Who you're working with

Background

I'm Mitchel Heitinga. Since 2010 I've worked as a coach and trainer. In those early years I worked with NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis — methods that still run through my work, even though IEMT has now become the core of what I teach. Client work and teaching ran in parallel from the start: building craft on the practice side, and teaching colleagues what I encountered in that practice.

Alongside that, I work part-time as an Epic-EHR trainer for physicians at Amsterdam UMC — a materially different training context (digital systems, not personal development) that stands apart from my IEMT work. What I do take from it is daily practice in training groups, in a complex professional setting.

My career began in business and IT consultancy. That background still runs through my work: I know from experience what it's like to work on something inside an organisation that doesn't yield to procedures alone — and why the move from learning a method to applying it is often the hardest step.

Approved trainer with The Association

I'm an approved trainer with The Association for IEMT Practitioners — the official international professional body for the method. That means my live trainings (online and in-person) meet the Association criteria for Practitioner certification, my course material has been inspected and approved, and a successful assessment of two case studies plus video recording leads directly to Association Practitioner status.

Concretely: I teach the official curriculum (Part 1 — Emotional Engineering, Part 2 — Identity Reimprinting), I conduct the assessment of case studies and video recording myself according to the Association criteria, I file the certification with the Association on your behalf when you pass, and I keep the course material up to date against the official Practitioner Manual.

My profile as approved trainer with The Association ↗

Read about the certification and the official criteria →

My approach not for you?

Then you can turn to other approved trainers within The Association. I can warmly recommend Roni Matar and Andrew T. Austin — I have learned a lot from them.

Methods in my palette

Five frameworks work together in what I do. IEMT sits at the centre; the other four are there because they regularly turn out to be needed alongside IEMT in practice.

• IEMT — Integral Eye Movement Technique. Works on emotional patterns and identity imprints that do not shift through conversation alone. The core of what I teach.
• Wholeness Work. Subtler than IEMT; works with smaller movements around attention and presence. Useful when IEMT proves too direct or when a client lacks the attentional stability IEMT requires.
• NLP. A broader skills layer — language patterns, representational systems, anchoring. Not as a goal, but as an extension of the palette with which a practitioner can refine their work.
• Neurogram. A profile framework for insight into how someone's nervous system and personality interact. Not an intervention method in itself; a lens that helps choose the right intervention.
• Ericksonian Hypnosis. Indirect language patterns for unconscious change, originally modelled on the work of Milton Erickson. A genuinely powerful means of bringing change about. Not strictly applied as a method in itself, but as skills I draw on to find the way in that the IEMT work requires — comparable to how NLP functions in this palette.

In training contexts I teach IEMT as a stand-alone method. The other four come up where they enrich the IEMT context, but no blending — those who follow this training learn IEMT as it was designed, not a hybrid with other eye-movement methods.

MOM (Metaphors of Movement) is Austin's own work that grew out of IEMT and developed into a stand-alone discipline. For me it is a way of thinking that feeds my IEMT work — a lens for seeing what moves in someone's mental space.

In my coaching I use that lens fully. In the training I don't: there I work purely with IEMT. I do, on occasion, point to where MOM strengthens my IEMT work, so you can recognise where my choices come from. The same applies to you afterwards: you receive IEMT as a stand-alone method that you can bring into your own practice — or use as an addition to what already works for you.

Working style

Three words capture it: transparent, candid, to the point. That applies to my client work and to my training work. I name what I see. I don't give false certainty where I have none. I don't tiptoe around it when a training participant does something in their client work that could cause harm — I say so, with respect for the fact that they are already a professional.

Result-oriented within a safe space — both matter, in that order. The training room itself has to be a demonstration of the room the participant will create for their clients later. That is not a side issue; it is didactically essential.

Why I give training

IEMT as a method is still relatively small in the Netherlands. What keeps striking me: practitioners who picked up the method in a weekend and then run into walls in their practice — not because they are not bright enough, but because they learned the step protocol without the observational layer underneath. I want to contribute to changing that — not only by training myself, but by training in a way that takes the transition from protocol to independent craftsmanship seriously.

People learn best where it feels safe. I make sure of that.

More

A thirty-minute introductory call is the simplest first step. No obligation, free. We explore together whether the next opportunity fits your starting point — not the other way around.

See all training variants →

Book an introductory call →