You became a practitioner to help people heal.
The system you trained in wasn't built for that.
We combined our clinical experience, teaching experience, and innovation to fill this gap.
A practitioner education pathway for healers who want to work differently.
Trauma-informed. Nervous system-aware. Sustainable for you and the people you serve.
Most clinical training teaches practitioners how to treat conditions.
Almost none of it teaches practitioners how to care for whole people.
If you work with patients or clients navigating chronic illness, burnout, trauma, or complex health histories — you already know the gap. You feel it in your appointments. You see it in your clients' faces when the standard protocol doesn't account for their actual life.
You may have sought out additional training on your own. Trauma-informed care. Nervous system regulation. Whole-person frameworks. But you've likely pieced it together from scattered sources, because most professional education still doesn't integrate these approaches.
And there's another gap almost no one talks about: sustainable practice. The burnout rate among helping professionals is staggering — because practitioners are trained to give endlessly, without frameworks for their own tending.
Body Luminary's Practitioner & Leadership Education is being developed to address both gaps: how to care for whole people, and how to sustain yourself in the work.
This is for practitioners and leaders who are ready to go deeper.
This pathway is being designed for:
Healthcare practitioners — MDs, DOs, DCs, NPs, PAs, PTs, OTs, acupuncturists, naturopaths — who want to integrate nervous system-aware, trauma-informed approaches into their clinical work
Coaches and therapists who work with clients navigating chronic illness, burnout, life transition, or complex health histories
Integrative and holistic practitioners who want a more rigorous framework for the whole-person work they're already doing
Healthcare leaders and educators who want to bring trauma-informed, sustainable care principles into their organizations, teams, or curricula
You don't need to be struggling in your practice to belong here. Many practitioners come because they are good at what they do — and they want to be better, in a way that's also sustainable for them.
2. Trauma-Informed Practice Integration
A focused curriculum on what trauma-informed care actually means in practice — not just as a philosophy, but as a set of specific skills, frameworks, and ways of being with people. Covers: understanding nervous system states in clinical encounters, recognizing re-traumatization risks in standard protocols, building safety in therapeutic relationships, and adapting your approach to fluctuating capacity.
4. Certification Pathway (In Development)
We are developing a formal certification pathway for practitioners who complete the full training and want to be recognized as TENDing Method-informed providers. Details will be shared with waitlist members first.
The founding cohort will co-create this curriculum alongside Michele and the Body Luminary team. Founding members will receive the deepest access, the lowest price point, and significant influence over how the program develops.
What the Practitioner Pathway Will Include
We are currently developing this curriculum and will be launching with a founding cohort. Here is what we are building toward:
1. TENDing Method Practitioner Training
An in-depth training in the TENDing Method framework — nervous system regulation, body literacy, trauma-informed care, and sustainable pacing — adapted for practitioners who want to bring this approach to their clients and patients. Includes the conceptual foundations, clinical applications, and direct practice with the tools.
3. Sustainable Practice & Practitioner Tending
Because you cannot tend others sustainably from a depleted nervous system. This module addresses the practitioner's own relationship with their body, capacity, and care — applying the same TENDing principles to the healer. Includes: recognizing compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma, building sustainable rhythms in practice, and creating conditions for your own healing and longevity in the work.
This training is built by practitioners who live what they teach.
Body Luminary was founded by Dr. Michele Renee — a Doctor of Chiropractic, Master's in Acupuncture, and former Director of Integrative Care at Northwestern Health Sciences University who also lives with Long COVID, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic Lyme disease.
The TENDing Method wasn't developed in a classroom. It was developed by a clinician who had to apply everything she knew — and then go further — to navigate her own body's collapse and rebuilding. The practitioner training is built from that same integration of clinical expertise, lived experience, and hard-won wisdom.
Teaching alongside Michele: Dr. Karen Lawson (MD, integrative health coaching) and Dr. Brenna Erickson (DC, nervous system specialist) — both bringing their own depth to the practitioner training.
We are building the Practitioner & Leadership Education pathway now and will be launching a founding cohort in the coming months. Waitlist members will:
Hear about the program before it's publicly announced
Receive founding cohort pricing — the lowest this program will ever be offered
Have input into the curriculum through a pre-launch survey
Get early access to any free practitioner resources we release in the meantime
If you are a practitioner or leader who wants to work more sustainably and more effectively with the whole person — this is where to start.
This program is in development.
The people on the waitlist will shape it.
FAQs
Do I need to have done TENDing Foundations as a participant first?
1
It is not required, but it is strongly recommended. Going through TENDing Foundations as a participant gives you a ground-level understanding of what the program feels like from the inside — which meaningfully enriches the practitioner training. Waitlist members will receive information about accessing TENDing Foundations at a practitioner discount.
Is this only for people who work with chronic illness?
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No — though the curriculum is deeply informed by chronic illness and complex health presentations. If you work with burnout, trauma, grief, life transition, or any population navigating stress and dysregulation, this training will be relevant to your work
Will there be CEUs or continuing education credits?
3
We are exploring CE credit options for relevant licensing bodies. This will be clarified before the founding cohort launches. Waitlist members will be informed as soon as that determination is made.
What if I'm not a licensed practitioner — I'm a coach or wellness educator?
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You are welcome here. This training is designed to be applicable across a range of helping and healing roles. It does not confer clinical licensure and is not a substitute for it — but the frameworks, tools, and philosophy are valuable to anyone working with people navigating health, body, and healing.
