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Announcing a brand NEW Professional Offering!

PASSION & PRESENCE®

Mindful Couples Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

AT-A-GLANCE

Are you a helping professional who works with couples (or wants to)? Do you sometimes find yourself feeling uneasy or ill-equipped to address sexuality? Would you like to enhance your skills and explore this intricate, complex, and sacred facet of human expression?

Our Certificate Training isn’t just a program; it’s a gateway to becoming a sexually informed professional.

Sexuality is an integral aspect of our humanity, intricately woven into the fabric of intimate relationships. However, even therapists well-versed in relationships may tread this terrain cautiously, wary of making a potential misstep or being intrusive. Yet, our clients need a safe place to explore all aspects of their lives.

The Mindful Couples Sex Therapy Certificate is an empowering journey designed to instill confidence in navigating the delicate realm of sexual issues within long-term relationships. It equips you with the skills, experiential activities, and mindful methodology necessary to address the spectrum of challenges partners face, including “low” or discrepant desire, shame, power struggles, performance anxiety, infidelity, and more.

A Glimpse into the Program…

As a program participant, you’ll:

Engage in real-world scenarios with plenty of opportunities to watch demonstrations.

Practice and refine your skills in interactive breakout rooms and monthly Peer Pods.

Receive group case consultation providing practical guidance for real-world scenarios.

Craft activities designed for immediate implementation with your clients.

A Glimpse into the Program…

As a program participant, you’ll:

Engage in real-world scenarios with plenty of opportunities to watch demonstrations.

Group case consultation providing practical guidance for real-world scenarios.

Practice and refine your skills in interactive breakout rooms and monthly Peer Pods.

Craft activities designed for immediate implementation with your clients.

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

Equip Yourself to Make a Profound Impact

Compassionate Exploration:

Learn to navigate sexual issues with empathy and collaborative inquiry, fostering an environment of trust and understanding.

Uncover Hidden Barriers:

Delve deep into the “Hidden Factors” that obstruct pleasure and expression, unlocking new pathways to intimacy.

Innovative Approaches:

Design “little experiments” to explore unconscious couple dynamics, unveiling patterns that may be impacting your clients’ relationships.

Neuroscience for Healing:

Utilize processes grounded in neuroscience to effectively address and heal erotic wounds, empowering your clients toward positive transformation.

Trauma-Informed Practice:

Equip yourself to support trauma survivors in reconnecting with their bodies, fostering a safe space for healing.

Infidelity Recovery:

Guide individuals and couples through the delicate process of erotic recovery after infidelity, helping them rebuild trust and intimacy.

Navigating Life Changes:

Assist those grappling with medical or age-related changes in finding new pleasure pathways, ensuring that pleasure remains a central aspect of their lives.

What is Passion & Presence®?
Passion & Presence® is a method of sexual healing and enrichment for couples/partners rooted in Mindfulness.

It focuses on pleasure and connection rather than sexual functioning and uses “bottom-up” interventions from somatic psychotherapy to access barriers to erotic fulfillment.

The depth-oriented, experiential techniques of Passion & Presence® are suitable for addressing a wide range of sexual issues and combine well with other clinical modalities.

What is Passion & Presence®?
Passion & Presence® is a method of sexual healing and enrichment for couples/partners rooted in Mindfulness.

It focuses on pleasure and connection rather than sexual functioning and uses “bottom-up” interventions from somatic psychotherapy to access barriers to erotic fulfillment.

The depth-oriented, experiential techniques of Passion & Presence® are suitable for addressing a wide range of sexual issues and combine well with other clinical modalities.

Passion & Presence® has three levels:

Understanding the three levels helps you know which path to start with and orients you and your clients to the process.

LEVEL 1

Use mindfulness to plumb the depths of your clients’ erotic lives gently.

LEVEL 2

Give clients the skills to work with triggers in real-time so they can stop fearing running into difficulties during sex.

LEVEL 3

Offer a path and practice of “Awakened Intimacy” for those who choose to use the erotic portal for transformation.

