symbolic process without theatre, drama, or control.

    • Build ritual fluency that’s usable in therapeutic, community, or group contexts.

    • Use accessible, embodied rituals to mark transition, with respect and readiness.

    • Practice anchoring others through your regulated presence.

    • Support someone to enter, stay in, and exit a threshold in their own time.

    • Maintain clear energetic and practical boundaries — without guilt or over-explaining.

    • Speak directly. Make clean agreements. Follow through.

    • Honour lineage, land, and influence without claiming or imitating what isn’t yours.

    • Name your role and limits clearly — especially in group dynamics.

    • Spot when you’re being idealised or put on a pedestal — and stay grounded.

    • Avoid centring yourself in someone else’s process — even if you feel uncertain.

    • Name and repair subtle breaches of trust without collapse or defensiveness.

    • Stay in contact when someone withdraws or gets reactive, without force.

    • Walk away from dynamics that require you to abandon your own values.

    • Work with the elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether, vibration, void) through body-based exploration — not conceptually.

    • Practise gestures, movements, and breath linked to each elemental rhythm.

    • Identify where you habitually overuse or avoid particular elements.

    • Use elemental mapping as a diagnostic and integrative tool in facilitation.

    • Build a full-spectrum range — grounded, expressive, still, subtle, and attuned.

    • Develop physical fluency with each element through repeated micro-practices.

    • Track the resonance or absence of elements in a client or space.

    • Use the elements to restore balance in conversation, posture, or space — practically and immediately.

    • Sense when to pause, speak, wait, or act — without needing to get it right.

    • Build capacity for uncertainty — including the ability to sit in “not-knowing.”

    • Feel the rhythm or pulse of a room and respond accordingly.

    • Develop your intuitive sensing without using it to control outcomes.

    • Strengthen discernment between intuition, fear, habit, and urgency.

    •  Practise using time as a tool — slow things down or apply pressure when it serves.

    •  Interrupt unconscious cycles without shaming or fixing.

    •  Trust silence as a valid, often necessary, facilitation move.

Still have questions? Reach out!