Next Essentials commences April 2023.

In Essentials participants acquire all the fundamental coaching skills needed to run a professional coaching session & client relationship. It’s an intensive 5-week immersive program and asks a lot yet you gain a lot! It’s also the entry point into becoming a fully certified Emergent coach (ECC) ready to credential with the ICF at PCC Level 2 or to gain a Level 1 Certificate in Emergent Essentials Coaching on our ACC track. Like all our programs, you can take Essentials as a stand alone training if you’d simply like to learn the key competencies of professional coaching plus our unique & powerful approach to supporting change. All the live classes and workshops combine expert instruction, teacher facilitated experiential practices and live teacher-led coaching demonstrations with breakout opportunities to practice and coach. 

Essentials is a great way to quickly upgrade your resume and skillset if you’re say a therapist, counselor, social worker, manager or leader. Having these skills will give you a powerful new edge, make you a more attractive hire and give you significant leverage to enhance your earning potential. 

The program comprises:

• Three 2-hour live teacher-led sessions on the Zoom platform. For certification, full attendance is essential. The recordings are made available following each call. Classes run on a Saturday at noon eastern and then again on the following Tuesday at the same time so you have two opportunities to make them. 
• Two intensive weekend workshops. These run virtually on Zoom and take approximately 7 hours each day. In these you’ll intensively learn the structure of great coaching and how to run professional coaching sessions. 
• Alongside the live classes and workshops you’re required to have at least five, 1-hour minimum Buddy Group sessions where you practice and integrate the skills. These are essential to the certification hours. 
• All participants have access to our in-platform private community pages to connect, self- organize and share resources. 
• There are office-hours opportunities with experienced faculty throughout the program. Dates/times to be confirmed. 
• At the end of the training you will be required to submit a 30 minute max. recording of your coaching. You’ll receive written responses from a mentor coach who will make helpful suggestions to improve your coaching. 
• All participants receive the 8-week self- guided mindfulness program as a free resource to support your learning. 
• The learning platform which is your central learning resource containing dedicated learning content (videos, text and audio) and supplementary material such as the call recordings, homework etc. 

A certificate of completion is available following sufficient live attendance on the classes, workshops & buddy calls & submission of your fully completed log & recordings. 

Essentials will take 5 weeks to complete and earns up to 40 units.

Next Pathways begins February 15th, 2023

Alongside the dedicated content, Pathways includes 6 x 2.5-hour live class calls for learning and practice in teacher-led sessions and break-out.  Session 7 is a 2.5 hour live small group mentor call.

Live classes occur every two weeks. Participants meet every other week as a Buddy Group to consolidate the skills being learned.

Module 1: Coaching at Depth

In this module we cover:

• An overview including the intersection of Structure & Process as keys for effectively coaching change.
• Practices and qualities for developing oneself as an effective Emergent Coach.
• Engaging the body (coach and client's) as a coaching resource.
• Developing deeper listening, empathic resonance and attunement for more powerful sessions.
• Coaching, embodiment and trauma—what look out for and how to respond.
• The integration of professional and personal ethics.
• The ICF Core Competencies and the ICF PCC markers.

Module 2: The Science of Implicit Intelligence

Now we dig deeper into the science and practices including:

• Behaviorism, cognitivism and current theories of embodied mind and cognition.
  
• Experiential practices for working with implicit intelligence and somatics.
  
• Coaching the 3 key processing pathways:
  • The analytic (D-mode to Prof. Guy Claxton)—the conventional used to engage analysis for deliberate problem solving & decision-making.
  • The fast intuitive—the rapid fire “rule of thumb” gut feeling, effective yet prone to bias.
  • The slow intuitive—a more nuanced, reflective pathway and a key aspect of the Emergent Coaching process.
• Learning & practice with 3 key modes: Thinking, Feeling & Sensing.
• Managing complexity via embodied intelligence.
• An overview of Otto Scharmer’s “Theory U”.
  

Module 3: Coaching Pathways for Insight

Through live class and online content we explore:

• Optimizing the coaching container for emergent insight and change.
• Integrating intuition and the creative use use of body in sessions (among other possibilities) for new thinking and insight.
• How Presencing, mindfulness and reflective practices potentiate powerful insights both in-session and as personal developmental work.
• Engaging rich, imagistic communication forms for creative thinking and insight.
• The use of visualization in coaching to provoke new thinking and perspective.
• Engaging the body creatively in sessions.

