YEARLONG AUTONOMICS PRACTICUM - AUTUMN 2026 & SPRING 2027

Please note that this practicum is by application only. Apply here. We are running an earlybird discount of $2000 for applications received and enrolled prior to April 1, 2026.

Hearth Science, through our translation research team has codified a new foundation model of living autonomic physiology (Autonomics). The model builds on advances in clinically-applied neurophysiology, including the Polyvagal Theory, as well as the Evolved Nest work of Darcia Narvaez, PhD, trans-cultural indigenous lineages, and other mentors and advisors of ours pioneering in neurophysiology. The model is on schedule to achieve peer-review validation this calendar year (2026). You can read a number of white papers about it on ResearchGate here. As validation expands, demand for these skills is increasing dramatically.

In this yearlong autonomics practicum, as a 'Craft of Being' apprenticeship, we will rediscover, experience and explore the interconnected, animate intelligence of the human body and nervous system both in ourselves and in relationship to a cohort of peers. You will learn to read the deep & nuanced geologic landscape of your own living nervous system, and to track this landscape in others. The art and science of this work is applicable across a broad range of domains in the healing arts, leadership, community-building, systems change, and elite performance. The nervous system is a primary site of embodied transformation.

We will explore:

• •A non-brain-centric worldview of the human nervous system, body, and collective body
• •A novel living neurocartography of the Autonomic Nervous System
• •Refined understandings of the distinction between neuroanatomy and neurochemistry
• •Dynamic movement between autonomic states in relation to contexts of safety, danger or life threat

We will experience:

• • Capacitizing your interoceptive & autonomic tracking abilities both in relationship to self and with clients within your relevant scope of practice
• • Getting you lots of hands-on experience tracking yourself and others through various nervous system states
• • Increasing your granular experience of your own interoceptive anatomy
• • Helping you to really deeply feel the ways that state-shift happens
• • Increasing your confidence in being able to follow organic processes of the ANS
• • Helping you differentiate when to allow things to unfold and when to intervene
• • Helping you clarify the qualities with which you intervene- sometimes this is very gentle, sometimes very direct, etc.
• • Continuiung to familiarize you with the pattern language of the ANS in increasingly nuanced ways
• • Increasing everyone’s attunement to field phenomena in the group
• • Strengthening the collective healing field
• • Continuing to cross-pollinate collaborations and professional relationships
• • Practice, practice, practice

Learning will happen within our own bodies experientially. It will then be applied to working with others.
This practicum is both experiential and practical, and involves the following forms of commitment and assignment:

• •Live engagement and tracking during each seminar class
• •Basic interoceptive exercises practiced throughout the year
• •Video and written homework
• •Entry into the second semester is contingent upon instructor approval

WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR:

Researchers, integrative physicians, naturopathic physicians, psychologists, nurses, trauma therapists, addiction therapists, practitioners of mindbody medicine, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, licensed professional clinical counselors, occupational therapists, physical therapists, bodyworkers.

We will consider applications from individuals across the spectrum of research and the healing arts, with the caveat that you need to have a clear scope of research or practice in which you will be applying this learning.

Course is BY APPLICATION ONLY. Regretfully we are unable to offer scholarships for this course at this time. If accepted however, we will work with you to create an installment plan for tuition if paying it in a single lump sum is overwhelming. Apply here.

Our autonomic physiology seminar was, in brief, and I say these words with potency, an altogether grounding reorientation of my connection to Self and my Environment which manifested itself during a period of deep and painful metabolization of emotions and nervous system states which were previously unexperienced by my physical body. Not only was it meaningful for me, but it was in fact quite necessary for me in order to remain acutely conscious, observant, and attentive to the ways in which connection and safety desired to show up for me in a life context/situation which seemingly provided very little. In this way, it meant a great deal to me - and as I've always felt, known, and seen, this connected world knows the confluences of support, required growth and stretch, invitations to expansions and safeties in contraction much better than I am necessarily consciously aware. This course provided the banks and power charge to a river of insight, of revelation, and of reorientation.

Personally, it allowed me to apply grounded theoretical learning to the movement of energy within my own body and community. In turn, it contextualized the physiological requirement of containing, of holding, and of relating in a way that illuminates the beautiful symbiosis between our unconscious lives and our automated physiology. This course brought phenomenal clarity, with neurophysiological acuity and revelational attributes, the relationships between my own fields of study - restoration, creative expression, conflict dissolution and contextualization, and the general notion that in fact all of these fields are not separate at all.

-J. Ariel Guy, Counselor, Conflict Consultant, Artist & Mental Health Eductor (presently residing in Tel Aviv)