Mindful, Somatic, Process-Oriented, and Experiential

These words describe the Passion & Presence® approach (and how we teach)

SOMATIC

The body offers avenues to healing that go deeper than words alone.

Passion & Presence® relies on the body’s wisdom to guide the process, using the felt sense as a bridge to early imprints partners encode around sexuality, pleasure, connection, and self-expression.

EXPERIENTIAL

Instead of analyzing and reflecting, Passion & Presence® practitioners activate the core pattern and explore it in real time.

The approach goes beyond discussion and reflection by offering ways to bring the issue “into the room” to study the unconscious dynamics shaping each partner’s experience.

MINDFUL

Mindfulness offers a new paradigm for helping professions emphasizing exploration rather than treatment.

The state of Mindfulness also has many eros-enhancing benefits. 

  • It cultivates an embodied, wakeful presence that supports pleasurable, pressure-free encounters.
  • It sharpens the senses and enhances pleasure.
  • It helps partners wake up from eros-inhibiting body-mind states.
  • It brings freshness to couples/partners who feel stuck in predictable routines.
  • It helps partners access the “Hidden Factors” shaping their avoidance and can illuminate their deepest desires.
  • It helps couples caught in “blame and shame” cycles see what’s beneath their protective patterns.
  • It enables couples/partners to befriend the inescapable change, uncertainty, disappointment, and grief of long-term erotic coupling.

PROCESS-ORIENTED

We don’t know where we are heading until we get there.

Passion & Presence® recognizes that transformation is an iterative process of uncovering the next piece…and the next. Each discovery informs the path forward, which means, like good sex, it’s wildly creative and unpredictable.

How Is This Training Different from Others?

No diagnoses or judgments here.

We aren’t “fixers,” and we don’t treat disorders. We are curious, accepting, and non-pathologizing.

We “trust the process.”​

And believe that erotic problems are often a call to wake up.

We go deep.

We explore the unconscious beliefs and emotional learning contributing to sexual difficulties with Mindfulness and Somatic Interventions.

We empower partners to be each other's healers.

As we aren’t with them when problems arise in the bedroom (or wherever they happen to be!)

We emphasize three aspects of partner sex:

The sexual relationship (what’s working; what’s not), relationship dynamics (how partners address their difficulties), and the “Hidden Factors” (imprints that inhibit creativity, pleasure, and expression)

We combine the East’s focus on consciousness...

…with the best of Western neuroscience and contemporary sex therapy.

We want you to grow professionally and personally from the program.

We encourage you to practice the skills and activities at home to learn the method from the inside out whenever possible.

We nurture active learners.

We hope to engage your mind, but we also want you to get this method “in your bones.” In addition to lectures, you’ll work with others in small groups to discuss themes, share discoveries, and practice using the Passion & Presence skills.

Sex isn't just triggering for others; it also brings up stuff for helpers.

We’ll use the skills of Passion and Presence® to process these feelings so you can better support your clients.

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

Who Is This Training For?

This program is for psychotherapists, counselors, couple’s therapists, relationship coaches, sexuality coaches, and healthcare professionals.

You’ll take to this approach if you:

  • Are more interested in discovering than diagnosing, exploring than explaining, listening & learning than dispensing advice (Although sex ed is important too!)
  • Want to give the power back to your clients to honor what feels realistic, desirable, and pleasurable to them.
  • Believe that all sex is “good sex” if it’s pleasurable and consensual.
  • View pleasure as a birthright regardless of a person’s gender identity and expression, sexual and relationship orientation, size, age, race, or ability.

Who can benefit from this approach?

Whether you work with spiritual seekers or salt-of-the-earth types who want better sex – or any sex – you can tailor this approach to a wide range of clients.

Who Is This Training For?

This program is for psychotherapists, counselors, couple’s therapists, relationship coaches, sexuality coaches, and healthcare professionals.

