School Trauma - What´s Your Wound?

As a therapist and teacher I have worked with 100s of people from a myriad of backgrounds, and I’ve noticed something over the years:

No matter whether we thrived at school or struggled through every lesson, most of us carry some kind of wound from our education or lack of it.

For those of us who excelled academically, the wound often hides beneath perfectionism. When our identity forms around being “the one who knows,” it becomes frightening to be a beginner again — to step into a space where you don’t yet understand, don’t yet shine, don’t yet feel competent. Many people who were straight-A students find that the hardest part of learning later in life is letting go of the part of them that needs to perform, excel and seek endless external validation. Learning creates a quiet internal pressure that we are afraid to revisit.

And for those of us who didn’t fit the narrow mould of traditional schooling — those who were dyslexic, dyspraxic, ADHD, daydreamers, creatives, highly sensitive, or simply not built for memorising facts on demand — the wound looks different. It’s the paralysing fear of not being “good enough,” of being judged by outdated academic standards, of being measured in a way that never captures our actual intelligence (that we may doubt even exists).

Which are you? What happened to you? What messages overt and covert where you given about your intelligence, your capacity and your competence? How have they got tangled in to your sense Self and how you move through the world?

The joy of learning was stolen from all of us at a young age. And as such, regardless of the details, many experience the same hesitation as they consider signing up on this training, or they approach the evaluation phase towards the end.

Not because they dont actually have the capacity to do really well, but because something old is stirred — an echo of school. A self-doubt. A fear of getting it wrong. A fear of failing. A dread of being “tested.” Or the exhausting pressure to be flawless.

So let me say something clearly: This is a school. But not school of the kind we all came to know. This is school done different.

I am not interested in dry indoctrination. I am not interested in having you trawl through endless clinical academic texts, flooding your nervous system with excess information and theory. That is why all our content is engaging, dynamic, video or audio content delivered in a way that is playful, practical and engaging, supported by simple but comprehensive PDF files to refer back to. This is why we built this training in a way that allows you to come in and out of it in a way that is flexible - honouring your natural learning style and your nervous system´s window of tolerance. All in hard and fast, or little by little, a few hours at a time, one step at a time. You do you.

I have zero interest in simply selling you a program - I want to support you to move all the way through a process to the point where you´ve had a journey that's left you truly changed, and your certificate is landing in your inbox.

I am not interested in training you to repeat empty facts and figures. The system has shown us this doesn't even work. How many therapists have we been to who hold a first class degree or a PHd that do not seem - for all their kindness and good intention - to be able to really support us to heal and thrive? We are not machines. And therefore training cannot be mechanistic. It has to have soul.

Yes, evaluation matters — your certificate is something you earn. But the way we evaluate is radically different.

We don’t care about your spelling or grammar.

We’re not interested in rote memorisation.

We’re not judging how well you can perform or repeat information.

What we look for is something far more meaningful:

I am interested in integration - not memorisation. They are very different things. memorisation is forced and contrived, integration arises.

Every student I have every taught has been shocked to realise at evaluation stage just how much they have internalised without explicitly trying. It can be hard to trust that process because it is so antithetical to how we were taught to learn - but time and experience have shown me it works.

At evaluation I am largely interested in whether I can feel your connection with the heart and essence of what has been taught - in sensing whether you understand the process from the inside out, in a way that can actually transform how you can hold space for another.

Because real therapeutic skill doesn’t come from reciting theories. It has nothing to do with your spelling or grammar. That is why we encourage students to cultivate a deep personal relationship to what is being taught - to be constantly relating to what is being offered rather than getting anxious about remembering it all. This is how, even as a self study training, we are able to produce competent, embodied practitioners.

Students tell us again and again that the evaluation, which they once feared, becomes one of the most healing parts of the entire training. It becomes a place where old school wounds begin to soften: the perfectionist loosens and the person who felt “not academic enough” discovers their own brilliance. Everyone gets the opportunity to reclaim the joy of learning - which I would argue is at the heart of the human process itself.

Our pass rate is incredibly high, not because the evaluation is easy, but because the teaching is alive, the structure is supportive, and the way you’re held through the evaluation invites growth rather than fear.

So if part of you feels drawn to this path but another part pulls back — worried about whether you’ll be good enough, whether you’ll stay motivated, whether the evaluation will expose something old and uncomfortable — I want you to know this:

You are not alone. And you are more capable than your school-self ever believed.

This is a place where we re-learn how to learn. This is a a place where evaluation becomes an opportunity for insight and healing, not judgment. This is a place where the journey transforms us long before the certificate arrives.

And if this isn't the training for you - then I wish all this healing for you, wherever you go and whatever you do, because we all deserve to jailbreak ourselves from the grip of inadequacy. and the world needs our healing.

All my love always

Aimee

Aimee Rai

ISOHH FOUNDER

Student Testimonial

Philip Parker - Breathwork Facilitator, London

"Another standout feature was the assessment process, which was a far cry from the typical stressful end of year exam. Instead, the open book assessment allowed me to review and reflect on the course content and techniques taught in a way that deepened my understanding and reinforced the material, making it much more meaningful than cramming for an exam. I was really able to identify my gaps in knowledge and go back over the content – exams seem so outmoded to me now!"

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