IFS x DESIRE

You get to have a life you actually want!

May & June 2025

Photo: Eric Bandiero

And, many of us also have parts of ourselves that scramble the signals of our desire. Parts that feel scared to want. Parts that don’t believe it’s possible to have what we want. Parts that have taken in messages about what we are and aren’t supposed to want, and what we have to do to get it. Parts that have simply been too busy with the work of surviving to know what we want.

This 8-week course is about using IFS practices to listen inside and hear clearly what you actually want. And it’s about unlearning constraining conditioning around desire. It’s about building a life that is grounded in safety and reality, and also grounded in your genuine desires.

You get to have a life you actually want!

We all have parts of ourselves that desire — that want some things and not others, that feel alive in some situations and not others, that say “I want,” and “yes,” and “no.”

Photo: Tory Stopler

What’s Included

  • 8 weekly Zoom calls with Rakhel and the other folks taking this course with you

  • Recorded guided meditations integrating IFS and meditation, with a focus on desire

  • Journaling prompts to facilitate listening inside and hearing what’s true for you

  • Movement practices to connect with desire in your body

  • Readings and handouts on IFS, pleasure activism, and attachment

  • Unlimited access to session recordings and course materials so you can come back to them at your own pace, anytime

This is for you if…

  • You’re going through (or considering) a career transition

  • You’re going through (or considering) a breakup, separation, or divorce

  • You grew up in an environment where you had to focus on your parent(s)/caregiver(s) feelings — rather than the other way around

  • You can feel places where you’re living from a sense of obligation — “should”s around caring for others, providing, being “good”

  • You’re a former gifted kid (gifted former kid? lol)

  • You want to maintain a strong connection with yourself while in intimate relationships — partnering, parenting, friendship, family

  • You want more pleasure and love in your relationship with your body

  • You’re exploring your sexuality

  • You’re taking on new leadership

  • You want more pleasure and connection in your life

  • You want a community to explore desire, pleasure, and parts work with!

Values

  • Trauma Informed

  • Person Centered

  • Non-Pathologizing

  • Liberation Oriented

Pleasure is a reliable compass

P.S. When I use the words “desire” and “pleasure,” people sometimes think I’m just talking about sex.

But I’m actually talking about learning to connect with what you want and enjoy in every area of your life, as an ongoing practice and way of life.

About Your Facilitator

Hi! I’m Rakhel Shapiro. I’m really looking forward to exploring your parts, and your desires with you.

Here’s a bit about me, what qualifies me to lead this course, and what’s motivating me to lead this course in particular.

I have an MA in clinical psychology, and I am ABD (all but dissertation) in my PhD in clinical psychology. This means I’ve completed all the clinical training, clinical experience, and coursework that comprise a PhD in clinical psych. As a therapist, I specialize in attachment and relational trauma. I’m in the final stretch of my dissertation, which should be complete just before this course begins.

My research has two main areas of focus: The role of self-compassion as a protective factor in the trauma process; and IFS meditation — including its impact(s), and how it works. I’m really looking forward to sharing my findings with you, and integrating the insights from my research into our process together in this course.

I’m also a Level 2 IFS practitioner. Internal family systems (IFS) has been my home modality for five of my eight years of practice as a therapist. I have been meditating for almost 20 years now, and dancing for 30. Throughout my clinical training I was searching for ways to incorporate contemplative practices, and the body, into my work. And I just wasn’t finding it in the talk therapy training. When I found IFS I finally felt home — home in my body, home in my relationship with myself, home in the process with my clients.

Desire and pleasure quickly became areas of focus for me within my IFS work. I learned to listen inside with these questions: Who’s here inside? What do my parts want? What nourishes and resources them? What brings them pleasure?

This focus on listening inside for desire and pleasure got me through the grief and rage of a long, painful divorce. It got me through friend breakups. It taught me the truth about my boundaries and “no”s. It pointed me towards relationships I want. It’s the bedrock of my trust in myself. It’s the compass I use to continuously orient towards a life I love and want.

And, in this process, I also found myself coming up against so much constraining conditioning that ran counter to my desires and pleasure. Conditioning from my family about money and power and pleasure and play being icky and low. Conditioning from American culture about what makes a life and a person valuable — or not. Gender-based conditioning that admonishes me against accessing the information and pleasure in my body. Conditioning from my schooling around perfection and productivity. Conditioning from religious beliefs that permeated many of my communities, which valorized asceticism, self-sacrifice, and purity; and which treated desire as a danger, trick, trap.

When I actually listened inside, I found that so much of this conditioning was like a virus, living in my body, leeching my life force for its own ends and against mine.

It has been the gift of my life to face bravely into what I actually want and what actually feels pleasurable, and to release the constraining conditioning that keeps me from pursuing it.

As I work with clients year upon year, I hear parallel themes come up in others over and over again. Fear of our own desires. Conditioning to distrust our pleasure. Beliefs that we must sacrifice our pleasure for a future, externally-granted reward. Beliefs that we have to overwork and drain ourselves in order for the world to meet our needs. Beliefs that we have to hide our desires and pleasure in order to be safe. Beliefs that we shouldn’t even have desires or needs in the first place. And, also, in person after person, session after session, we find tenacious desiring parts. Parts that say “I want!” and “This feels bad!” and “No!” and “Go in that direction!” and “This feels good!” Parts that advocate for the needs of pleasure, aliveness, connection, honesty, expression. Sometimes they look at first like rage or grief or anxiety or dissatisfaction or restlessness or envy… the list goes on.

Together we can learn to hear your parts’ desires and meet their needs. Together we can turn towards a life you actually want.

I can’t wait to share this process with you.