Systems Wayfinding
IFS for Social Transformation
If you are longing to find what is yours to do in a time of upheaval, you are in the right place.
In this 10 week wayfinding journey, you will learn the navigational tools to impactful social change in complex systems
Sign Me UpHow are you changing in changing times?
It is an important time to be alive right now.
We live in the most consequential decades for the future of humanity. We will either change dramatically and turn the current course around, or risk loosing control of the inter-connected systems that shape the world we know. Whatever we do, wherever we are, we are part of a system that is undergoing profound change.
This programme will not make complexity simpler.
It will make you more capable of acting wisely within it.
And changing times affect us all:
Finding your way to impact in complex times
Clearly, the old arrangements no longer serve us. Maybe they never did. We know we must change the stories we live by, but we are rarely given the tools to understand how deeply these narratives live in us and govern our relationships, the way we think, the decisions we take, what we believe is possible, and the way we imagine our future.
We need to reclaim agency over our choices and our legacy.
And yet, nobody will figure it out for us. We are the leaders, the parents, the teachers who get to decide what future our children and generations to come will live with.
Systems Wayfinding
IFS for Social Transformation
This ten-week online Masterclass brings one of the most powerful frameworks in contemporary psychology into the fields of systems change, social transformation and leadership and provides you with a sophisticated and relational lens to read systems information.
Through this course, you will build five key skills
WHAT YOU WILL GAIN
01
Pattern recognition
You will learn to recognise hidden patterns, noticing what is being protected, constrained, or excluded across individual, organisational, and systemic levels.
Agency at every level
You will build the capacity to hold polarities and engage in relational ways with complex dynamics in your own life. This will help you identify powerful leverage points for change.
Leading from power
You will cultivate the ability to act from deeper presence and self-leadership, grounded in systemic insight rather than habit or reaction.
Using Wayfinding Tools
You will gain practical tools to explore the interconnected parts within yourself and the systems around you. Resistance is understood as a signal of protection rather than an obstacle to overcome. Every part has a place, even the most defensive ones. This reframing reveals where to focus your efforts for real impact.
Listening to what’s ignored
You will sharpen your ability to notice weak wayfinding signals, the data nobody wants to see, the voice nobody listens to, the knowledge that contradicts the dominant story. By tuning into what is systematically exiled, you’ll uncover the most generative and necessary interventions to create real impact.
Student Praise for Systems Wayfinding
"This programme made it impossible to remain unchanged. The process was applicable to me as a whole person and not just as a leader or only to my professional life. This has been the beginning of a transformation that continues to evolve and unfold. It was the key to the door that I needed to open. I can highly recommend this course to anyone who is curious to understand themselves better and the systems they live and work within.”
Megan Johnson, Events Organiser
Steffi Bednarek is an original thinker who has extended IFS into territory where the inner life meets the systems we are embedded in. The result is a framework of unusual power, range, and impact. Systems Wayfinding changes what is possible for anyone working on social transformation.
I’m not aware of anything else that brings psychological depth and systems literacy together with so much rigor and relevance for our times. I am proud that IFS is part of this vital work and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who feels the urgency of this moment.
Those of us who are working in the social change field often carry the sense that things are getting steadily worse, however hard we work. Rather than offering dogmatic answers, Steffi Bednarek opened up possibilities of seeing things from an entirely new perspective. I have taken this learning into my work. That for me, is the measure of impact. Not what I knew at the end of the course, but what became possible because of it.
Samira Jevelin, Social Justice advocate
"As a policy adviser, I spend my working life trying to understand why good information doesn't produce good decisions. This framework gave me the most honest answer I have encountered."
J. Sutcliffe, Sustainability consultant.
"This course was transformative. It helped me understand the inner patterns shaping my work in social change, and to unlock new opportunities to support my clients. Steffi’s extraordinary gift for holding space made it feel safe, deep, and genuinely expansive."
Genevieve Nathwani, Coach for systemic change
“Working with Steffi on the IFS programme has been a special and quite unique experience. I am surprised and excited by the profound inner shifts. I feel re- empowered and have a renewed sense of honesty with myself and others. This has positively impacted on my relationships and leadership style.
