Readiness for NAIO™ Training

NAIO™ Practitioner Training is a holistic awareness and somatic movement and awareness practice. It is subtle, relational, and entrusted. The training is designed for those who feel genuinely called to this work, who are ready to mature into the role of practitioner, and who are able to engage with the process in an integrated and grounded way.

Personal Readiness

Students are expected to:

• Be self-aware and honest about their personal behaviors and tendencies.
• Be free from active addictions or dependencies on substances.
• Not rely on the training as therapy, crisis support, or a way to resolve unresolved issues with authority, structure, or belonging.
• Not project onto the training an identity need — whether for “enlightenment,” status, or an instant career.
• Not depend on ritual forms, borrowed cultural practices, or performative spiritual behaviors as a basis for their participation.
• Not carry or impose discriminatory, oppressive, or dominant structures into the training space.

This is not about being “perfectly healed,” but about having enough maturity and stability to participate responsibly in a subtle, relational group process.

Orientation of the Training

The NAIO™ training models the qualities of the practice itself: fluid, relational, responsive, with a light framework for guidance. The deepest learning happens through attunement, dialogue, and embodied practice.

The training is a path to becoming a practitioner and offering service — but students are asked to hold realistic expectations about how a practice is built. Developing a NAIO™ practice takes time, trust, and relationship. It is not appropriate to place urgent personal financial needs or business pressures onto the training. NAIO™ prepares and entrusts practitioners; it does not guarantee immediate income or provide a business model.

Integrity of Representation

NAIO™ is a subtle and entrusted practice. It cannot be reduced to elevator pitches, quick sales strategies, or simplified marketing formulas. Students are expected to honor the depth of the work and represent it responsibly.

While practitioners may find ways to describe NAIO™ simply and accessibly, the training does not promote corporate-style sales tactics, cold outreach, or packaging the practice into slogans. Building a NAIO™ practice happens through depth, embodiment, and the integrity of relationships, not through oversimplification.

Responsible Use of AI Tools and Respect for NAIO™ Requirements

NAIO™ is a subtle and entrusted practice that must be represented with integrity and depth. While AI tools may assist with general study support or brainstorming, students must not rely on AI to create training assignments, written materials, promotional content, or research that represents NAIO™.

Using AI-generated content to describe or promote NAIO™ risks producing inaccurate, diluted, or inappropriate representations of the work, and does not demonstrate the personal reflection and integration that are central to practitioner readiness.

It must also be clear that only NAIO™ International sets the requirements, standards, and policies for training and professional practice. Students are bound by what NAIO™ International requires — not by what AI suggests or tells them they need to do.

This includes (but is not limited to) anonymizing procedures, release forms, consent forms, confidentiality agreements, and training requirements. Students may not substitute AI-generated templates or dictate their own terms in these areas. To do so is not only inappropriate, but also disrespectful to the integrity of the training and to the responsibility NAIO™ carries in safeguarding clients, practitioners, and the work itself.

Training staff cannot enter into repeated email exchanges to correct missteps, misperceptions, or disputes arising from reliance on AI outputs. Students are expected to respect and follow the requirements as they are formally given, and to take personal responsibility for aligning with them.

Responsibility for Practice Development

Students are expected to take initiative in developing their practice experience. This includes finding their own practice partners, sessions, and clinic opportunities as part of their learning journey. The training will guide and support, but it does not supply practice clients or create external structures for students.

This expectation reflects the reality of professional practice itself — that practitioners must cultivate their own relationships and communities, rather than relying on an institution to provide them.

Previous Training and Openness

Many students come with backgrounds in other modalities. This experience can be valuable, but it must be held with humility and openness.

Students are asked to be reasonable about the limits of their prior knowledge and to remain receptive to other views, approaches, and possibilities. NAIO™ has its own ethos and scope, which may not align with frameworks from other disciplines.

This training is not about unlearning what you already know. It is about being able to set aside fixed perceptions long enough to enter new learning, to see differently, and to remain open. The invitation is to expand, to deepen, and to meet the work freshly, rather than to overlay or defend pre-existing frameworks.

At the same time, we appreciate that students arrive from very different paths and levels of experience. NAIO™ welcomes this diversity of background, provided it is carried with curiosity, humility, and respect for the integrity of the work.

Multidisciplinary Foundations

NAIO™ training is inherently multidisciplinary. It draws together insights from philosophy, somatic education, neuroscience, trauma studies, ecological awareness, and relational practice. These strands are not added for breadth alone, but are woven to support a deeper understanding of the integrity of NAIO™ itself — its orientation, scope, and practice.

