Course BadgeBecome the calibrated instrument behind your findings.
Level 1 is not an online course you consume. It is a sixteen-week mentored calibration journey with Dr Jo Abbott — the Perceptual Calibration Certification that every HODA-A™ clinician begins with, and a learning library you keep for life.
How clinicians evolve, week by week.
Nine modules — Human Perception plus the eight HODA-A™ Measurement Theories — paced deliberately, so calibration has time to become embodied rather than merely understood.
Arrival and kick-off
The live kick-off integration session. You meet your cohort, receive your calibration kit, and confront the founding question: what does my assessment actually measure?
Perceiving the perceiver
Human Perception and Interoception. You learn to notice your own internal state before and during contact — and discover how much of "what the tissue feels like" begins inside you.
Memory, relationship and touch
Sensorimotor Memory Stimulation and Care Ethicist Attunement. Your history is in your hands; the therapeutic relationship shapes the signal. Laboratories make both visible.
The science of the signal
Cross-Modal Judgements & Neuroplasticity, Mechanoreceptor Activation, Intuition & Pattern Literacy. Intuition is respected — then examined, trained and calibrated.
Integration and consolidation
Sensorimotor Integration, Somatosensory Interpretation, and the end-of-course live integration session. The pieces become one instrument — yours, calibrated, with the certificate to evidence it.
This programme arrives at your door.
Level 1 laboratories are physical, not theoretical. Your onboarding kit contains the tools your hands will train against — Braille blocks, wooden blocks, LEGO bricks, eye masks, marbles, feathers, tuning forks, therapy putty and gel hand warmers.
Each object is a reference — a known quantity your perception can be tested and calibrated against, week after week.
Structured laboratories
Hands-on calibration exercises with known references, repeated across the sixteen weeks so drift becomes measurable.
Reflective calibration assessments
Module quizzes and reflective calibration pulses that track how your perception — and your reasoning about it — changes.
Guided integration
Dr Jo connects the science to your background: your previous career, your clinical language, your way of perceiving.
Sixteen weeks, and you never calibrate alone.
Every cohort has a private Clinical Integration Community — an active professional space where clinicians share calibration observations, test their language, examine uncertainty together and learn from how differently other clinicians perceive.
Between modules, Dr Jo uses the cohort's real questions and reflections to revisit theory and make the next step manageable. Participation is optional, professional boundaries apply, and patient-identifiable information is never shared.
Mentored by Dr Jo throughout.
Personalised bridges from your previous expertise — musician, athlete, engineer, experienced clinician — into the measurement framework.
Reflective feedback that helps you separate sensation, perception, interpretation and action.
Progress support when pace, confidence or cognitive load needs adjusting — the journey is guided, not policed.
Two live integration sessions (kick-off and end-of-course), offered at times that serve a global cohort, recorded for on-demand catch-up.
The programme is 16 weeks. The learning is for life.
The guided certification programme — mentoring, live integration, cohort community — runs for a defined sixteen weeks. Your lifetime learning access continues afterwards: revisit modules, repeat laboratories, and return to concepts as they become newly relevant across your career.
The next cohort begins the week of 31 August 2026.
Not ready to decide? Attend a free webinar or ask Dr Jo directly.
The questions clinicians actually ask.
Why sixteen weeks?
Because calibration is embodied learning, not information transfer. Perception changes through repetition, reflection and time — a weekend course can inform you, but it cannot recalibrate you. Sixteen weeks at around three hours a week gives the nervous system what it actually needs: deliberate pace, spaced repetition and guided integration.
Do I have to attend live?
No. There are two live integration sessions (kick-off and end-of-course), each offered at two times to serve a global cohort, and both are recorded. Between them, learning is self-paced between live integration sessions — designed around real clinical workloads.
How much mentoring is included?
Level 1 is guided throughout: Dr Jo leads the live integration sessions, is active in the Clinical Integration Community between modules, and uses the cohort's own questions and reflections to shape how theory is revisited. This is a mentored journey, not a video library with a forum attached.
Who is Level 1 for?
Manual therapists, physiotherapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, sports and soft-tissue therapists, movement professionals, educators and researchers — anyone whose clinical findings depend on their own perception. Every HODA-A™ clinician begins here, whatever their experience: that shared foundation is what protects the standard.
Why lifetime access?
Because the material becomes relevant in layers. A concept you meet in week six lands differently two years into calibrated practice. The 16-week programme creates the transformation; the lifetime learning library lets you keep returning to it as your practice, caseload and the science evolve.
What do I hold at the end?
The HODA-A™ Level 1 Perceptual Calibration Certificate and course badge — evidence of approximately 45 CPD hours — plus eligibility to continue to Level 2: Clinical Signal Integration. More importantly, you hold a measurement system you finally understand: your own.
Your hands have been waiting your whole career for this.
Sixteen guided weeks. A calibration kit at your door. A community of clinicians doing the same honest work. And an instrument — yours — that finally gets the care it deserves.
HODA-A Level 1 Perceptual Calibration Certification
This is a must do course! It is a scientific and evidence based course. It puts both facts and accuracy, and reliability back into the hands-on value that a therapist can provide. Hands-on assessment becomes scientifically measurable, repeatable and reliable. Apart from learning the science and how to calibrate, it is a journey of learning how integral the therapist becomes in the management of calibration and assessment. It’s a journey in the development of the therapist and how they respond to their environment, the client, and the true reality of what assessments reveal. This course has the scope and freedom to allow one to explore all aspects of therapy and what it means to be a therapist. This is an exciting and dynamic course. It will grow your success and is life changing.
30 Years in Practice… and This Changed Everything”
After 30 years as a hands-on therapist, I can honestly say this is the most impactful course I’ve ever done.
HODAA has completely transformed the way I work.
It’s taught me how to truly listen to my own body first—calming my nervous system, becoming centred and present—before I even begin working with a client. From that place, everything changes.
My hands are more sensitive.
My awareness is deeper.
And I’m far more intentional in every treatment.
One of the biggest shifts has been understanding bias.
We all carry it—but bringing it into a session stops us from truly hearing and feeling the client. This work has taught me to challenge what I feel, to question it, and ensure it’s real—not something created by my own assumptions.
I now start from ground zero with every client.
Not “I’ve seen this before”—because the truth is, I haven’t. Every body is unique.
Instead, I feel what the client presents through my hands and respond to that. And the results speak for themselves.
Clients often say:
“Wow… I didn’t even realise that was happening until you explained it.”
That level of clarity, trust, and understanding has completely changed my outcomes.
This isn’t just a course—it’s a different way of thinking, feeling, and treating.
And for me, this is just the beginning of the journey
Teresa
Sports therapist and Backpain Systems ResetTM Coach
New Zealand
Very Highly Recommended!
Through this course I deepened my trust in myself and my skills, learning to quiet my own internal state, navigate and stabilise my biases and assumptions, challenge what I feel. I am no longer asking questions from a place of fear but most importantly from a place of security and grounding. HODA-A Level 1 has made the intangible tangible. Bringing science of calibration, connection and touch into real life situations, through simple drills that you can easily include in your clinic routine. This course has contributed more to my professional development than any other in over 20 years of practice! I cannot recommend this course highly enough to all hands-on practitioners. It will transform your approach to assessment, treatment and clinical decision making.
Christina
BSc Sports Therapist
East Sussex, UK.