Ruth, Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust
WHO ARE YOUR TEACHERS?
Developed by Steffi Bednarek and co-facilitated with David Kitchings, this course will be taught in collaboration with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, Nora Bateson, the President and Founder of the International Bateson Institute, and Vanessa Andreotti, author of the influential books “Hospicing Modernity” and “Outgrowing Modernity” and her daughter Giovanna de Oliveira Andreotti.
A faculty assembled for this moment
CREATOR AND LEAD FACILITATOR — ALL TEN SESSIONS
Steffi Bednarek
Steffi Bednarek is a psychotherapist, systemic facilitator, and the founder of the Centre for Climate Psychology. Trained in Internal Family Systems, Gestalt psychotherapy, trauma therapy, and systemic approaches, she has been a pioneer in applying psychological thinking to the ecological crisis and to the wider metacrisis.
Steffi has worked with individuals, teams, organisations, and communities across Europe and internationally. She is the editor of Climate, Psychology and Change (2024), a landmark book, which reckons with the ways power, colonialism, capitalism and our innocent seeming familiar perceptions impact our myriad crises.
Steffi developed Systems Wayfinding through four years of research, practice, pilot programmes, and a collaborative dialogue with Dr. Richard Schwartz, with whom she is also co-authoring a book.
CO-FACILITATOR — ALL TEN SESSIONS
David Kitchings
David Kitchings is a certified Internal Family Systems therapist, experienced facilitator, and trainer who has worked alongside Steffi Bednarek through the development and piloting of this programme.
He brings a deep grounding in IFS practice and a particular skill in creating the conditions for genuine learning within group settings.
GUEST TEACHER — SESSIONS 3 AND 9
Dr. Richard Schwartz
Dr. Richard Schwartz is the creator of Internal Family Systems, one of the most significant developments in contemporary psychology. He developed the model in response to what his clients were describing: a multiplicity of inner voices, each with its own perspective and protective function, governed by a calm,
compassionate centre he called the Self. Over four decades, the model has grown from a clinical approach into a widely applied framework for therapy, coaching, education, and organisational development. He is the author of numerous books, including No Bad Parts (2021).
Dick's participation in this programme grows directly from his dialogues with Steffi Bednarek — exploring, together, what becomes possible when this model is applied beyond the consulting room, at the scale of systems and civilisational change.
GUEST TEACHER — SESSION 5
Vanessa Andreotti
Vanessa Andreotti is a scholar whose work sits at the intersection of decolonial theory, Indigenous knowledge traditions, and radical adult education. Her books Hospicing Modernity (2021) and Outgrowing Modernity (2025) are among the most unflinching accounts of the worldview that produced the ecological crisis.
Her concept of “hospicing” describes accompanying the end of a worldview without hastening or trying to rescue it. She is joined by her daughter Giovanna Andreotti, who brings this work into the intergenerational and relational dimensions.
GUEST TEACHER — SESSION 7
Nora Bateson
Nora Bateson is a writer, filmmaker, educator, and systems thinker whose work explores the intersection of ecology, learning, and human complexity. Daughter of Gregory Bateson, she has developed the concepts of symmathesy and Warm Data — central to this programme. Her work challenges the dominant
assumption that we can understand any part of a living system by studying it apart from everything else. She offers a way of perceiving that is simultaneously rigorous and fully alive to the complexity of how life unfolds.
What’s In Systems Wayfinding?
THE CURRICULUM: Ten weeks. A deliberate arc.
Ten weekly sessions of 2.5 hours, running October to December 2026. Each session combines teaching, live demonstration, small group inquiry, and guided practice. Sessions are live and interactive (not pre-recorded!).
In addition you can join 3 facilitated practice groups in your time zone that will help you integrate the learning into your own practice.
OCT
WEEK 1 · 8 OCTOBER
Foundation: The Fractal Principle
With: Steffi Bednarek and David Kitchings
We establish the intellectual foundation for the whole ten weeks — introducing the central themes that will run through every session. We build community agreements, map our own relationship to the material, and begin the first practices.
