Compassion-Based Spiritual Direction:
Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a Model for Spiritual Companioning
A four-part webinar series from SDI
Presenter
Dr. Frank Rogers, Jr.
Dates
July 23, 30, August 6, 13, 2025
10AM-11:30AM PDT
1PM-2:30PM EDT
Find your local time zone.
Duration
6 hours (total)
Recordings are available.
“We need a new paradigm that convincingly shows that humanity is inherently good and thoroughly interconnected.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, from No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a contemplative, soulful, and non-pathologizing approach to personal healing and spiritual transformation. A contemporary spiritual path, it deepens our connection to a sacred Source of loving energy; it tends, with care, the cacophony of emotions, impulses, and interior self-chatter that so often swirl within us; and it restores us to our true Self, that reservoir of personal power, expansiveness, and compassion that dwells within every human being.
This four-session series is designed for spiritual directors who want to explore how IFS can be a model and a process for compassion-based spiritual direction that keeps spiritual directors grounded in our own compassionate essence and invites those to whom we provide direction into a deeper connection with the sacred and with their own spiritual essence. Through content presentations, self-reflection exercises, contemplative practices, and interpersonal processes, this program will offer a model for spiritual direction grounded in IFS.
What to Expect
This webinar series includes four 90-minute weekly sessions with Frank Rogers Jr.
- Session One: IFS and One's Self-Essence - IFS recognizes that each person has a sacred essence or true Self. This session describes the qualities of this Self-essence and how it is uniquely embodied in each of us.
- Session Two: IFS and Parts – IFS observes that each of us is composed of multiple parts expressed in our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. This session introduces us to the nature of parts and the radically liberative insight that all parts mean well; all parts are welcome.
- Session Three: The IFS Process of Healing Wounds and Restoring Internal Well-Being – All of us get activated by parts that hijack our internal worlds. IFS offers a radically non-pathologizing process for tending to the wounds within these parts and restoring us to our Self-essence.
- Session Four: Facilitating an IFS-Informed Spiritual Direction Session – This session offers a concrete process for companioning another in ways that empower the directee to access their own Self-essence, reconnect to their own sense of the Sacred, and tend to their interior worlds in restorative ways.
“IFS is a contemporary spiritual path. And with its clarity into the dynamics of the soul, its radical hospitality toward all that the soul carries, and its unqualified trust in the essence of self, fused with the sacred, within each person, it offers generative resources for a compassion-based approach to spiritual direction.”
― Dr. Frank Rogers, Jr., Presence Journal, December 2020, Vol 26, Issue 4.
Host
Dr. Frank Rogers Jr.
Frank Rogers is a spiritual director, supervisor, certified IFS practitioner, retreat leader, writer, and professor of spiritual formation at the ecumenical and inter-faith Claremont School of Theology. He has taught spirituality, contemplative practice, and compassionate social engagement for over 30 years, and has written numerous articles and books including Cradled in the Arms of Compassion: A Spiritual journey from Trauma to Recovery; and Practicing Compassion. As the Co-Director for the Center for Engaged Compassion, he offers and teaches compassion-based approaches to spiritual direction and supervision.
Additional Information
- Participants from all spiritual traditions and orientations are welcome in this webinar series as are those with all levels of spiritual experience.
- Each session will run 90 minutes. We understand that the timing of the seminar will not be convenient in every time zone on the planet. For those who have trouble making this time, a recorded copy of each session will be made available to all those who sign up.
- CEU credits are available for all those who participate. SDI will provide a certificate of completion for self-reporting to agencies. More information can be found here: continuing education units (CEUs).
- Scholarships are available for those facing financial hardship. Please apply here.
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