December 9 — February 3

Ideal Parent FigureHealing journey

A 6-week deep dive to experience relief and move towards secure attachment.

Applications are now closed. If you want to hear about future iterations, you can sign up here.

Mother and baby elephant in forest

The story

When we get all of our needs met as a child, we grow up with secure attachment – we move through the world with wonder, confidence, self-love, presence, and ease. Many of us didn't, and we carry the wounds of this – like insecurity, fear, and self-criticism.

Ideal Parent Figure is a protocol developed by Dan Brown to help people move into secure attachment and experience the relief of feeling unconditional love, support, nourishment, and guidance. It's incredibly potent – a pilot study found that after four 16-minute visualizations over a month, people with complex PTSD experienced a significant reduction in symptoms.1

I did Ideal Parent Figure therapy for a year and a half. During that time, I experienced profound shifts in my state of being. Here's something I wrote about it 8 months in:

In the last 8 months, I've had many moments of deep, felt senses of relief. I've tasted what it's like to actually have unconditional love and a true belief that I am safe and cared for. I feel like Mary in the colorless room: Before, I could describe what security would feel like and point to moments where I had felt more secure. But what I've felt since starting IPF is like a different qualia that I couldn't have imagined before. I didn't possess the experiential building blocks to be able to imagine this feeling of security.

I've since become an Ideal Parent Figure facilitator, with mentorship from Evan Leed (student of George Haas, Dan Brown's IPF lineage holder). Alongside my training in parts work (through Aletheia) and Reichian character structures and energy healing (through Luminous Awareness), I've been coaching people for the last 8 months.

I've been so inspired by seeing what Ideal Parent Figure has given to my clients. I've seen people experience states of okayness they've never felt before, when other methodologies (like parts work) aren't hitting. I've seen people move from ever-present distrust into joy and openness, and embody the full essence of their being in a way that radiates out.

IPF feels so under-appreciated – relative to its potency, there aren't a lot of ways to receive IPF facilitation. I so deeply want more people to experience the power of the Ideal Parent Figure protocol, and this course is a pilot towards that.

The course

We're going to go on a 6-week journey together to go deep on the Ideal Parent Figure protocol.

We'll work with each of the six attachment needs: Safety, security, regulation, attunement, delight, and exploration.

The emphasis will be on experience – we'll lay some theoretical groundwork, but will spend the majority of the time giving you an experiential sense of what getting your attachment needs met could feel like.

Part of this is to discover just how powerful IPF can be. We'll measure your quality of life before and after the 6 weeks, with the hope of improving it :)

The course is 6 weeks, with a break in the middle for the winter holidays. We'll meet twice before the break (December 9 and 16), and then meet again starting January 6.

Here's what we'll do together:

1

Foundation

  • What is attachment theory, and what are the different attachment styles?
  • The different roles of the mother and father
  • Developing an initial relationship with your ideal mother and father
2

Safety

  • Establishing a sense of safety and trust with your ideal parents
  • Moving into a regulated, relaxed nervous system
3

Attunement

  • What is attunement, and what can deep attunement feel like?
4

Regulation

  • What would it feel like to receive exactly the comfort and support you need to be regulated, in every moment?
5

Delight

  • What if you were loved and appreciated just as you are, without needing to do anything?
6

Exploration

  • Receiving support to move out into the world with guidance, trust, love, and excitement for your dreams
  • Doing the exploration protocols – including natural innocence protocol (to touch the easeful, innocent state you were in before any of your conditioning happened), ideal partner protocol (to imagine your ideal partner and heal partner wounds) and best self protocol (to establish a sense of your best self)

The crew

I'll be teaching the 6-week course. I'm also really excited to have Evan Leed, my Ideal Parent Figure mentor, as a mentor for this course. He's supporting with developing the curriculum, and he'll share some of the teachings he's developed around positive mindstates.

Amanda

Amanda Ngo

Hi 😊 I've been a bit obsessed with inner work for the last 8 years. I've explored every modality I could get my hands on – from classic CBT and psychoanalysis, to somatic healing, to buddhist traditions, to energy and shamanic healing.

I have gained so much from the emotional work that I've done and the teachers I've learned from – my experience of being alive has so much more ease, delight, security, and joy. Part of my purpose for being in this world is to help bring this light to others. I'm playing with all the different forms of this – through coaching, workshops, courses, and through many different modalities.

Here are some things people have shared about working with me 1-1.

...She has the patience to let you find your own way, but also the smarts and curiosity to help you keep pulling on useful and interesting threads. She may be one of the world's most gifted listeners. Totally transformative and worth every penny.

— Robinson

Working with Amanda has helped me build an awareness of a love that has always been there. ... She is kind and patient and also knows when to push and challenge me. She is also great at intuiting what I am sometimes unable to see regarding certain emotions and thoughts. I would highly recommend working with Amanda if you are looking to become more intimate with yourself, shadows and all.

— P

Amanda's gift of being able to attune to my thoughts & emotions lead to a breakthrough in my relationship with work – we broke through the surface of the problem and dove straight to the root.

— S

Evan Leed

Evan Leed

Evan Leed is a coach authorized to teach on meditation and attachment by George Haas, founder of Mettagroup, with whom he maintains an active mentoring relationship. He also had the privilege of studying attachment under the late Dr. Daniel P. Brown for two years as an original member of the Ideal Parent Figure Masterclass. His work centers around helping his clients come into greater security, resolve attachment wounds and traumas, and experience a deeper sense of meaning in individual pursuits and relationships. His practice is deeply informed by the Dharma and he regularly teaches on the jhanas, high concentration bliss states. He has maintained a daily meditation practice for over fifteen years and has spent over nine months on intensive retreat, in the Theravada and Vajrayana traditions.

Join the course

If this resonates, join us! The 6-week course is $300. I don't want this to be a barrier for anyone, so please talk to me if that doesn't feel feasible.

Once you apply, we'll set up a 30 min call together to get to know you, make sure this is the right fit, and answer any questions you have.

I'm so excited to spend time with you, if this course feels right for you 😊