OCT
WEEK 2 · 15 OCTOBER
Exiles and Collective Burdens: What Gets Pushed Out
With: Steffi Bednarek and David Kitchings
We move between individual and collective experience — examining what gets pushed out of personal awareness, and what gets pushed out of a culture. Participants encounter the question of what societies cannot hold, and begin to see the relationship between suppression and systemic dysfunction.
OCT
WEEK 3 · 22 OCTOBER
Self-Energy and the Change Agent [Guest: Dr. Richard Schwartz]
With: Dr. Richard Schwartz, in conversation with Steffi Bednarek and David Kitchings
Dr. Richard Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems, joins us to explore the relationship between the grounded, compassionate centre he calls ‘Self’ and the protective patterns that obscure it. Drawing on his own work with activists and change-makers, Dick introduces ideas that will be deepened across the following weeks.
OCT
WEEK 4 · 29 OCTOBER
Cultural Managers and Cultural Firefighters
With: Steffi Bednarek and David Kitchings
Building on Dick's foundation, we take the framework into the collective. We map the inner voices that maintain the status quo — through control, analysis, and performance — and the collective escapes that modern culture provides.
NOV
WEEK 5 · 5 NOVEMBER
Hospicing Modernity [Guest: Vanessa Andreotti]
With: Vanessa Andreotti and Giovanna Andreotti
Vanessa Andreotti — scholar of decolonial thought and author of Hospicing Modernity — joins us with her daughter Giovanna, offering a framework for understanding what the dominant worldview was built on, what it has suppressed, and what it means to accompany its transformation with honesty rather than denial.
NOV
WEEK 6 · 12 NOVEMBER
The Voice of the System
With: Steffi Bednarek and David Kitchings
We integrate Vanessa Andreotti's framework with the map developed in earlier weeks. Participants work directly with the parts that carry the logic of the dominant culture inside them. This is one of the programme's most challenging and generative sessions.
NOV
WEEK 7 · 19 NOVEMBER
Warm Data and Living Systems [Guest: Nora Bateson]
With: Nora Bateson
Nora Bateson brings the epistemological and relational dimensions of the framework alive — providing the ground for the programme's most radical claim: that inner and outer systems are not analogous but the same phenomenon at different scales.
DEC
WEEK 8 · 3 DECEMBER
Double Binds and Integration
With: Steffi Bednarek and David Kitchings
We integrate Nora Bateson's teaching with everything built to date. Participants explore double binds — the impossible injunctions that systems create — and develop the practice of transcontextual perception.
DEC
WEEK 9 · 10 DECEMBER
Returning to Self [Guest: Dr. Richard Schwartz]
With: Dr. Richard Schwartz, in conversation with Steffi Bednarek and David Kitchings
Dick returns for a session shaped by everything that has emerged. Participants bring their most pressing questions, the edges they have encountered, and the applications they are developing in their own fields.
DEC
WEEK 10 · 17 DECEMBER
Threshold: What Is Mine to Do
With: Full faculty
We close with integration and the explicit question of vocation: what is mine to do in this systemic moment? A threshold, not an ending.
Practice groups
Once the course begins, you are invited to join a small practice group. These are facilitated gatherings across three time zones, meeting on selected Mondays from 5–7pm. They offer an unhurried space to reflect on your learning and begin bringing it into your own professional context and practice.
Groups meet in the following time zones: GMT / US ET / AES
Monday 19th October
Monday 16th November
Monday 7th December
Here’s What You Get
Everything you need to engage fully and go deeper
10 live sessions
2.5 hours each, fully interactive via Zoom. Teaching, demonstration, small group inquiry, and guided practice in every session.
Session recordings
All sessions recorded and available for 90 days after the programme ends, so you can revisit material at your own pace.
Participant handbook
A comprehensive handbook developed specifically for this programme — conceptual frameworks, practices, glossary, and a full reading list.
Live access to Dr. Richard Schwartz
The creator of Internal Family Systems, participating in Sessions 3 and 9. This level of access is rare outside of IFS Institute training programmes.
Guest faculty sessions
Live, interactive sessions with Vanessa Andreotti, Nora Bateson and Giovanna de Oliveira Andreotti, who are some of the most important thinkers in their respective fields.
Access to 3 live facilitated Practice Group sessions
You have the option of joining a practice group that guides you to integrate the learning directly into your daily professional life.
