The emphasis in Integral Health Education explores integral approaches to health, health education, and community health. There is a strong emphasis on community in the Somatics program.
Attention is paid to group process and group learning.
A program retreat begins the academic year, and there are weekly community meetings in which students, faculty, and staff participate. In preparing students for a career in counseling, the Somatics program draws on a variety of understandings of the body's relationship to transformation and health. Students and faculty are part of a worldwide community which studies the body in a sociocultural context and understands the body as a reflection of familial, social, cultural, and spiritual practices and institutions. Course offerings explore the relation between body processes and states of consciousness, and foster a dialogue between spiritual traditions, psychological approaches and contemporary scientific understandings of the body. Rooted in the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural foundations of the Institute, the program draws from many traditions in its study of the body.