for you, and for the world
Become an Embodiment Facilitator
Whether you are seeking personal transformation, or are helping others transform in your role as the leader of an organization, as a coach, a parent, a therapist, a priest, a body worker, a teacher, a healer, a psychiatrist, an artist, or countless other roles, being grounded in your body is indispensable to being able to help others do the same.
True change requires a paradigm shift
There is a fast-growing awareness that mind and body are inseparable, and that embodiment is key to transformation.
TEPP's Embodiment Facilitator Training is uniquely designed to help you:
- Learn simple practices to help you (and your clients, your students, your staff, your patients, your neighbours, your mother...) drop into the grounded presence of your body.
- Discover and disentangle from cultural prohibitions and stories that live in your body.
- Reclaim your body as a source of relationship and wisdom.
- Deepen, question and grow together with a family of like-minded seekers.
- Get certified as a TEPP Embodiment Facilitator.
Our Year's Journey Together
October 4 - 9, 2026
Session 1: Creating a Foundation
In this session Philip and Allyson introduce participants to a range of practices that underpin the work of TEPP. These practices enable you to butt up against impediments to embodiment within yourself so that you can notice them and transform them. These are not practices that just make you feel good – they provide you with the skills to reliably find your way back home to your body and your most vital truth. Ultimately, they help you reunite the thinking of the head with the deep knowing and presence of your body. When you experience that wholeness for yourself, you don't just listen to the body; you listen to the world through the body.
Time and Date to be determined by the group
Weekly Zooms
Once a week we meet together for an hour-long Zoom call, during which a new practice is shared, challenges are discussed, and the training continues. Immersed as we are in a culture of forgetfulness, the continuity provided by these calls is indispensable. Calls are scheduled based on everyone's availability and are recorded so you can access them at any time.
April 25 - 30, 2027
Session 2: Discovering Radical Wholeness
The curriculum of the Facilitators Training focusses on the practices that constitute the standard two-day Radical Wholeness workshop. This session focusses on those practices to helps you master them. The skills that result not only deepen your experience of embodiment, they provide you with a personal foundation from which you can begin to share the practices.
Inbetween Sessions 2 & 3
Zooms + Buddies
In addition to our weekly Zooms, you are invited to work with 'buddies' from the group to practice sharing the exercises. We offer a structure for exploration and invite you to dig into each practice, ask questions, understand its purpose for yourself, and gain comfort in leading someone else through it. These extra sessions are optional but highly rewarding, and highly recommended if you intend to share the work with others!
October 3 - 8, 2027
Session 3: Bringing it All Home
Session three is the culmination of our year together, and always has a bittersweet quality to it. In these last five days we introduce some variations on practices we’ve addressed over that time, and we move through the curriculum of the weekend workshop with an invitation to everyone to select one of its practices to lead the group through. There is a sense over this week of bringing the work home, bit by bit – empowering you to carry it into the world, however that might happen.
Audios, Videos and more
Extra Supports
You'll receive a Facilitator Manual, access to a library of videos showing how Philip teaches each practice in the Radical Wholeness workshop, and other supports. Also included in your training is an optional "Trauma-informed Care for TEPP Facilitators" – a virtual workshop led by TEPP graduate and Eco-therapist Kimberly Rose.
Upcoming Cohort
All three in-person sessions will be held at:
Sanctuary Retreat Center
2610 Adial Road
Faber, Virginia 22938
Session 1: October 4 - 9 2026
Session 2: April 25 - 30, 2027
Session 3: October 3 - 8, 2027
Investment TBA (instalment plans available)
**Meals and accommodation are booked through the retreat center. See FAQs below with pricing.
Limited to 22 students per cohort.
How the training benefitted these facilitators
The biggest part of how this training is different is in helping us recognize our deeply engrained patterns, which ultimately prevent us from being authentic with our selves, others, and wholeness. You have no idea what it is until you personally experience it. Thank you Philip! You saved my life!
One of the greatest gifts to me from this work, thus far anyway, is the gift of a quieted mind and a process and place where I will find that quiet mind as a path, not a goal. Shifting awareness to being, to process and to a journey without an end point is a subversively wonderful transformation that sneaks up on you, if you don’t work at it.
If you have experienced profound shifts during the Radical Wholeness workshop, and are thinking about doing the teacher training, I would say don’t hesitate. The softening of divisions continues as you deeply ground into the body and the world. It keeps going, getting richer and more profound. There is wild, soulful love here. This is important work.
The opportunity to work and play with vital and curious partners is precious. And of course Philip’s low key yet sensitive and thoughtful approach creates precisely the container for this adventure in wholeness.
Find a facilitator near you
Facilitator Directory
Our facilitators are spread around the world. See a listing of those currently sharing the work, either through Radical Wholeness workshops or integrated into their work.