You’ll take to this approach if you:

  • Are more interested in discovering than diagnosing, exploring than explaining, listening & learning than dispensing advice (Although sex ed is important too!)
  • Want to give the power back to your clients to honor what feels realistic, desirable, and pleasurable to them.
  • Believe that all sex is “good sex” if it’s pleasurable and consensual.
  • View pleasure as a birthright regardless of a person’s gender identity and expression, sexual and relationship orientation, size, age, race, or ability.

Who can benefit from this approach?

Whether you work with spiritual seekers or salt-of-the-earth types who want better sex – or any sex – you can tailor this approach to a wide range of clients.

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

What's Included

As a participant of the training, you will receive:

Comprehensive Training Hours:

100 live/synchronous virtual training hours spread across 25 classes, each lasting 4.5 hours.

EXTENSIVE TOOLKIT​

 40+ Experiential Activities ready for immediate use in sessions and as impactful homework exercises.

MINDFULNESS PRACTICES:​

Mindfulness practices designed to initiate sessions, fostering a bridge to the “deeper issues” right from the very start.

Essential Reading:

A copy of the book “Passion and Presence: A Couple’s Guide to Awakened Intimacy and Mindful Sex,” serving as the primary text for the course.

Diverse Learning Materials:

A curated collection of videos, audios, and articles to enrich your learning journey.

Lifetime Access:

Unlimited access to a dedicated learning portal with recordings, activities, and worksheets, ensuring your ongoing growth.

Expert Insights:

Guest presentations from experts in couple’s therapy, somatic trauma healing, marginalized sexualities, and consensual non-monogamy, expanding your knowledge base.

Professional Support:

Coaching during practice sessions and group case consultation.

Continuing Education Units (CEUs):

Earn up to 100 hours of Continuing Education Units through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT).

Listing Opportunities:

A free one-year listing on the Passion & Presence® Practitioner directory (for those with a clinical license or adherence to a related professional Code of Ethics). An annual fee applies thereafter.

Certification Pathway:

An opportunity to become a Certified Passion & Presence® Practitioner. Explore certification requirements in the FAQ section.

Retreat Facilitator Training:

Eligibility to enroll in the Passion & Presence® Retreat Facilitator Training, empowering you to lead group retreats (License fee applies).

Meet Maci Daye

AASECT-certified sex therapist, Hakomi Trainer,  author & Pleasure Activist

Maci is the creator of Passion & Presence® and lead instructor of the course. 

With graduate degrees in human sexuality, human development, and counseling from both Harvard and Georgia State Universities and training in Somatic Experiencing, Matrixworks Group leadership, and coaching, Maci possesses a unique, multifaceted perspective on sexuality and human connection. As a Trainer, Maci brings clarity, authenticity, and a contagious enthusiasm that transforms learning into an engaging exploration of the beautiful complexities of being human.

Meet Maci Daye

AASECT-certified sex therapist, Hakomi Trainer,  author & Pleasure Activist

Maci is the creator of Passion & Presence® and lead instructor of the course. 

With graduate degrees in human sexuality, human development, and counseling from both Harvard and Georgia State Universities and training in Somatic Experiencing, Matrixworks Group leadership, and coaching, Maci possesses a unique, multifaceted perspective on sexuality and human connection. As a Trainer, Maci brings clarity, authenticity, and a contagious enthusiasm that transforms learning into an engaging exploration of the beautiful complexities of being human.

Why We Created This Program

The 2020 publication of Maci’s book Passion and Presence: A Couple’s Guide to Awakened Intimacy and Mindful Sex seeded the idea for this training. Couples reached out for individual support (more than we could provide), and practitioners, inspired by our gentle, trauma-sensitive approach, asked for training in the model. We wanted to develop a curriculum that captures the heart and soul of Passion & Presence – its mindful paradigm, experiential orientation, and respect for each partner’s inborn growth path and unique erotic expression. This training is our offering, guided by the same creative process that births all of life and sparks our pure erotic potential. If it speaks to you, please join us.

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

Full Curriculum

Ten Segments Consisting of One, Two, or Three Sessions Each.

All Sessions Meet from 10:00 am – 2:30 pm  (Eastern, USA) Check your time zone here.