Module 4: Archetype, Myth, Metaphor & Narrative in Coaching

Module four is devoted to:

• Exploring narrative in coaching through skillful use of myth, metaphor and archetypes in change conversations.
• Deepening learning in how rich, figurative language can be seamlessly employed for catalyzing implicit intelligence.
• An introduction to working with parts, selves and archetypes in coaching sessions.

Module 5: Coaching Self, Selves & Parts

As coaches we spend the majority of our time in supporting our clients in improving themselves, here we explore the constructed self and the multifaceted nature of the self through theories of multiplicity. Some key themes will be:

• Exploring theories of constructed self from ancient philosophy through to the work of contemporary researchers. 
• Learning some powerful opportunities to explore the client’s narratives, belief systems and sense of self.
• Parts Multiplicity—creatively & powerfully working with parts and selves in coaching sessions. This is stunningly powerful and nuanced work which can rapidly transform client perspective and help them to easily overcome internal psychological blocks to success.
  

Module 6: Integrating Emergent Conversations

In this final module we will primarily be integrating the Pathways learning into a PCC-level coaching arc. Learning includes:

• PCC markers and the Emergent model.
• How to support clients to integrate learning & insights for sustainable change.
• Engagement and session management for greater success including documents to support client management.
• How to meet the client where they are—knowing when to go deep and when to hold back.

Module 7: Mentoring

In this final module participants meet in small pods (typically maximum of 5) with a mentor to clarify and receive feedback on live coaching.

There is plenty of self-guided learning content with unique supportive material which is accessed via our dedicated online learning platform.

Pathways will take approximately 13 weeks to complete and earn 29 units.

Next Focusing begins May 9th, 2023

Toward the end of the 1970s, Prof. Eugene Gendlin launched his understatedly titled book “Focusing” into a somewhat overflowing self-help market. Despite appearances, Focusing is not another new-agey personal development tool, but was developed from a vast outcomes study Gendlin had conducted with the eminent psychologist Carl Rogers aiming to uncover the key factor(s) which predicted success in psychotherapeutic conversations—why some clients change and others don’t. Astonishingly one simple factor stood out: it was not what clients spoke about but how they reflected inside and then spoke about it. The “how” was how they related to their inner experience. Focusing’s empirically-based potential to radically and quickly manifest extraordinary insight and change for Focuser and Facilitator (or client and coach) alike, makes it a must-have skill for any coach wishing to effortlessly and powerfully get to the heart of any issue and bring their own and their client’s largest version of self to the change process.

Throughout the 8 modules you’ll be guided through the key steps of this extraordinary skill, and how to seamlessly integrate it into coaching conversations. The program is delivered by leading Focusing trainer, psychotherapist and coach Charlotte Howorth LCSW and Rod Francis plus their support faculty. The program comprises a series of eight 2.5-hour live classes which occur every two weeks, eight 1-hour Buddy Groups to integrate and practice the learning, supplemented by our online learning content.

Module 1: Introduction to Focusing

This module's learning will include:

• An overview of the research informing the Focusing approach. 
• An exploration of the 6 key steps of Focusing—Clearing a space; Contacting Felt Sense; Getting a Handle; Resonating; Asking; Receiving. 
• Direct, experiential and conceptual understanding of the felt sense and how to reflect and support a client to locate and connect with it.  

Module 2: Resonant Reflection

In this module the learning will cover:

• Guided exercises for taking turns to listen and focus. 
• Opportunities to work through the six focusing steps we covered in Module 1. 
• Experiences of finding a “handle,” or “fire engine” word and direct practice. 
• Learning how resonantly reflect back the focuser’s words and how to fine-tune reflections with the felt sense to catalyze thinking. 

Module 3: Making a "Something"

In this module we cover:

• How to create appropriate distance—to make a "something"—in order to not be entangled in or dissociated from one's inner content.
• Mastering appropriate resonant words, questions and invitations to explore.
• Differentiating between emotions, thoughts, felt sense and understanding how this relates to a Focusing approach.
• Helping the client to be less identified and merged with yet still able to keep company with their "issue" offering a radically different perspective and new potential avenues for seeing, thinking and action.

