Harmony Within: Embracing Transformation through IFS

Harmony Within: Embracing Transformation through IFS is a four-day spiritual workshop on the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, held at Q Center in Saint Charles, Illinois. It is an IFS Institute flagship experience, led by IFS founder Dick Schwartz together with licensed clinical psychologist Jeanne Catanzaro. It suits anyone curious about IFS, whether as a path of personal insight and inner healing or as a way to meet the model directly from the person who created it.

What to Expect

Over four immersive days, Dick Schwartz and Jeanne Catanzaro guide participants through the heart and core principles of the IFS model. The approach is experiential. Rather than only listening to teaching, you take part in exercises designed to bring deep personal insight and lasting change, working with the idea that the mind is naturally made up of many parts and that this is healthy.

At the center of IFS is the understanding that each person is a system of protective and wounded inner parts, guided by a core Self. The work invites you to get to know those parts with curiosity, and to reach the compassionate, undamaged Self from which they can be led. Two leaders sharing the program means you can learn the model from more than one perspective.

About Dr Richard Schwartz

Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is the creator of Internal Family Systems, a therapeutic model that de-pathologizes the multi-part personality. He began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, he developed IFS in response to what clients told him about the various parts within themselves.

He observed that when those parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, clients spontaneously experienced qualities such as confidence, openness and compassion, which he came to call the Self. IFS holds that inner parts, like members of a family, can be pushed into extreme roles but also carry valuable qualities of their own.

About Jeanne Catanzaro

Jeanne Catanzaro is a licensed clinical psychologist and co-leads this program alongside Dick Schwartz.

The Setting

The program takes place at Q Center, at 5th Avenue in Saint Charles, Illinois, a town in the Chicago area. Gathering at a dedicated conference venue lets the four days unfold in one place.