1

The Path and Practice of Passion & Presence ®

In our opening segment, we look at the core aspects of Passion & Presence as we identify common couple/partner issues.  We will explore our internal reactions when eros enters the space and practice deepening with mindfulness. You will use techniques to work experientially and experimentally, embodying a compassionate presence that creates safety and invites humor and authenticity into the helping relationship.

Skills: Reporting from the Observer, Contacting the here-and-now, Accessing the Sexual Operating System, Deepening, Designing Experiments

Class #1

Sunday, May 19, 2024

The Naked Path

  • Tenets of Passion and Presence
  • How We Speak About Sex Matters
  • The Power of Disidentification
  • Enhancing Embodied Awareness
  • Countertransference: Envy, fear, aversion, and judgment

Class #2

Monday, May 20, 2024

Empowerment through Sex Positivity

  • The Dangers of Models
  • De-pathologizing Sexuality
  • Barriers to Our Pure Erotic Potential (PEP)
  • Sex Positivity and the Hakomi Principles
  • Dirty Talk: Asking Partners About Their Sex Lives

Class #3

Monday, June 17, 2024

Deepening with Mindfulness

  • The Three Relationship Stages
  • Why most couples get stuck at Stage 2
  • Bringing the issue “into the room”
  • “Bottom-up” vs. “Top-down” processing
  • The “not-knowing” mindset
  • The “Explore & Inform” approach

2

From Disenchantment to Re-Enchantment

In the second segment of our training, we start to understand the power of consciousness in shaping our erotic experiences. You will begin to recognize the presenting issues accompanying the “familiarity trance” and how to help couples that have fallen into a deep sleep revitalize eros through presence and “Seeing Fresh.”

Skills: Seeing Fresh, Erotic Mapping, Mindful Touch, Catch & Release Technique

Class #4

Monday, July 15, 2024

Erotic Absence

  • Why Couples/Partners Experience Bedroom Boredom
  • Automaticity: Blessing or Curse?
  • The Numbing (and blinding) Effect of the “Familiarity Trance”
  • The Danger of Being a “Know-It-All”
  • Negative Sexual Priming: Expectations Matter

Class #5

Monday, August 12, 2024

Erotic Presence

  • Where’s Your Head on Sex?
  • Recovering Erotic Curiosity
  • Emptying the Database
  • Cultivating A State of Mind for Creative, Intimate Sex

Class #6

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Erotic Presence - Part 2

  • Core Features of Mindful Sex
  • Linking The Brain and Body to Increase Pleasure
  • Putting The Presence Back into The Sex
  • The “Wide” vs. “Deep” Path to Novelty

3

Erotic Cooperation

Even the most loving couples argue around their different rhythms, levels of desire, and arousal pathways. In our third training segment, you’ll learn skills to shift challenging impasses into catalysts for connection by helping partners study and share the hidden vulnerabilities at the core of their conflicts. You’ll discover ways to support couples to work with their reactive states consciously and find compassion for themselves and their partners.

Guest Speaker: Halko Weiss, Ph.D., Author, Hakomi Founder, and Creator of the Reciprocal Interaction Loop (RIL).

Skills: RIL, Self-Dialogue, 3Rs, PREP, Mindful Co-Investigation, Mindful Query, Listening from the Heart.

Class #7

Monday, September 9, 2024

Transforming Negativity Loops

  • Help! We’re At an Impasse.
  • It’s All About Your State
  • Protectors Ignite Protectors
  • PEP Barrier: Fear of Vulnerability
  • How Parts Dance: The Reciprocal Interaction Loop

Class #8

Monday, October 7, 2024

The “High Road” and the “Low Road”

  • Your Emergency Roadside Assistance
  • PREP (Pause, Regulate, Explore, Peaceful Presence)
  • The “Dark Night”: When All Feels Lost
  • Using Cupid’s Wings to Rise and Wrap: Calming and Befriending

Class #9

Monday, November 4, 2024

Holding Hands through the Hard Stuff

  • The “Care Cycle”
  • Underneath The Armor: Radical Nakedness
  • The Gentle Art of Compassionate Contact
  • Repairing Ruptures

4

Erotic Healing

While we tend to think of the “joy” of sex, for many people, sex stimulates old wounds and evokes unpleasant feelings and sensations. In our fourth training segment, we learn ways to transform Eros-inhibiting imprints and help clients recover trust in their embodied wisdom. You will practice antidoting erotic wounds, including trauma, using body interventions and Memory Reconsolidation techniques.

