ROOT Healer Academy · by application
Understanding it is not the same as being able to guide someone through it.
Twelve weeks of structured training for people who others already come to for help.
You know the pattern from the inside, or from years of practice. What is harder is sitting with someone exhausted and frightened, working out what to look at first, and knowing exactly where your part ends and a doctor’s begins.
Four phases. Twelve weeks.
Sixteen sections, with assignments and assessment. Structured rather than self-paced, because reasoning is built by practising it in order.
Weeks 1–3 · Phase one
Foundations
- Framework principles and reasoning discipline
- Reconstructing the inflammatory timeline
- Macrophage and innate-immune foundations
- The gut–immune axis as gatekeeper
Weeks 4–6 · Phase two
Immune dysregulation
- MAIT cell hyperactivation and exhaustion
- Post-viral immune drift and persistent signalling
- Inflammation without abnormal routine markers
- Phenotype recognition and trigger mapping
Weeks 7–9 · Phase three
Intervention frameworks
- Gut-first sequencing, and why order matters
- Sleep recalibration and autonomic stabilisation
- Pacing, and why graded exertion can backfire
- Flare logic and behaviour-change systems
Weeks 10–12 · Phase four
Practitioner application
- Complex cases and session frameworks
- Client communication and expectation setting
- Ethical boundaries and referral triggers
- Assessed certification case
Every week carries the same seven parts
- Mechanism teaching
- A reasoning framework
- History-taking skills
- An implementation practice
- A communication script
- An assignment
- Red flags and referral boundaries
- Reflection on your own cases
The limits are the training.
A guide who cannot say where their competence ends is dangerous, however good their framework. So the boundary work is not an appendix at the end of the course — it runs through every single week.
What certification does not give you
It is a certificate of training in this framework. It is not a medical qualification, it does not create a regulated scope of practice, and it does not permit you to diagnose, prescribe, or advise on medication. If that is what you are looking for, this is not the course.
Referral is taught as a skill, not as an admission of failure.
You will also be assessed on the harder half of that judgement: recognising when referral is not indicated, and proceeding within the framework is the right call. Practitioners who only learn the red flags end up referring reflexively, which serves nobody.
You keep the room after the twelve weeks.
Certification is not the end of the learning. The questions that matter most tend to arrive later, with a real person in front of you whose history does not fit any example you were shown.
So the Academy runs into an ongoing masterclass membership: where cases get discussed, where new research is explained as it emerges, and where you are reasoning alongside other guides rather than alone.
The science is still moving. A qualification that stopped on the final day would go stale.
How to get in.
1
Complete ROOT Foundations
The standard route in. It is where you apply the framework to the one history you know completely — your own.
2
Apply
Tell us your practice, who you work with, and why now. Applications are read personally.
3
We assess fit, honestly
Existing practice context, understanding of scope, and readiness to work inside limits. If the fit is not right yet, we will say so and tell you what would change that.
Being honest with you.
We make no claims about income. Not a figure, not a projection, not a suggestion that certification produces clients. Be wary of anyone in this field who offers you one.
The immune model is a hypothesis. Published and peer-reviewed, which means judged a reasonable contribution — not proven right.
Where evidence is disputed, we teach it as disputed. Microclots and fibrin amyloid, for instance, are taught as an open question rather than a basis for practice.
Guides educate. They explain, recognise patterns, support a plan, and refer. That is the whole scope.
This is not a career from nothing. The training gives structure to work you are already doing.
Who is teaching this.
Dr Philip McMillan is a physician and researcher working on why symptoms persist after infection. The framework taught here comes directly from that research.
McMillan P, Turner AJ, Uhal BD. The Central Role of Macrophages in Long COVID Pathophysiology. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2026; 27: 313. doi.org/10.3390/ijms27010313
Apply to the Academy.
Places are limited by assessment, not by a countdown. Tell us where you are and we will tell you honestly whether this is your next step.
In your email, please include:
- Your name
- Current practice or role
- Who you currently work with
- Whether you have completed ROOT Foundations
- Why now
Not completed Foundations yet? Start there — it is the route in.
The ROOT Healer Academy is an educational training programme. Certification is a certificate of training in this framework; it is not a medical qualification and creates no regulated scope of practice. It does not permit diagnosis, prescription or medication advice. No representation is made regarding income, client numbers or professional outcomes. The macrophage-centred model of post-viral illness is presented throughout as a hypothesis rather than settled science, and contested claims are labelled as such. © 2026 McMillan Research.