Transformational Program Design
For facilitators, leaders, guides & culture shapers who want to design retreats that truly change people.
10 June- 15 July 2026, Online
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"No human escapes change: everything in life is constantly in motion.
We are always passing from one life phase to the next.
That's how we grow.
What matters is how we meet these transitions and support people through them."
Who This Training is For:
This training is for facilitators who want to go beyond creating “nice experiences” and learn how to design retreats and programs that create genuine transformation.
It’s for people who understand that how an experience is designed shapes what becomes possible inside it.
This training may be a fit if you are:
- A coach, facilitator, guide, creative, teacher, or space-holder wanting to bring your work to life through retreats, immersions, or transformational programs
- Already leading retreats or workshops, but craving a clearer structure, stronger arc, and more confidence in your design process
- Dreaming of hosting your first retreat and wanting to build it on solid foundations from the beginning
- Ready to create experiences that feel intentional, memorable, and deeply impactful for the people inside them
- Wanting to understand the deeper architecture behind transformation, rather than relying on intuition alone
This training is best suited to people who already have some experience working with groups in some capacity whether through coaching, yoga, facilitation, workshops, leadership, healing work, community spaces, or education.
It’s probably not the right fit if you have no experience holding groups at all.
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Join Nele Vandersmissen for a transformative 6-week online training that equips you with all the essential tools to design life-changing retreats and group programs.
Get ready to unlock a powerful upgrade in your personal leadership in the process.
This immersive program features live group calls, engaging home-study videos, and an in-depth design manual packed with ready-to-use templates and practical resources.
Whether you’re a community leader, coach, breathwork facilitator, manager, or teacher, this training will profoundly transform your leadership.
If you’ve been feeling a calling to lead transformational programs for groups, this is foundational work.
The Blueprint
A design framework that’s both ancient and modern
At the heart of this training is a universal Blueprint for transformation. A spiral-shaped map of transformational design that integrates the best of both worlds:
- The timeless practices humans have always used to create meaning and transformation
- The adaptability to meet the needs of our time, our culture, and your unique gifts
Most retreat structures are overly linear.
This approach is different.
It brings together structure and intuition, preparation and presence, the known and the unknown.
You’ll learn how to create experiences that feel grounded and coherent without becoming rigid or formulaic, so your participants feel safe enough to open, engaged enough to stay present, and moved enough for genuine transformation to occur.
A strong foundation to hold the experience and enough freedom to respond to what is actually happening in real time.
So instead of relying on disconnected activities or hoping something meaningful emerges, you’ll understand how to intentionally guide people through an experience that feels emotionally resonant, deeply human, and genuinely life-changing.
The Six Pillars of the Training.
This training is built on six essential pillars. Together, they form the backbone of transformational program design and facilitation. Each one is an essential element in creating life-changing experiences that will stand the test of time.
Transformation
Learn how to design for genuine transformation, not just “good experiences.”
Using the Blueprint of Transformation, you’ll learn how to create the conditions that allow real change to happen through safety, trust, community, emotional depth, liminal space, ritual, storytelling, and trauma-aware practice.
Connection & Community
Transformation doesn’t happen in isolation. You’ll learn how to create spaces where people feel safe enough to be real, deeply seen by others, and supported as they grow into more of themselves.
This invisible architecture of trust is often the difference between a retreat that feels pleasant and one that creates genuine breakthroughs.
Servant Leadership
Step into the art of servant leadership. Cultivate the inner qualities and practical skills needed to design and guide with confidence, humility, and integrity.
Lead from your own genius while learning how to draw out the gifts in others, always in service of the greater good.
Ritual
Rituals root change in the body.
You’ll learn how to design simple yet powerful rituals that mark thresholds, honour transitions, create meaning, and anchor transformation.
Through the use of symbol, story, and clear intention, you’ll discover how to create timeless moments that connect past, present, and future.
Nature-based design
Structure
At the core of this training is a repeatable framework that works across all types of retreats and programs.
The Transformational Blueprint provides a strong, safe container within which all the elements of transformation can come together and create something genuinely meaningful.
It becomes the structure that allows the flow to happen.
The Curriculum
Over six weeks, we’ll move through every stage of transformational program design in a practical and organic way.
You’ll receive 5 core modules, each with sub-modules, practices, and plug-and-play templates, plus 5 live gatherings to refine your design, explore your leadership, and bring your unique gifts into the work.
Inside the online modules, you’ll learn the core principles of transformational design and receive practical tools to help you build rituals, practices, session flow, and your full retreat runsheet.
The live sessions are focused on integration, leadership, feedback, and real-time support. There’ll be space for Q&A, design labs, coaching, and shared reflection throughout the training.
In Week 5, you’ll create your own retreat or program using the Transformational Blueprint, receive direct 1:1 feedback from me, and graduate with a fully developed, ready-to-run experience.