Breakout group sessions
Small group inquiry embedded within each session for peer learning, practice, and relational exchange.
Community platform
On a dedicated private community platform, you will be able to connect and network with other practitioners, leaders, and change-makers from across sectors and geographies, for mutual exchange between sessions.
Book chapters
Free chapters from the main teachers, so you can extend your reading alongside the live sessions.
Certificate of completion
Awarded on attendance of at least eight of the ten sessions. The certificate names the programme, the Centre for Climate Psychology, and the full faculty.
Gateway to the Advanced Systems Wayfinding Certificate
Completion of this course is a prerequisite for enrolment in the Advanced Systems Wayfinding Certificate Course, launching in 2027. By joining now, you secure your eligibility for the next stage of this3 pathway, whenever you may be ready to deepen your learning.
Free Lifetime Guest Access
Should you wish to re-take this course at any point, you have free access on one occasion to return as a guest.
PRICING & REGISTRATION
Structured for accessibility
We have designed a tiered pricing structure so that this programme can reach as wide a range of participants as possible.
Concession / Global South Rate
£195–350
Exclusively reserved for participants in the Global South, early-career practitioners, and people on low income. Apply via the registration form. Places at this rate are limited.
Organisational/Group Rate
£395 per person
For organisations or groups of three or more participants. Contact us to discuss organisational booking and invoicing.
Pay in three monthly instalments for all tiers. Instalments begin at registration and must be completed before the course ends.
A small number of full scholarships are available for practitioners from communities disproportionately affected by the ecological and social crises who demonstrate both financial need and a clear contribution the programme would support. To apply, email [COURSE EMAIL] with the subject line 'Scholarship Application' and a short paragraph about your situation and your work.
Any revenue from this course supports the work of the Centre for Climate Psychology and is a direct contribution to keeping our work independent, rigorous, and sustainable. Your participation helps us to extend our reach.
Satisfaction Guarantee
We are committed to delivering a high-quality learning experience and want you to feel confident in your decision to join.
If, after attending the first live session, you feel this course is not the right fit for you, you may cancel your enrolment within 3 days of that session and receive a full refund. No questions asked.
After this 3-day window has passed, cancellations are no longer possible and no refunds will be issued.
ABOUT THE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE PSYCHOLOGY
Founded by psychotherapist and systemic facilitator Steffi Bednarek, the Centre for Climate Psychology brings together depth psychology, collective trauma research, and evidence-based tools, with some of the world’s most rigorous thinkers in systems change to help build the psychological resilience, relational intelligence, and collective capacity we need to meet the current moment.
CCP develops training programmes, publishes original work, hosts events, and convenes communities of practitioners, leaders, and change-agents working at the edges of what’s possible.
It began with the book “Climate, Psychology and Change, which brought together 34 contributors from across psychology, ecology, and social transformation. Systems Wayfinding is the Centre’s most ambitious programme offering to date.
DATES, TIMES, & FORMATS
Session time: 4:30–7:00 pm UK (GMT/BST)
Practice groups
Mondays in 3 time zones from 5-7pm (GMT/ US ET/ AEST):
Monday 19th October
Monday 16th November
Monday 7th December
Everything you need to know before your register
All sessions are live and interactive via Zoom. We ask participants to commit to at least eight of ten sessions. Recordings available within 48 hours of each session.
4:30–7:00 pm UK (GMT/BST) A time zone converter is available at the registration link. Sessions run in GMT. Please confirm your time zone when registering.
All sessions are live and interactive via Zoom. You will need a stable internet connection, a quiet space, and, where possible, a camera. This is a live community of practice, not a webinar.
We ask participants to commit to at least eight of ten sessions. The programme is designed as a cumulative arc, with each session building on the last. Where unavoidable absences occur, recordings will be available within 48 hours.
If you have accessibility requirements (hearing, visual, or learning needs) please contact us before registering and we will discuss how to support your participation. Zoom automated captions are available on request.
