IIN was founded 30 years ago with a mission to play a crucial role in improving health and happiness, and through that process, create a ripple effect that transforms the world. Over the last 30 years, that ripple effect has traveled far and wide to become a global phenomenon in health and wellness coaching, with the largest community of Health Coaches who are actively making the world a healthier place.
As the health coaching industry has expanded, IIN has also expanded, going completely online over 20 years ago (before online learning was mainstream) as well as creating courses in trending wellness topics, such as gut health and hormone health, to give people more opportunities to flourish in their life and career.
IIN has been at the forefront of the industry, advocating for the health coaching profession and partnering with mission-driven brands who want to amplify the value of an IIN education. Today, we’re deeply honored to announce our strategic partnership with Dr. Deepak Chopra and Chopra Global (Chopra), the first of many to come as IIN evolves into the world’s largest integrative health education and certification platform.
Why now? This is the natural evolution of both brands, IIN and Chopra, in their journeys in the wellness education space. In order to continue to support our communities in their personal and professional development, we must offer robust wellness education that empowers students to personalize their experiences and learn from the latest experts in their fields.
Health coaching is just one key aspect of achieving well-being – and just one option to create a lucrative and flexible career – which is why IIN is embracing this next chapter with Chopra to elevate and expand our offerings.
Dr. Deepak Chopra has been an esteemed IIN visiting faculty member for over 20 years, and he will now be supporting IIN as chief wellness officer. In this important role, Dr. Chopra will advise IIN as we bring additional courses to the wellness marketplace, offering his unparalleled insights into how we can continue to be of service to our community and provide not only a best-in-class education, but also employment opportunities and resources to grow in their careers.
As part of this landmark partnership, IIN will now offer and operate all Chopra education products, including courses in yoga, meditation, and Ayurveda, as well as their coaching certification program. IIN and Chopra will also be collaborating on bringing additional courses to market, meeting the needs of those looking for a quality wellness education that is backed by years of credibility and experience.
Like the IIN community, the Chopra community is made up of coaches and teachers who are eager to make a difference in the world with their education. This partnership will empower this combined community to learn from each other, grow in new and exciting ways, and further our now shared mission to heal the world.
Below is an excerpt from an exclusive interview between Lynda Cloud and Dr. Chopra, discussing what excites them most about this partnership and the incredible things IIN and Chopra will achieve together:
Lynda: We’re two organizations that have shared a mission of health and happiness for the last 30 years, and now, we’re coming together. How do you think that can change the world?
Dr. Chopra: For 30 years I’ve had the dream of reaching a critical mass of the world for personal and social transformation, for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world. To achieve social transformation, you need personal transformation. You can’t have social transformation without personal transformation. You also need the backing of academia, and science, and the popular public zeitgeist.
The public support for sustainability, for social justice, for gender and economic justice, for climate change, for handling these mass pandemics and seeing what the best approach is for treating chronic disease and in general, bringing joy to the world, that cannot be done unless you have a critical mass of people who are aligned. The public support has been there for 30 years. That’s why we’re here.
This is a revolution going on... As a medical student, I first learned anatomy, realized that that’s all about structure. There’s something called physiology, behind the anatomy is physiology. Behind physiology is biochemistry. Behind biochemistry is biophysics. Behind that is math and we now know that no experience cannot be mapped out.
We have the science for healing for the first time and we started it for the first time in the general public. Now, it’s becoming mainstream, and we need to take the lead with responsibility, with a higher purpose in our mind. We’re taking on a huge responsibility for giving power back to the people for their own health and well-being and longevity as well. So, I think the more we can collectively collaborate with people, the more we can bring best practices, the more scientific backing we can do. We are the next revolution in health, well-being, longevity, you name it. And joy.
Lynda: Joy! Yes.
Dr. Chopra: Joy should be the purpose ultimately. If there’s no joy, it’s not worth it.
Lynda: Wow. I love it. And now, what excites you most about what we’ll do together?
Dr. Chopra: I think the work together is, number one, supporting the teachers and the coaches. It’s not enough to just train them but to help them market them, find them employment if we can, connect them to health organizations and businesses where they need corporate well-being, connect them to even medical institutions because they need coaches. They don’t have coaches. They don’t have teachers. Doctors don’t have time. Nurses are burnt out. So, we must help our coaches and teachers influence the system as it is right now, and they will be. They are needed.
That’s number one. Number two is back everything we say with good science and make sure that everything we say is academically supported by good science. Unfortunately, physicians haven’t kept up with their own science in their own fields. You talk to geneticists, and they don’t know too much about epigenetics. You talk to epigeneticists, all they’re talking about is the toxic environment, not the mental and emotional environment that we have to deal with in our internal lives all the time.
So, we need to actually impart our coaches and teachers with the right connections, but we also need to give them training that they can solidly back up with evidence, evidence-supported interventions. And then, we need to enter the mainstream conversation on longevity, on health, on well-being and on a new model.
Because, the old model, you know, which I was trained in, you diagnose a disease, you find a specific cause for it, then, there’s a specific intervention. I see it’s an old model. You know, everybody who gets sick chronically has inflammation, depression, anxiety, stress, and it’s all modulated by lifestyle. And if we can intervene at the right time and make it measurable... There's so much interest for this in the world. And now that we can make everything predictable, measurable, preventive, it’s our time.
Watch the partnership video here.
Learn more about this landmark partnership here.