Our Esteemed Presenters

Kay Gardner, LCPC, CIFST, is a founding Senior Lead IFS Trainer and has been in leadership since IFS’s beginnings in the early 1990s. She brings 45 years of clinical experience, with 35 of those years in private practice, and came to the model as an experienced Hakomi therapist and teacher. As a result, she helped to integrate the body into IFS practice. In her earlier work, Kay founded the Women’s Circle in Chicago and led various workshops including “Persephone’s Journey,” “Men and Their Mothers,” “Women and Their Fathers,” and “Sacred Theater for Couples,” which brought her body-centered theater approach to work with couples in groups or individually. In her most recent work, which has been presented both nationally and internationally, Kay was the first (along with Michi Rose) to bring the notion of legacy burdens to IFS and has also developed a unique program that integrates energy work and developmental stages called “A Possibility of Awakening.” She brings a body-centered and spiritual approach to all her work. Known for her heartfelt and skillful teaching, Kay creates an inviting space for transformative healing.

Beth Jerva, LCSW, is a Certified Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapist as well as a Certified Yoga Teacher. She completed Level 1 IFS training in 2013 and works with children, adolescents and adults, specializing in anxiety, trauma and addictions. She has presented on the benefits of yoga therapy in clinical settings and has developed many therapeutic yoga workshops focusing on adolescents, anxiety, mindfulness and calming techniques for children. Beth has studied alternative therapies since graduating with her MSW in 1998, having completed her Phoenix Rising Therapy training in 2003 and yoga teaching certification in 2004.

Mary Beth Thomas, RYT-500, is passionate about sharing her love of yoga as a tool for transformation. She began her pursuit of yoga at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health 26 years ago, and has since studied with many gifted yoga mentors. Sje is a certified facilitator of the Trauma Informed Mind Body Program, and is a Level 1 trained IFS practitioner. To explain why she teaches, she quotes Rolf Gates from his book, ““Meditations from the Mat:” “The word ‘educator’ comes from the Latin verb educere, which means to lead or draw out. The Latin term was used by midwives, with the meaning ‘to be present at the birth of.’ Teaching yoga is first and foremost about drawing forth that which is already present in a student…. I became a teacher in the true sense when I recognized my teaching was a divine opportunity to be present at the birth of an individual’s authentic self. The real payoff of a yoga practice…is not a perfect handstand or a deeper forward bend, it is the newly born self that each day steps off the yoga mat and back into life.”

Tanis Allen, LMSW, ACSW, your “camp director,” is a Certified IFS Therapist and IFSI approved clinical consultant in private practice in Ann Arbor, specializing in work with depression and anxiety, eating disorders, grief and loss issues and mentoring other therapists learning the model. She has been training in and teaching the model for over 25 years, having completed all three levels of training and countless IFS intensives and retreats. Tanis has been a frequent presenter at the annual IFS international conference as well as other venues in the Midwest and Canada, has served as a PA many times, and is author of a new book that was published in early 2025 by Penquin/Random House Books titled “The Self-Led Internal Family Systems Workbook: Learn to Use IFS Skills to Understand and Love All Your Parts.” With the help of our wonderfully gifted teachers and committed supporters in the IFS Great Lakes tribe, she created the IFS Great Lakes Retreat in 2015. She is so thrilled to gather with all of you on the shores of beautiful Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which has been a lifelong source of healing and inspiration for her, and she is hopeful that all of you will find that here as well.....