Technical Requirements
Zoom (free to download at zoom.us)
Stable broadband connection
Computer, laptop, or tablet with camera and microphone
A private, quiet space for each session
CONTACT EMAIL: [COURSE EMAIL]
Frequently Asked Questions
This is a unique course, four years in the making through sustained practice and pilot programmes. It covers:
New intellectual territory: Developed by Steffi Bednarek over four years of sustained practice and pilot programmes, this course is not an adaptation of existing material. It takes the evidence based model of IFS into genuinely new territory, moving the Internal Family Systems framework into living systems thinking, decolonial theory, and transcontextual ways of seeing.
Four levels of application: The same insight that illuminates your inner life experiences illuminates the societal patterns that shape these experiences. This framework operates simultaneously at the personal, relational, organisational, and societal level.
A living framework: In a complex world of interconnected systems where the ground keeps shifting, the comfort of certainty becomes a liability. This is a living framework of enquiry that draws on multiple schools of thought. It does not provide universal answers, but offers powerful relational practices that surface information that is often missed. This provides a navigational tool that has the capacity to help you move through shifting grounds.
Accessible to everyone: No prior knowledge of Internal Family Systems or therapeutic training is required. What you bring is the lived experience of your personal and professional life context; what you leave with is a framework that you can apply within it.
Anyone who senses that the personal and the political are connected, and wants a rigorous way to work with both.
Psychologists, therapists, and coaches seeking a framework that reaches beyond the individual
Leaders, executives, and HR professionals working on culture change and systems transformation
Politicians, policy advisors, and public servants navigating complexity under pressure
Climate and social justice practitioners who need to sustain themselves through the long work
Educators and community organisers at the intersection of personal and collective change
It is a good fit if you're ready to:
Sit with the full complexity of what it means to be human in a time of unravelling, including the ways that complexity lives inside you.
Bring curiosity rather than certainty to perspectives that contradict your own.
Engage with discomfort as a feature of the learning, not as a reason to withdraw.
This may not be the right moment if:
You are currently working through acute trauma or grief and need a high level of personalised therapeutic support.
You need a strong sense of predictability or control in group settings right now.
You are seeking a space where facilitators can offer consistent individual attention.
If you suspect that overwhelming personal support needs will arise, we strongly encourage you to arrange appropriate personal support alongside this programme.
If you cannot attend one of the live sessions, don’t worry! Recordings of these sessions will be available for viewing at your convenience on the course platform
Yes, all course materials, including recorded sessions and handouts, will remain accessible for 90 days after the cohort ends. You can revisit the content at your convenience to reinforce your learning.
We will run this course again in the autumn of 2027. To hear when new dates are announced, join the mailing list here (include link to newsletter sign up page)
No. Making enemies of people close to you is not how meaningful change happens. This course builds the capacity to hold complexity without collapsing it, to find the courage to actively reduce harm without dehumanising those you disagree with, and to stay present in relationships even when the ground is contested.
Because you won't be doing it in isolation. Alongside live sessions and a private online community, you have the option to join a small practice group in your time zone. This gives you a regular meeting point to work with what's emerging and to keep accountable when momentum risks to dip.
This course is designed to provide an application of IFS to social transformation. It is not equivalent to a training to apply IFS as a therapeutic tool with individuals. If that is what you are interested in, please check out level 1 trainings at the IFS-Institute.
The term IFS Trained is only granted to therapists after the completion of a level 1 training at the IFS Institute. Participants in this program can refer to themselves as IFS-informed or as integrating “parts work” into their practice.
We are committed to delivering a high-quality learning experience and want you to feel confident in your decision to join. If you signed up to the course and life circumstances change you will receive a full refund until October 13th.
If, after attending the first live session, you feel this course is not the right fit for you, you may cancel your enrolment within 3 days of that session and receive a full refund. No questions asked.
After this 3-day window has passed, cancellations are no longer possible and no refunds will be issued, regardless of circumstances.
In the event that a guest facilitator is unable to attend a session, this does not constitute grounds for cancellation or refund.
It means you get one free return over the lifetime of this course. Once you complete this course, you have a one-time invitation to return as a guest free of charge at any point in the future, for as long as this course is offered. The material will have evolved, the cohort will be different, and you may well be too.
Please note that this only applies to this specific 10 week Systems Wayfinding course and not to other IFS related training courses that the Centre for Climate Psychology may offer in the future.