Module 4: Making Contact

Key learning areas this module are:

• Working transformatively with critical voices or the Inner Critic.
• Masterful pacing.
• The skillful use of metaphor, archetype and rich language for bringing more for a client.
• Learning & facilitated experience of the 12 avenues (Physical, Emotional; Location/Shape, Sound, Posture/movement, Relevance from past, Metaphor/Simile, Imagery, Internal Dialogue, Felt sense, Internal conflict)

Module 5: Deepening Contact

Areas for exploration and learning will be:

• Using language and invitations for deepening connection with and teasing out the intricacy of the felt sense.
• Engaging the felt sense as perspective shift and ways to reveal underlying and unseen aspects of self. 
• Inviting and catalyzing meaning & insight via deepening connection with the felt sense. 
• How to deepen listening and hold the Focusing frame of attention. 

Module 6: Shift Questions

Key learning points will be:

• Understanding Shift (Powerful) questions and how and when to deploy them. 
• Tracking client energetics (vocal, somatic etc.) and how to effectively reflect them for awareness and shift.
• Sensing/understanding when the client is stuck or plateaued and how to help create forward movement.  
• Knowing what to do once a question has “landed” & created a shift.

Module 7: Working with Parts

Some of the key learning points in this module explore a Focusing approach to parts including:

• Understanding parts and how to help a client separate them out.
• How to identify part conflicts and how to work effectively with them.
• How to engage with these areas when there’s a sense of being stuck and how to engage focusing in order to assist the client to create solutions.
• Learning on  how to engage in dialogue with parts to create shifts and overcome internal blocks.

Module 8: Integrating

In this final module we will be supporting you in being able to seamlessly integrate Focusing into your coaching. In doing so, we will also be looking at how a session incorporating Focusing or a Focusing approach will also embody the PCC markers.

Focusing takes 16 weeks to complete and offers up to 33.5 units.

EMPOWERMENT: WILD CONVERSATIONS & PURPOSE (2023 Retreats: Elohee In-Person Sept 1-5; Virtual Sept 15-18)

The key element of this section is the Empowerment Retreat which can be taken in-person or  virtually (on Zoom). It offers an immersive opportunity to step out of “regular life” and as a community explore untapped aspects of our inner process though facilitated direct interactions with the wild which help awaken and reconnect participants with a deeper, more primal and elemental story and offers fascinating potential for deep conversations of purpose. 

The retreat is supplemented by:

• 2 live classes on Zoom. 
• 2 Buddy Group sessions (min. 1 hours) are required in this module.
  
• Supportive content in the learning platform. 

THE RETREAT

Stand still.
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you Are not lost.

Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers.

The Empowerment Retreat is a five-day (four-day virtual) immersive and experiential program designed to help participants embody their capacities as Emergent Coaches and to reconnect with and deepen their abilities for deep listening, powerful conversations and living aligned with ones deepest sense of purpose. The retreat offers several opportunities to radically deepen learning and capacity as a coach, and for in-person participants to be able to do so in an extraordinary wilderness setting.

Alongside many other activities during the retreat, participants are facilitated into direct wild world encounters in deeply powerful, surprising and transformative ways. The experiential group and individual activities include deep listening practices, mindfulness practices, conversations with the wild, somatic learning opportunities, and many nature-based practices and games entwined with and built around competencies-based coaching skills opportunities. The activities can open powerful new doors for coaches to be able to engage their clients more effectively and effortlessly in their sessions. Over the retreat, participants are also given plenty of time to engage in their own reflection, integration and change and also offered appropriate support if needed.  Overall it's an incredible experience for all!

As the retreat is dedicated to supporting participants reconnect with self, others and the land, ample time is allowed for that. Plus alongside all that deep experiential learning we make sure there's plenty of time for fun, connection and play. Each evening there is facilitated council and group learning activities including story, song, fire and laughter.

Empowerment takes approximately 4 weeks to complete and offers up to 32 units depending on whether virtual or in-person. ICF CCEU's are available.