How I teach IEMT — methodically, with respect for your craft.

The core sentence

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

This is not a slogan. It is a design principle that steers every other choice. Under stress, new memory formation becomes harder — cortisol gets in the way of synaptic plasticity. For IEMT this goes double: working through stuck emotional patterns calls for a nervous system that is not on alert. Safety is not a soft addition here — it is a hard precondition for the work itself.

For my training approach this means the training room itself is a demonstration. A demonstration of the space you make for your clients later. That is not a side note; it is didactically essential.

Four values in hierarchical order

My work rests on four values that, in this order, take the lead. When they conflict, the higher value wins — that is binding, not advisory.

• 1. Safety. Participants can make mistakes, hesitate, fail — without social or professional cost. Quiet in the room, no urgent calls, explicit permissions. No one learns when they feel unsafe.
• 2. Craft. I master what I teach at the level I claim. No pretension, no guesswork, no overtraining on concepts I have not lived through myself. Methodological rigour, clear structure, honest limits about what works.
• 3. Service. The work serves the participant, not my ego or my offer. Modest tone, no hype, attention to what the participant actually needs.
• 4. Productive tension. Pressing on within the safe space. Safety without productive tension becomes patronising; productive tension without safety becomes violence. Both matter — in that order.

I am results-oriented and move in big steps. In some work contexts that can chafe; in my own practice and trainings it strikes a healthy balance. Staying quiet where the participant needs it, pressing on where it serves the learning. The rule: safety is always the foundation. Within that safety, we press on. Never the other way round.

Structure of a training day

Every training day is built in four phases, regardless of length:

Phase	Aim	Share
Opening safely	Attention, trust, orientation	~10%
Holding the content	Knowledge transfer, modelling, guided practice	~50%
Implicit transmission	What lands without explanation — ownership, recognition	~25%
Closing and inviting	Integration, explicit learning gains, take-away question	~15%

The first ten per cent is purely psychological preparation — content in this phase is a mistake. Quiet on arrival, a short partner exercise, explicit permissions. Specific to IEMT trainings: I always state here that participants may themselves be moved by the exercises during the training. That is not a problem, that is information. Permission to step out — temporarily or for good, without explanation — is not a side note but a precondition for doing the work safely.

Four steps per technique

For transferring procedural skill I use a four-step approach. I apply all four steps with every IEMT technique:

1. Demonstration. I perform a session at normal pace.
2. Deconstruction. I perform it again and name every sub-step.
3. Instruction to the other. You walk the other through the steps of the session — the pivot step.
4. Performance. You perform it yourself, you receive feedback.

Step three is the most uncomfortable and the most informative. In classical instruction it gets skipped. Here it makes visible where you implicitly misunderstand an intervention — before you get it wrong with a real client. Giving instruction to someone else forces you not just to do the work but to be able to pass it on. That is a different layer of understanding.

(Demonstration, Deconstruction, Comprehension, Performance)

Deliberate practice on what does not yet flow

A training does not work by clocking hours. It works by practising precisely on what does not yet flow — not on what already goes well. That calls for structure: name in advance what you will sharpen this round, one element at a time, with direct feedback straight after.

The triad format has this discipline built in. The observer names before the round what they will watch closely — for example, the transition between two pattern phases, or the moment a client loses the thread. Feedback then concerns exactly that element, not general impressions. One point per round. What already works needs no attention.

That sounds strict. It is also efficient: in a day we work on a handful of concrete elements, instead of vague back-and-forth shuffling. And you leave the training with a short list of what you have refined this session — not a feeling of 'we did something again'.

(Deliberate Practice)

Making thinking visible

Expertise becomes implicit — the expert does it well but can no longer explain how. In an IEMT session I lean heavily on subtle signals: the client's breathing, tension around the eyes, pauses in the voice and what is said. You need to learn to see this and hear the words — and that requires me to name it explicitly, even when it feels self-evident to me.

Concretely: I voice what I think during a demonstration, not only what I do. 'I can see her breathing has risen — that tells me I am going too fast. I slow down. I will not move on to the next pattern now, I let her land first.' You do not just hear the technique; you hear the reasoning that steers the technique. That is where professional competence lives, and it is what normally stays implicit.

(Cognitive Apprenticeship — modelling, articulation, scaffolding & fading)

Reflection as a learning activity

For practitioners, reflection is not an afterthought — it is how you work. During a session you notice when something does not land and adjust; after a session you take stock of what you have seen. Both kinds of reflection sit embedded in the training: not as a separate activity after the learning, but as the way the learning consolidates.

After every triad exercise come fixed reflection questions — not open reflection, but focused on what you saw happen in that round and what you will do differently next time. In multi-day trainings you receive a short reflection task between sessions about application in your own practice. What you notice, you bring back to the group.

I name out loud when I adjust on the spot and why. That makes the reflective layer of the work visible rather than implicit.

(Reflective Practice: reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action)

Feedback with direction

Not all feedback works. General compliments ('you did well') slide off; vague criticism ('that didn't quite work') leaves you stuck. Feedback with direction answers three questions: where is this going — how is it going now — what is the next step.

During triad work the observer uses these three questions. Not 'I thought that was lovely', but 'your intervention was heading towards X, the client landed at Y, my suggestion for the next round is Z'. I model that in my feedback to the group — no judgements about you as a person or practitioner, but about the task, the process and what a next step would be.

For your own work later, the same holds. What I model for you here is not just a training technique; it is how you give feedback to yourself after a session in your own practice — and to a client where that fits.

(Visible Learning)

Adaptive pace — competence over time

In traditional education, time is fixed and competence varies. In this approach it is reversed: time varies, competence is fixed. A training is finished once you have reached the level needed to use IEMT responsibly in your own practice.

That takes a different length per person. Participants do not move on with insufficient command — that would risk harm to their own clients. In the with supervision variant there is extra room for this: six supervision hours between blocks in which we discuss cases from your own practice.

(Mastery Learning)

Other principles for adult learning

Alongside the approach above, my work rests on four further principles that reinforce each other:

• Whole task before isolated skill. Complex learning starts with authentic complete tasks, not with sub-skills. Concretely: I start with complete IEMT sessions in simplified form, not with isolated eye-movement patterns. You practise the whole work from the start, at a simplified level. (4C/ID)
• Apply before remember. My learning aims sit at the level of applying, analysing and evaluating — not at the level of explaining what IEMT is. You do not need to recite the definition; you need to judge when IEMT is the right intervention, which pattern you see and what adjustment is required. (Bloom's taxonomy)
• Train reproductive and productive aspects separately. Some aspects of IEMT are reproductive (the step sequence, the eye-movement patterns): they call for repetition. Others are productive (when to intervene, how to read the nervous system, which pattern to follow): they call for case material and reflection. I train both explicitly, with different methods. (Romiszowski)
• Adults learn differently from children. My participants are professionals with several years of work experience. I treat them as experts in their own field, not as pupils. Their existing practice is teaching material, not background. Every IEMT technique is linked to situations they already encounter. (Knowles — andragogy)

Learning consolidates after the session

A session does not fix the learning in place — that happens in the moments afterwards, when you retrieve it again. Spaced retrieval is therefore a design principle in my approach: targeted retrieval moments at spaced intervals, instead of a single one-off hand-over.

(Spaced retrieval)

What this approach is not

No 'certification in a weekend' — that leads to shallow application. No self-study-only path to certification — applying IEMT responsibly calls for live practice under guidance, with direct feedback (online or in person). No mixing of IEMT with other eye-movement methods — those who follow this training learn IEMT as it was designed. No marketing promise that IEMT is 'better' than other methods — what is clear is where IEMT's own value lies.