Module 1
Transformation + Intent
This opening module lays the foundation for everything that follows.
You’ll explore the core principles that make transformation possible: liminal space, psychological safety, group dynamics, and the art of reading the field. We’ll look at how change actually happens in groups, and why some retreats or programs feel pleasant but forgettable, while others become genuine turning points.
You’ll also learn how to formulate and communicate clear intent, whether you’re co-creating with others or designing a program entirely your own. We’ll explore the roots of servant leadership, the lineage of group transformation, and how to design with integrity rather than imitation.
By the end of this module, you’ll have clarity on who your work is for, what you are truly inviting people into, and how to design from purpose rather than performance.
Includes the Transformation Glossary.
Module 2
Transformational
Blueprint
In this module, you’ll be introduced to the living blueprint behind powerful transformational experiences.
Rather than relying on a linear formula, you’ll learn to work with the cyclical arc of transformation: descent and emergence, separation and return, belonging and becoming.
We’ll explore how people move through past, present, and future inside a retreat or program, and how to design experiences that honour this natural rhythm.
This module gives you the structural intelligence behind transformation, so your program has depth, coherence, and flow while remaining safe, grounded, and deeply human.
Includes the Blueprint of Transformation
Module 3
Belonging and Becoming
You’ll learn how to design experiences that create genuine community without collapsing individuality, and how to support participants to grow without losing themselves within the group.
We’ll explore the three layers of connection: personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal, and how to consciously design for each within your program.
You’ll also learn the invisible architecture of safety: trauma-informed facilitation, clear boundaries, agreements, and energetic upkeep. This is where you develop the ability to read and tend the group field in real time, guiding people through edges, resistance, and breakthroughs with steadiness and care.
Includes the Container Checklist, Enrolment examples + Games and Ice-Breakers
Module 4
Ritual & Ritual Theatre
Ritual is where transformation moves from insight into the body.
In this module, you’ll learn how to design simple, powerful rituals that anchor change through action, symbol, rhythm, and repetition. We’ll explore ritual as an embodied technology, drawing on ancient wisdom, myth, and theatre, without performance, spectacle, or spiritual bypassing.
You’ll learn how to work with symbolic language, timing, and collective movement to create moments that carry people beyond words and into direct experience.
These are often the moments participants remember most. Not because they were dramatic, but because they landed.
By the end of this module, you’ll be able to design rituals that feel clear, contained, and deeply meaningful, and that support integration rather than overwhelm.
Includes the Ritual Design Template + adaptable plug-and-play rituals.
Module 5
The Return: Vision, Celebration & Integration
Transformation isn’t complete until people know how to return.
In this final module, you’ll learn how to design the closing arc of your retreat or program, the moment where insight is honoured, meaning is made, and participants are oriented back towards their lives.
We’ll explore how to work with vision, celebration, and integration so the experience doesn’t stay in the room, but travels home with people.
You’ll learn how to harvest the collective wisdom of the group, create rituals of completion, and support participants to articulate what they are carrying forward.
This is where commitment is named, memories are anchored, and a new groove is formed, one that can actually be lived.
By the end of this module, you’ll know how to close a retreat or program in a way that feels complete, generous, and empowering.
Includes a Vision Template + Integration Best Practices
“In a world moving faster than ever, the real mastery lies in slowing down enough to design for what matters most—
human connection, meaning, and transformation.
These are the skills of our time.”
How it Works
- 5 weeks of live teaching (120 min/week, starting 10 June 2026). Full schedule in the FAQ section below.
- Platform: Zoom + Kajabi, with lifetime access to recordings and resources
- Assessment: submit your retreat or program design for personalised feedback and approval
- Private Coaching Call (after Week 4): bespoke guidance to refine and strengthen your design
- Certification: Certified in Transformational Program Design
There are two upcoming cohorts:
Cohort 1:
AMERICAS and EMEA
10 June – 15 July 2026
We’ll meet each Wednesday from 1–3 PM Eastern Time (ET), which is evening in the UK, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
In Week 5, you’ll create your own retreat or program design, receive 1:1 feedback, and graduate in Week 6 with a fully developed, ready-to-run experience.
Cohort 2: APAC and EMEA
10 June – 15 July 2026
We’ll meet each Wednesday from 7–9 PM Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST), which falls in the morning for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
In Week 5, you’ll create your own retreat or program design, receive 1:1 feedback, and graduate in Week 6 with a fully developed, ready-to-run experience.
For clarity, a full list of dates and times is included in the FAQ section below.
Sign Up Here
The Ripple Effect?
