Enriching Clinical Practice Through Integrative Relational Understanding

Shifting Through Current Mental Health Systems of Care

This evolution in practice requires patience and openness to complexity. By bringing together established clinical wisdom with emerging insights about human interconnection and interdependence, we create opportunities for more complete approaches to supporting psychological wellbeing.

To implement these enriched perspectives within current systems, we can make transformative change in ourselves, with our clients and communities, and within our systems for care and health.

  • Support practitioners

    We can support practitioners in expanding their awareness to include individual and relational dimensions

  • Cultivate Learning Environments

    We can create learning environments that integrate technical expertise with authentic presence

  • Develop our Language Awareness

    We can develop language that captures both specific clinical observations and broader patterns of meaning

  • Document Integrative Relational Practices

    We can find ways to document both traditional clinical measures and relational dimensions of healing

  • Build Supportive Communities

    We can build supportive communities of practice where practitioners share insights about integrating approaches

What we think.

What we do.

In our everyday experiences, we feel isolated and divided by the cultural systems that shape our lives.

Integrative Relational Health (IRH) is based on the universal truth that culture is omnipresent in our lives and influences our internal, interpersonal, and social realities. Culture determines the structure and language of “normal” and therefore also determines the systems that support and reinforce these constructs in which human beings exist and make meaning. By centering culture in the human experience, isolation and connection emerge as two vital dimensions of mental and relational health.

Isolation may manifest in our lived experiences as:

  • Discord, avoidance and withdrawal in our relationships

  • Dysregulation in and disconnection from our emotions

  • Dissonance or ambivalence in our thoughts

  • Dissociation from our environment discomfort in our body

  • Disease or physical ailments

Connection is thus an essential requisite and tool for healing. Bridging this gap drives many of us toward a therapeutic journey to feel connected. We believe there are eight common factors that manifest our sense of connection in its many forms.

Practitioners who utilize an IRH lens prioritize connection through collaboration, nurturing, and nourishing one’s emotional, cognitive, and relational workspace (called a liminal space) in which they can safely explore their “thinking”, “being”, and “doing”. Integrative Relational Health recognizes humanity within systems of care and understands the relationship to be the driving force behind the clinical interactions and transactions that take place.

We ask for a new conversation with the field of mental health – one that calls for a shift in the doing and the making of the very field itself. Our programs and partnerships emerge from community needs and insights, and reflect our commitment to mutual exploration and transformation through the work of collective learning and practice. Our work to re-engage the field is characterized by an emphasis on developing learner leadership, making meaning through knowledge creation, and fostering the growth of relational organizations.

  • We are all leaders who emerge through our demonstration and embodiment of integrative relational principles. We understand that growth happens through relationship. Our decision-making in the therapy room reflects mutual influence and shared wisdom. In our networks, we leverage our leadership to cultivate collaboration. When this “learner-leader” value emerges throughout our systems for mental health, people and organizations can:

    • Foster both relational learning and shared resource development as a way of being

    • Value “learning” over “knowing”, making the work relationally constructed and systemically supported

    • Balance individual growth and collective development in our practices, agencies, and institutions

  • We believe that theory develops from lived experience and practice. Our learning and research are participatory and relationship-based, and what we produce emerges from dialogue and mutual exploration. Teaching and learning are mutually reinforcing with the purpose of generating collective wisdom. When we value skill development throughout our systems for mental health, people and organizations can:


    • Engage in practices that integrate both relational competencies and systemic understanding

    • Provide feedback that addresses both relationship patterns and dependency awareness

    • Utilize growth metrics that consider both connection quality and systemic integration

  • We believe that successful mental health practices grow deeper, not just bigger. We enable resources to flow through networks of relationship, and measure impact and sustainability through the quality of relational transformation of its systems and protocols and a healthy interdependence between these interactions. When our mental health practices, treatment centers, agencies, and institutions enact operational strategies that are integrative and relational, people and organizations can access:


    • Mentorship that considers both relational growth and systemic navigation

    • Peer learning that builds both connection networks and resource sharing

    • Career paths that value both relationship building and systemic change

What we explore.

The paradigm shift to integrative relation psychotherapy isn’t just about changing techniques or theories - it’s about transforming how we understand and engage with human suffering and healing at the most fundamental level. It requires patience, courage, and a willingness to sit with complexity while trusting in the natural movement toward wholeness that emerges when we create the right conditions.

  • Recognizing interconnection and interdependence: The myth of the independent self creates unnecessary suffering and unrealistic expectations. Understanding interconnection helps us see how well-being emerges from healthy relationships and supportive systems. This shift aligns our approach with how human beings actually function and thrive.

  • Binary thinking forces complex human experiences into oversimplified categories that don’t reflect reality. Examining our binary thinking helps us recognize and move beyond these artificial limitations. This shift allows for more nuanced and effective approaches to human suffering.

  • Culture often pathologizes normal human complexity and need for connection. Normalizing these aspects of experience helps reduce unnecessary suffering and shame. This shift creates space for more authentic and effective healing.

  • Much human suffering comes from trying to force experience into rigid either/or categories. Understanding this connection helps us work more effectively with the root causes of distress. This shift enables more fundamental and lasting transformation.

  • Treating cultural and power dynamics as background factors misses their fundamental role in shaping human experience. Understanding these systemic influences helps us work more effectively with root causes rather than just symptoms. This shift enables more comprehensive and effective approaches to healing.

  • Shifting from fixing problems to exploring possibilities: The focus on fixing problems limits our ability to see the transformative potential in challenges. Exploring emergent possibilities allows for more organic and profound transformation. This shift helps us work with rather than against the natural movement of human systems toward growth and healing.

How we do it.

We Connect

We foster a community of practitioners interested in an integrative relational approach and organizations doing aligned work, creating spaces for dialogue between different philosophical traditions. Our community structures and engagements reflect both interconnection and interdependence. Members of our community have access to exclusive learning resources, community practice sessions, participation in co-labs and supervision groups, opportunities to contribute to content creation, and discounts to events and conferences.

We Learn

We create experiential learning opportunities that build bridges across a variety of Eastern and Western approaches through accessible entry points, helping practitioners to embody non-dual awareness. Our innovative training programs begin with philosophical foundations rather than clinical techniques.

We Share

We actively document and study how an integrative relational paradigm shift in traditional psychotherapy models affects clinical outcomes. As the Center for IRH grows, we will publish resources including articles and books that articulate our theoretical framework, and create case studies to show how an IRH approach works in practice.

We Change

We form networks with academic, clinical, cultural, and professional institutions around shared practice and learning, creating partnerships through authentic relationships with organizations who share our vision for integrative relational practices. In doing so, we gather critical insights and sustainable solutions to challenge existing mental health policies and practices. Our partnerships are structured to create mutual value and share resources, fostering sustainability and collective capacity building.

Who we are.

Learn about the founder of the Center for Integrative Relational Health and our community of professionals passionate about integrative relational health practices in mental health care.