Meet the TEPP Co-Directors
Philip Shepherd
Author & Embodiment Facilitator
Philip Shepherd is recognized as a leader in the global embodiment movement. He is the founder and co-director of The Embodied Present Process™. Philip's unique techniques have been developed to transform our disconnected experience of self and world, and are based on the vision articulated in his celebrated books, New Self, New World (2010) and Radical Wholeness (2017). His new book, Deep Fitness, was co-authored with Andrei Yakovenko. He leads workshops around the world, creating a network of people bringing TEPP to their lives.
Allyson Woodrooffe
Certified Coach & Embodiment Facilitator
Allyson Woodrooffe is the co-director of The Embodied Present Process™, and is also certified as a Co-Active Professional Coach. She brings the strengths of both modalities and her natural compassion and embodied intuition to the work she does, which is primarily dedicated to helping women move into an embodied clarity in which anxiety is eased and a grounded resilience discovered.
Is this training for you?
The Training is designed to help you achieve two goals. The first is to renew your relationship with your body’s deep intelligence. As you do that, you effectively disarm the noise of the head and learn how to land in the calm, deeply connected presence of the body. The second is to develop the ability to help others do the same, by learning TEPP practices in a way that enables you to share them.
Over our year together, the unique, individual journey of every participant is grounded in and supported by a small community that deepens with every passing week.
There are three main reasons that people join the TEPP adventure, and we support them all:
- Some participants will be interested in becoming facilitators of the weekend workshop
- Some will already have a practice as a facilitator, coach, therapist or bodyworker, and will be looking to enhance what they can offer by meeting their clients from a place of deeper presence and embodiment.
- Some will be there for the challenges and rewards of the personal growth it will support.
And many participants will be there for all three reasons.
Sanctuary Retreat Center
Location of our 2025 Virginia Training
Questions you might have
Logistics
Are there any prerequisites?
The only pre-requisite for the Facilitator Training is to have taken a Radical Wholeness 2 day workshop prior to the second session of the training. We encourage you to take one before the first session if you can.
What's the time commitment?
Shifting our way of being from living in the head to a fully embodied experience takes time. And the path of that journey is a deeply personal one.
The formal structure of the Training entails our three in-person retreats and our weekly one-hour Zoom calls. To get the most benefit from the training, though, you can expect to spend an additional 30 min - 2 hrs per week on your own time mastering the practices or meeting with fellow facilitators to learn to share the work.
As a participant in the training you are asked to understand that you are responsible for your own progress. You cannot receive this training passively. At the same time, we will do whatever we can to support you in your process of integration.
Are there required readings?
Before Session 1
Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing by Robert Wolff
Wolff takes us with him as he discovers the Sng’oi, an aboriginal culture in Malaysia – and as he discovers them, we discover ourselves, and see what we have lost, and what I strive in my work to regain. A beautiful, moving, illuminating little book.
Before Session 2
TEPP Facilitator's Manual - which you'll receive at the conclusion of the first session
Before Session 3
Radical Wholeness
What do I need to prepare?
As in the Radical Wholeness workshop, some of the exercises require that you know a short text by heart. Rest assured, this is not something you will ever be asked to perform – it’s just needed for some of the exercises. You can use one you are familiar with, or find a new one. It can be anything at all – a nursery rhyme, a song lyric, a Shakespearean monologue, the national anthem, a poem, anything. It really doesn’t matter, although it does help if it’s something you enjoy. It can get pretty tedious saying, “Row, row, row your boat” over and over. Just saying…
Whatever you choose to memorize, it should be at least 45 seconds long, though any length in excess of that is fine. If English isn’t your first language, feel free to bring something in your mother tongue. Having it WELL memorized is important.
What are the payment options?
We offer different payment options - usually 1, 3, or 6 monthly payments. The training needs to be paid in full prior to the start of the second session.
What is the refund or cancellation policy?
It is understood that by signing up for the training you are making a commitment to complete the full year. Similarly we make commitments to the venue and other participants that leave us unable to offer a refund if you leave the training before it is complete.
Click here to read our full policy.
What do our days look like?
Sunday
Check-in after 4pm, Dinner 6pm, Training: 7 – 8:30 pm
Monday - Thursday
Training: 10 am – 6:00 pm
Friday
Training 9:30 am – 12:30, Lunch, Check-out after lunch
Meals: There will be morning and afternoon coffee/tea breaks, and a 90 min lunch break.
We'll have some optional evening activities, such as a movie night and a Deep Fitness introduction!
Can I join the TEPP Facilitator Training without taking a workshop first?