People in your retreats will get to:
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Experience a retreat arc that feels intentional, powerful, and unforgettable
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Step into a field designed for true transformation rather than “just a nice weekend”
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Feel safe, seen, and held within a carefully crafted container
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Journey through the universal stages of transformation—separation, liminality, and integration
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Be moved by story, ritual, and symbolic moments that stay with them long after they leave
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Encounter breakthroughs through carefully woven liminal space and emergent design
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Connect more deeply to themselves, others, and the natural world
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Reclaim parts of themselves that were forgotten, hidden, or held back
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Leave with clarity, insight, and practices that ripple into their everyday life
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Be inspired by the magic of group resonance and collective meaning-making
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Celebrate vulnerability and the freedom it brings when honoured in community
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Walk away saying: “That was beyond anything I could have imagined.”
Hi! I'm Nele.
I will be your teacher and guide.
I’m the founder of Wondr, where I reimagine how we gather, create meaning, and navigate uncertainty through transformational design. Circle practice and rites of passage have shaped my life so profoundly that sharing them with others has become my calling.
Over the past decade, I’ve:
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Designed and facilitated 1,500+ retreats, circles, and programs across 20+ countries
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Spent 4 years as a lead facilitator at the Rites of Passage Institute
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Trained 500+ facilitators in Circle Practices and Rites of Passage frameworks
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Been trusted by organisations including Woolworths, LinkedIn, Snapchat and GumGum to design and deliver transformational programs
From boardrooms to riversides, from corporate teams to community circles, I’ve seen again and again how well-designed experiences change lives.
My mission is to train facilitators to become acupuncture points of transformation in their communities—so this work ripples outward into the world, creating connection, meaning, and lasting change.
"Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field. I will meet you there"
Simplified with Multiple Payment Plans:
Sign up for Cohort 1
(AMERICAS + EMEA)
Sign up for Cohort 2
(APAC + EMEA)
What Others
Have Experienced
BE INSPIRED
" I loved the way this training was designed: immersive, practical, and full of moments that brought the theory to life. It gave me a whole new lens on how to structure and guide retreats that truly transform people.
Nele is exceptional at what she does. Her presence, clarity, and ability to weave deep insight with real-world application make the learning experience powerful and inspiring.
If you’re thinking about joining any of Nele’s trainings at Wondr, don’t hesitate. You’ll walk away with tools that last a lifetime and the confidence to create experiences that truly change lives."
Paula P
" What I loved most was the lack of fluff: everything was clear, grounded, and deeply human. The teachings encouraged vulnerability, real connection, and meaningful sharing.
This experience helped me uncover and refine my natural abilities, giving me the confidence and tools to step into my next chapter with purpose. Being part of a community of people committed to creating change in the world was truly inspiring.
It reminded me that I am part of the change I want to see and it’s time to bring that to life. The flow and structure of the experience were fantastic."
Rich L
“Having the 1:1 was amazing. It’s such a treat to get time with the teacher, especially for this price. I loved taking a course that had such a clear and manageable deliverable, so I could walk away with a fully formed retreat plan and think: I did that. I’m taking so much inspiration for my own programs, and designing future retreats feels so much easier now. Hearing Nele teach live on the calls, based on what was hot in the moment and interpreting why certain things worked, was amazing.”
Tarzan K
“Nele is a great teacher and an exceptional retreat facilitator. She has developed a profound understanding of the core elements that make a transformational retreat truly work, and she shares them with clarity, passion, and generosity. From the beginning, the training offered clear structures that made sense both intellectually and spiritually, with plenty of real-life examples that brought everything to life.
The structure of the course, alternating recorded lessons with live sessions in a small, retreat-sized group, worked incredibly well. The group size felt intimate enough for meaningful interaction, without ever feeling impersonal. There was depth, seriousness, and plenty of laughs along the way.
By the end, I felt genuinely confident designing the structure and programme of a transformational retreat, knowing it would have the balance and flow needed to support a worthwhile, even life-changing experience. The materials are incredibly rich, and Nele is so generous with her teachings and lived experience. An enjoyable and deeply valuable experience. Truly amazing training."
Elizabeth JVV
“It was an easy yes for me when I first experienced Nele sharing her Transformational Program Design offering. Her authenticity, wisdom, and grounded presence were felt immediately and remained ever-present throughout the entire journey.
The depth and richness of the six-week program allowed me to fully immerse myself in the work and created a profound understanding of the power of transformational experiences, and how they can be shared within such a magical and meaningful framework.
I feel deeply inspired by the possibilities that have opened up and genuinely excited to begin integrating what I’ve learned into my own work. Thank you, Nele, for holding this space so generously and for offering such a transformative experience.”
Robyne C
“This training is simply incredible. It felt like a deep remembering, whilst also opening entirely new doors, and I couldn’t recommend it more. Learning the blueprint behind transformational experiences is life-changing. Honestly, it should be taught everywhere.
What surprised me most was how much it sparked my own creativity. I walked away with a fully developed retreat plan that has now become my signature offer. I also went through a profound personal process whilst being in the program, and that alone was priceless.”
Christina D
Frequently Asked Questions
ALL YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED HERE