Students are invited into dialogues across disciplines, learning how to think relationally and apply knowledge responsibly when working with others. NAIO™ engages scientific insight, welcomes innovation, and remains open to what is still unresolved.

At the same time, NAIO™ emphasizes discernment: to recognize where fields genuinely contribute to human sustainability and flourishing, and where they contain tensions or contradictions. Students are encouraged to hold these tensions with care — without collapsing them into easy answers, but also without following any field, method, or authority dogmatically.

The aim is not to overwhelm students with information, but to cultivate a capacity for discernment and integration — situating NAIO™ in meaningful conversation with other fields, while remaining rooted in the integrity of its own practice.

Feedback, Evaluation, and Certification

Students must be prepared to accept feedback and guidance, and to meet both the quantitative requirements (study hours, practice sessions, retreats) and the qualitative requirements (maturity, presence, relational capacity, integrity).

Certification is not awarded automatically on the basis of completing hours. A student must be deemed ready by the training faculty — which includes demonstrating not only technical or procedural competence, but also the depth of embodiment, responsibility, and maturity required to hold NAIO™ professionally.

If a student appears insufficiently integrated to safely practice, they may be asked to undertake sessions with a trauma specialist, mental health professional, or medical practitioner. Evidence of this support may be required, including letters of readiness from the treating professional that confirm the student’s capacity to engage responsibly in professional practice. In some cases, further training or certification may be delayed until such readiness is demonstrated in a consistent and enduring way.

If a student’s behaviors demonstrate a lack of understanding, maturity, or readiness, they may also be required to repeat certain modules of the training before progressing toward certification. This ensures that both the student and the practice of NAIO™ are upheld with integrity.

Learning Environment

NAIO™ training follows what we call an Entrusted Relational Weave. It is not structured as a classroom course, but as a weaving together of independent study, personal mentoring, and gatherings.

These gatherings are small, intimate, and responsive — modeled as circles of maturity where peers communicate openly, listen for rhythm, and absorb deeply through conversation and experiential practice. Alongside them, students engage in independent study, reflection, and practice sessions, always supported by one-to-one mentorship and ongoing guidance.

As a holistic awareness and somatic movement and awareness practice, NAIO™ is rooted in direct relational experience rather than ritual or rigid structures. It is not a ritualistic practice, and this is intentional. Rituals can create dependency, hierarchy, or borrowed forms that distract from genuine presence. Instead, the pedagogy emphasizes attunement, open awareness, and embodied listening.

This orientation is deliberate: the training environment mirrors the reality of professional practice itself. Just as a practitioner must meet clients without a script or ritual, so too does the training create conditions of responsiveness, unpredictability, and real human encounter. Students learn to listen, to adjust, and to meet each moment as it arises — not through formula, but through presence.

For this reason, NAIO™ training unfolds in online circles, personal mentoring, and residential immersions in natural settings — not in lecture halls, corporate training rooms, or wellness studios. The choice of residential settings allows the work to unfold in an environment of belonging and shared rhythm, closer to the way practice itself is lived and encountered.

Small Intimate Groups

Training takes place in circles of no more than six students. Groups are not manufactured but formed organically, as the right students arise together. This intimacy creates a learning environment where the presence, readiness, and integrity of each person supports the whole.

Questions to ask

If you feel drawn to NAIO™ training, reflect deeply:

• Am I stable and mature enough to engage in subtle, relational learning?
• Am I free of dependencies — whether on substances, external validation, or ritualized behaviors?
• Can I release pressure to “finish quickly” or to create a business immediately?
• Am I willing to represent NAIO™ with integrity, without reducing it to marketing shortcuts or AI-generated formulas?
• Am I ready to take responsibility for finding my own practice partners and opportunities?
• Am I open to learning in gatherings, in one-to-one mentorship, and in residential retreats held in natural settings, rather than in classrooms, studios, or halls?
• Am I humble and open enough to set aside assumptions from previous trainings, and willing to meet NAIO™ on its own terms?
• Can I participate in a way that does not carry discriminatory attitudes or attempt to dominate, but instead supports equality, safety, and mutual respect?
• Am I prepared to receive feedback, and to understand that certification is entrusted only when I am deemed ready — not only by hours completed, but by the fullness of my readiness?

If so, NAIO™ training offers an entrusted path: to mature as a practitioner, to deepen in attunement with life’s intelligence, and to offer this work as a service with integrity.

Further details of requirements, responsibilities, and scope of practice are outlined in the NAIO™ Student Handbookand the NAIO™ Ethics and Training Policies, which are provided to those entering the training.