Guest Speaker: Luis Mojica, SEP, Somatic Therapist and Founder of Holistic Life Navigation

Skills: Response-agility, the 5S’s, Mindful Self-Study, Planting Hearts, Befriending, Tracking the Charge, Pendulation, Using Resource Scales.

Class #10

Sunday, December 1, 2024

The Sexual Operating System

  • What We Learn About Sex Is Mostly Unspoken
  • The “Hidden Factors”
  • Black Light Syndrome: When Sex Feels Raw and Revealing
  • Stop-Study-Share
  • Don’t Endure, Adjust

Class #11

Monday, December 2, 2024

Working with Triggers

  • Triggered Again! Now What?
  • Humans as Anticipatory Machines
  • Self-Directed Neuroplasticity
  • Uncoupling “Now” From “Then”
  • Mending Wounds by Planting Hearts

Class #12

Monday, January 6, 2025

Healing Sexual Trauma

  • Somatic Trauma Healing
  • Why Erotic Expansion Feels Unsafe to Survivors
  • How Sex Positivity Heals the Wounds of Trauma
  • Why Do So Many People with Vulvas Fear Sex?
  • From Surviving to Thriving

5

The Biggest Stumper: Where Did My Desire Go?

In this fifth training segment, we dive into the number one issue that brings couples into sex therapy – Low Desire. We’ll use a bio-psycho-social model to address the many factors that diminish desire, including gender disparities. We’ll see what the science says about pleasure and how to help partners recover hope and find a portal to eros in collaborative and empowering ways.

Skills: Priming, Identifying Erotic Stimuli, Shifting into Eros-enhancing states, 3-part Pleasure Practice, Genital Re-perceiving.

Class #13

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Help I’m Not Feelin’ It

  • Ways to Assess Desire
  • Responsive Desire Can Be Sexy
  • Positive Sexual Priming: Getting Your Head on Sex
  • “Willingness” as an alternative to “Wanting”

Class #14

Monday, February 3, 2025

Eros-Inhibiting and Eros Enhancing States

  • Brakes and Gas Pedals
  • Resentment is a thing!
  • Stress is a thing. A big thing!
  • The Sweet Spot of Safety & Arousal

Class #15

Monday, March 3, 2025

Pleasure Matters

  • Heteronormativity: A buzzkill for vulva-owners?
  • Decolonizing the Body
  • Closing the Pleasure Gap: Clitoracy 101
  • Overcoming Genital Aversion

6

Affairs & Open Monogamy

Affairs can damage a relationship and erode trust or strengthen a partnership. In our sixth segment, we look at the conditions that enable partners to flourish after infidelity and recover erotically.

We’ll also explore “open monogamy,” in which partners have a primary relationship and a flexible and fluid monogamy agreement. We’ll look at how couples exploring consensual non-monogamy can dialogue about their desires and make non-exclusivity agreements based on honesty, trust, and mutuality.

Guest Presenter: Tammy Nelson, author of Open Monogamy: A Guide to Co-creating Your Ideal Relationship Agreement and The New Monogamy: Redefining your Relationship After Infidelity

Skills: Designing a Monogamy Contract, Erotic Empathy, 3 Elements of Consent, Erotic Recovery after Infidelity

Class #16

Monday, March 31, 2025

When Two is Not Enough

  • The 3 Stages of Affair Recovery
  • Creating a Monogamy Agreement
  • Open or Closed Secrets Policy
  • The Difference Between Privacy and Secrets
  • The Perils & Possibilities of Opening Up

7

Erotic Expression​

Immersed in a sex-negative culture, even the most adventurous relinquish parts of themselves that they think might be wrong in some way. Yet when we opt for “safe sex” in our long-term relationships, we stifle our growth and clip Cupid’s wings.

