Wake Up Transformative Change with All of your Couples

Join Our Exciting Monthly Training Series on Zoom!

Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute is excited to announce the fourth year of our Experiential SkillsMonthly Training Series, starting Tuesday, February 23, 2027. This series is designed for new and returning participants, offering a dynamic blend of teaching methods to help you navigate even the most challenging couples' dynamics.

Why Join?

Deepen Your Expertise: The first hour of each session will dive into the foundational theory and practice of Transformative Couples Therapy®, providing you with powerful tools and techniques to help couples break through longstanding struggles.

In the second hour, you’ll witness "unlikely transformations" unfold through clinical training videos, featuring couples working through complex issues:

• How we set the secure base for functioning starting in the first session?

• How we get insecurely attached couple members to practice productive truth-telling eye-to-eye?

• How do we resolve patterns of high conflict at the root cause?

• What are the steps to doing premarital therapy with complex cases?

• How do we turn sexual and financial conflicts into healing experiences?

• How does long term partnership heal attachment deprivation?

• What are the steps to treat early unresolved trauma effectively within couple sessions?

• How can we treat the avoidant state of mind, when the couple member has amnesia about their past?

• How do we accelerate treatment through the use of the Seven Channels of Experience®?

Hands-On Application: The third hour of each session is where the magic happens. With a skillful and supportive Experiential Assistant you’ll apply what you’ve learned with a live role-play “couple”.

Impactful Methods: You'll learn how to build bridges between couple members by accessing the Seven Channels of Experience®.

Become more confident in facilitating needed healingportrayals to help couples build and maintain a stable, deep and lasting felt experience of love.

Who Should Attend?

This series is ideal for clinicians who want to build their capacity to treat couples in a somatically rich, attachment research, and mindfulness-based method. A background in AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, EFT, Gottman, or ACT is helpful, but not required. If you are passionate about helping couples transform and thrive, this training is for you: Psychiatrists, Psychologists, LPC’s, Psychotherapists, MFT's, Social Workers, Registered Clinical Counselors, and Pastoral Counselors. 

Tuesdays, 8 am – 11 am PST

March 24, 2026

April 21, 2026

May 19, 2026

June 16, 2026

Summer Break

October 6, 2026

November 3, 2026

December 1, 2026

January 5, 2027

At the end of this program, participants will be able to:

• Identify two ways to help establish a secure base in treatment.

• Describe two ways to regulate emotional reactivity in both couple members.

• Define how to detect the healthiest aspects of each couple member.

• Describe two methods for couple members to process emotional experience to completion.

• Define why affirmation of the value of the self and the other is important in couple treatment.

• Explain how couple members can learn to melt defenses of intellectualization.

• Describe how to process warded-off emotional experience.

• Describe how to conduct meta-therapeutic processing after couples have reparative experiences.

• Define the value of the core effect of surprise.

• Define what is important about helping couple members develop skills to show more demonstrations of valuing in daily life.

• Define three early signs of dorsal vagal response.

• Describe two ways to regulate dorsal vagal response.

• Specify how the frequency of incidences of dorsal vagal response can be reduced in treatment.

• Distinguish three methods for engaging avoidantly attached patients in treatment.

• Explain why a state of mindful awareness helps both couples and therapist in treatment.

• Explain the value of increased awareness of bodily states in couple members.

• Define what transformance striving is and how to identify it.

• Describe the value of sensation in being aware of internal state.

• Define two ways a therapist can use their vision to identify tension in couple members.

• Define ways that awareness and skillful expression about energetic states can be helpful.

This course is designed for beginning and intermediate learners. The course will be conducted in the delivery format of live online learning. Instruction will include didactic presentation, recorded clinical video, role play, and group discussion. Review videos will be sent for all non-clinical portions of each training session to reinforce learning.

Special Needs: If you require ADA accommodations please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We can only ensure accommodations with adequate prior notification.

Cancellation policy: You may end your enrollment at any time and receive a refund for the remaining sessions of the course. Questions or concerns may be communicated by email to davidmarsphd@gmail.com.

David Mars, PhD, the main presenter for this course, holds a PhD in Psychology and has taught Transformative Couples Therapy® to couples therapists and psychotherapists since 2008. He is the developer of the method and taught it as a faculty member of the AEDP Institute for eleven years. He is the director of the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute and has been treating couples in private practice for over forty years. Click here for a more complete bio.

There are no conflicts of interest or external commercial support related to this course or any course offered by the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute.

All times are in Pacific Time

8:00-8:10am PT: Orientation and opening three-minute Channels of Experience meditation.

8:10-8:20am PT: Check-in and discussion of a few participant’s responses to the meditation.

8:20-9:00am PT: Didactic presentation by David Mars, PhD, Lisa Gardner LCSW and/or Abraham Lim. Group discussion will include strategies to implement the TCT method through the use of the TCT Fidelity Scales.

9:00-9:50am PT: Presentation and discussion of captioned clinical video. During the clinical video sharing, the instructor will reinforce examples shown in the didactic portion described above. We will highlight moments that illustrate the use of the Seven Channels of Experience®.

9:50-10:05am PT: Break

10:05-10:55am PT: Transition to Breakout rooms for the Experiential Exercise to apply what you have learned. Participants will choose to become role-play couple members, role-play therapist or witness. With the support of the Experiential Assistants, all participants gain a direct experience of applying the method.

10:55-11:00am PT: Regathering, closing remarks.

Participants must complete all sessions to be awarded CE.

Cameras on Zoom must be left on, with only brief exceptions. An evaluation must be completed prior to CE being awarded. Attendance will be taken and documented each session. Reading the course materials is a key to full participation. These materials will be sent out prior to each session. Any questions can be addressed to davidmarsphd@gmail.com or lisagardnerlcsw@gmail.com. To attend this live, interactive course you must have access to a working computer, a room with sufficient privacy to protect the confidentiality of couple members whose clinical work is shown and internet connectivity sufficient to maintain a stable connection to Zoom.

The cost for 22 Continuing Education (CE) credits will be $40. An email from Credits Education will be sent to all participants who complete the course.Credits.Education, #1032827, is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs. Credits.Education maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.  Course meets the qualifications for 22 hours of continuing education credits for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

"Participants who are unable to attend a live synchronous session may complete the missed instructional content by viewing the official course recording and successfully passing the associated post-test with a score of at least 70%. Continuing education credit will be awarded only after all required live and recorded components have been successfully completed."

Please check with your state board to confirm if CAMFT CE applies to your licensure.

Note: We are sorry that in 2026 we do not have capacity to offer CE to Psychologists or Psychiatrists.