Ideally all participants will have experienced the weekend workshop prior to the first session. However there have been individuals keen to take the training who haven't had an opportunity to experience the workshop. In that case, we ask for a commitment to take a workshop prior to the start of the second session.
Those who have signed up for the training can sign up for any workshop at 50% off the regular rate. They also get a 50% discount on any workshop during the training year.
If I'm able to participate in the first training session but am unable to do the second, would I have an opportunity to complete the final two training sessions another year?
Switching between training sessions is tricky. The number of participants is limited, so unless someone dropped out, there might not be a spot. That having been said, it’s something we have done, and would be willing consider doing again if all the circumstances were right.
I live near the retreat center. Can I just commute?
Unfortunately no. There are several key reasons for this. Staying together, sharing meals and enjoying the spontaneous conversations that occur throughout the mornings and evenings really helps the group bond and the work deepen. The retreat setting itself also plays a role in fostering the connection that then carries us between sessions. We are held by the space and supported by the gorgeous food prepared for us – far from the habitual snags of our home life.
Certification Pathway
Will I be able to lead practices at the end of the training?
Yes. Much of the training focusses on a deep familiarity with the 24 practices that make up the two-day workshop, and to understand their transformative power by discovering the inner journey of each. The training will certainly prepare you to be able to share whichever of these practices you wish to.
Will I be able to lead the Radical Wholeness workshop at the end of the training?
At the end of the training, graduates who want to go ahead and run Radical Wholeness workshops usually begin with two- or three-hour events, sharing the curriculum in bite-sized chunks as they become increasingly familiar with its journey. When a graduate feels ready to facilitate the full weekend workshop and Philip and Allyson agree, we will include their name on our website as a certified facilitator.
If I don't plan to teach the practices, can I still take the training?
Absolutely. Many people have taken the training as a way of supporting their own personal goals.
What else is required?
Attendance at the majority of Zoom calls is necessary to receive a certificate, and to make the most of the training.
I still have questions.
Fill out the contact form and send us your questions! If we can't answer them by email we'll suggest meeting for a short phone or Zoom call.
About Sanctuary Retreat Centre
How do I get to the Sanctuary Retreat Center?
From the Sanctuary website:
Sanctuary does not offer airport shuttles. For a list of transfer services, click here: Traveling to the Sanctuary.
Airports
The closest airport is Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport (CHO) (50 minutes by car); other possibilities include:
-Lynchburg Regional Airport (LYH) – 50 minutes by car
-Richmond International Airport (RIC) – 1 hour and 45 minutes by car
-Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) – 2.5 hours by car
Because of our rural location, we recommend using your own or a rental car. If you need a ride from Charlottesville airport, train or bus station, there are several services available to choose from. We suggest you pre-book your ride, as the Sanctuary Retreat Center does not offer shuttle service.
Transportation to and from Charlottesville, VA
Local
https://www.nelsoncounty-va.gov/business-directory/business_category/limousine-and-taxi-service/
-Afton Coach LLC, Norman Daniel (434) 263-7155 or (434) 760-7115 (cell); aftoncoach@gmail.com; www.aftoncoach.com
-All N 1 Transportation LLC, Shawanda Crawford (434) 270-5790; alln1trans@gmail.com
-Corporate Car Service of Virginia, Afton, VA, Dennis Garrison (434) 825-8199; ccsv.cville@gmail.com
-Tammy Morris (gamgamtam@gmail.com) (434) 277-8125
Charlottesville
-Aberdare Transit Inc. (24-hour service) (434) 227-9933
-Yellow Cab of Charlottesville (434) 295-4131
-Charlottesville Transportation & Taxi (434) 466-8465
-McCoy’s Taxi Service (434) 295-7433
What are the food and accommodations like?
Meals are healthy, Mediterranean style cuisine with fresh ingredients. There are vegetarian and meat/dairy options at most meals. Dietary restrictions can be communicated to the retreat center when you book your accommodation.
The center offers different accommodation styles, from cozy modular cabin rooms to comfortable Lodge rooms. Single accommodation is available for anyone who wishes.
Accommodation must booked and paid for directly with the retreat centre at least 30 days before each session.
What should I bring?
You might wish to bring a reusable water bottle and/or travel coffee mug. Please bring clothes that are comfortable to move in. You might also wish to bring a notebook.
Sanctuary Retreat Center provides sheets, towels and soap. You may also wish to bring:
- slippers or heavy socks as they ask that shoes be removed at the door
- comfortable shoes and clothing suitable for walks
- personal toiletries (toothpaste, shampoo etc)
- your personal medications
- anything else you need to feel comfortable!
Embodied facilitator training
A Final Word
The work of TEPP has been called "the great undoing". It is a process that helps you remember what has always been with you – your body, your breath, your being, your belonging.