Bring connectedness to your community
12 Trees Stewardship Training
Do you feel called to bring the 12 Trees framework into in-person community spaces?
Created and delivered by Dr Rosalind Watts, this training supports stewards to hold the work with integrity and a deep connection to the communities they serve.
We’re glad you’re here, and that our 18-month stewardship programme for therapists, coaches and experienced facilitators has caught your attention.
If you’ve found your way here through one of our partners, you may already have a sense of the work we do through ACER Integration, a global community rooted in connectedness.
For nearly five years, ACER has brought people together online to explore deeper connection with themselves, with others and with the living world. Throughout that time, we’ve heard a growing desire for something more: spaces where people can gather in person, in relationship with one another and the places they call home.
Because while online community can create connection across distance, there is something uniquely powerful about being together in the same room, sharing an experience in real time.
The 12 Trees Stewardship Training is our response to that longing.
We’re training mental health professionals, facilitators and community leaders who are experienced, grounded and able to be “safe pairs of hands” to bring the steadiness, structure and wisdom of the 12 Trees into their own communities.
The aim isn’t to create spaces that all look the same. It’s to equip people with the understanding and practical skills to work with the Trees in ways that are responsive to their own communities, places and contexts.
By supporting more people to hold this work in person, we hope to make the possibility of deeper connection more accessible to those who might benefit from it, but who learn, connect and grow most deeply through shared, embodied experience.
This is an invitation to take what has grown within ACER and help it take root somewhere new.
What it Includes
✓ Five live sessions with Dr Rosalind Watts and Lee Mendeloff.
✓ Additional workshops with experts.
✓ Quarterly support call with Dr Rosalind Watts.
✓ Monthly mentorship call with Elder space holders.
✓ Inclusion on a 12 Trees Steward Register hosted on the ACER Integration website.
✓ 18 months in ACER Integration - to prepare you before you begin and then to hold you while you learn.
Who it’s For
Experienced spaceholders including psychotherapists, counsellors, psychologists, social workers, somatic practitioners, coaches, and other accredited practitioners who have:
✓ A minimum of two-three years of facilitation practice
✓ Completed one cycle of ACER
✓ A readiness to bring this work home to their own communities
✓ The desire to be a “safe pair of hands” and create spaces for meaningful connection where they live
How it Works
After completing an initial 13-month cycle of ACER Integration to deepen your own learning, you'll continue with a further five months of teaching, mentoring, and live practice alongside Dr Rosalind Watts, Lee Mendeloff, and other experts and mentors.
Develop your facilitation through feedback and peer supervision, and complete a witnessed final assessment.
This is not a pre-recorded course. This is live training that supports your personal growth alongside your professional development.
On Completion
✓Certificate
✓Licence to use the Twelve Trees materials for a licensing fee
✓Listing on the 12 Trees Steward Register
✓Entry into an ongoing peer network
Training Modules
All modules taught by Dr Roalind Watts & Lee Mendeloff. Additional workshops from external experts like Philip Carr-Gomm and Indigenous Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies (IPAT) are included as well as monthly mentorship calls.
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The nuts and bolts of holding a circle — agreements, containment, management, safety
Explore the foundations of creating meaningful in-person gatherings. Learn how to design and hold spaces with clear intention, structure and purpose, while developing the practical skills needed to confidently guide groups.
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Ethics, power, and the psychology of groups — leading without guruism, designing from a ‘we’ consciousness
Explore the principles of ethical leadership and responsible stewardship. Learn how to create spaces grounded in integrity, accountability and shared power, while recognising and moving beyond the pull of ego, authority and "guruism." Develop practices for leading with humility, transparency and respect.
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Adapting the 12 Trees to your land, your culture, your community's needs.
Explore how to adapt teachings and practices with integrity, respect and awareness of cultural context. Learn how to avoid appropriation by rooting your work in your own land, lineage and lived experience. Facilitated with IPAT, this module explores how traditions can be respectfully adapted while honouring their origins and relationships.
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Nervous system literacy, trauma-aware responses, and how to stay steady when things wobble.
Develop the inner awareness and practical skills needed to hold grounded, supportive spaces. Explore embodiment, nervous system literacy and trauma-aware approaches to facilitation, learning how to cultivate safety, presence and connection for yourself and those you hold space for.
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Practical stewardship: licensing, pricing, co-facilitation, burnout prevention, and launch.
Bring your learning into practice by developing your own authentic offering as a steward and facilitator. Explore how to shape your work with clarity and purpose, while understanding the practical considerations of launching responsibly, including legalities, permissions, licensing and the ethical use of 12 Trees materials.
Meet Your Teachers
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Dr Ros Watts
FACILITATOR & CREATOR
Dr Rosalind Watts is a clinical psychologist, researcher and founder of ACER Integration. She created and leads the 12 Trees Stewardship Training and holds three of the five live sessions and provides monthly group check-ins with participants.
Dr Watts also developed the ACE model, and the Watts Connectedness Scale, a measure of psychological connectedness. She was formerly the Clinical Lead for the Psilocybin for Depression trial at Imperial College London, is an honorary affiliate of the University of Exeter, and serves on the Clinical Advisory Board of the Usona Institute.
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Lee Mendeloff
FACILITATOR & CO-CREATOR
Lee Mendeloff is a somatically-trained integrative therapist (MBACP), breathwork guide and yoga teacher. She supported the creation of the 12 Trees Stewardship Training and holds two of the five live sessions.
With over 13 years of experience facilitating peer support spaces and training leaders to hold groups in a mindful, trauma-aware way, she brings a deep understanding of community building and embodied facilitation to the training.
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Philip Carr-Gomm
WORKSHOP FACILITATOR - The Eightfold Wheel
Philip is a psychotherapist, and previous sharing circle facilitator on the first ever ACER cycle. Philip studied Druidry as a spiritual path with Ross Nichols, the founder of The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids, and in 1988 was asked to lead The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids himself. “There is something about a birch tree lit up by the sun against a deep azure sky that just makes my heart soar. In the Druid tradition it represents new beginnings - the paper-like quality of the bark evoking the excitement of the blank page inviting new creation!”
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IPAT
WORKSHOP FACILITATOR
IPAT is the only Indigenous-led organisation in Australia whose purpose is to advocate for cultural humility and the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge systems in the psychedelic assisted therapy field. IPAT provides training and education to psychedelic providers and has successfully advocated for the first non-clinical Indigenous healing practitioners to be trained as psychedelic therapists.
Fees
18-Month Training
£3450 £2000 for you - using your special discount code.
OR £225 per month if paid over 12 months
Includes 18 months of ongoing ACER membership, inclusive of a 5-month Stewardship Training programme beginning after your first year.
Licencing Fees for Graduates
Annual licencing fee for materials upon graduation:
£600 per year/£50 per month upon graduation.
£1200 per year for VAT-registered practitioners or equivalent.
Concessions can be made for grassroots initiatives.
The Stewardship Training begins after you have completed your first full year in ACER. That first year is an opportunity to develop your own relationship with the trees, deepen your personal practice, and become rooted within the ACER community.
While there is no formal assessment during your first year, we do ask that trainees attend and participate as fully as possible. This allows us to get to know you, while giving you the opportunity to experience what it truly means to become a steward of the trees.
This is more than a training programme. It is an invitation to cultivate meaningful connection and to bring the wisdom of the trees into your own community with integrity, care and purpose.
Apply Today
We appreciate that the form is long, but think of it as an opportunity to really show off and demonstrate why this training is right for you.