In this seventh training segment, we help partners who want to expand beyond their limiting scripts explore their fantasies, reintegrate exiled parts, heal shame, and support each other’s erotic expression.

Skills: Somatic Self-Attunement, Creating a Sexual Menu, Parts Play, Exploring Aversions Mindfully

Class #17

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Mining the Erotic Imagination

  • Signs and Signposts of the “Safety Trance”
  • Fantasies & Aversions
  • Revisiting Erotic Empathy & Curiosity
  • Embodied Consent
  • Creating a Sexual Menu

Class #18

Monday, April 28, 2025

Erotic Expression

  • Who’s In Your Bed with You?
  • The Four Flavors of Eros
  • Are You Getting Your Vital Nutrients?
  • The Joy of Whole-Person Multimodal Sex

Class #19

Monday, June 2, 2025

Eroticizing Shame

  • Shame Reduction as Harm Reduction
  • Creating a Contract for Safe Expression
  • “Sharing And Daring” to Heal and Build Trust
  • The 7 Levels of “Parts Play”

8

Erotic Attunement

In the eighth segment of the training, we help partners recover the creativity and delight of erotic emergence.

We’ll revisit the benefits of goal-free sex and learn embodiment practices to help partners follow the flow of eros through their bodies. You will practice helping couples in a “Performance trance” shift their consciousness from performing to exploring and join in a free-flowing exchange. 

Skills: Breath Attunement, Body Scan, The Naked Pause, Emptying, the EROS cycle, Working the edge, Embodied Self-Attunement, Working with Barriers to Sensing, Responding, Receiving, and Savoring.

Class #20

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Eros-Inhibiting and Eros- Enhancing States

  • Signs and signposts of the “Performance Trance”
  • Resting In Uncertainty Is Not Always Pretty
  • The Essence of Attunement: Feeling Me While Feeling You
  • Moving From the Inside Out

Class #21

MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2025​

Dancing with Eros

  • Into the Dark: The Joy of Goal-Free Sex
  • Moving From the Probable to the Possible
  • The four phases of the EROS Cycle

Class #22

Sunday July 20, 2025

Working with EROS Cycle Barriers

  • Supporting Embodied Self-Attunement
  • Relating without Fear
  • Finding Safe Expression
  • Receiving to enhance pleasure

9

Being an Ethical and Inclusive Practitioner

How can we cultivate an inclusive environment that welcomes individuals with diverse sexual, relational, and gender identities? This segment explores the subtle yet impactful moments where opportunities to build rapport and client resilience unfold – from their initial contact with our websites and office spaces to the nuanced discussions of personal and relational concerns. We’ll embark on a journey of self-reflection, evaluating our implicit biases, addressing potential kink-phobia and polyphobia, and exploring the relationship between cultural responsiveness, ethics, and scope of our practice.

Guest Presenter: Rachel Anne Kieran, Psy.D. Expert in sexual, gender, and relational diversity, including sexual and affectional identity/orientation, transgender issues, queer theory, BDSM and kink, polyamory, and other non-monogamies.

Skills: Creating inclusive healing spaces for marginalized sexualities, Informed therapeutic Consent, recognizing when to refer out, Differentiating Consensual Power Exchange from Partner Abuse

Class #23

Monday, July 21, 2025

Ethics & DEI: How they Relate

  • Working with Marginalized Sexualities: Common Concerns & Mistakes
  • Creating Affirmation and Access in Therapeutic Spaces
  • Why Communication and Consent Are EVERYTHING
  • Systems of Power – Social Marginalization vs. Medical/Professional “pathologization”
  • The State of the Science Around Sexual and Relational Diversity
  • Ethical Considerations, Including Scope of Practice

10

Tending Eros through the Seasons

As we move into the tenth and final segment of the training, we consider ways to help clients tend their erotic gardens, so they remain fruitful through the seasons.

Many aging couples/partners give up on sex because they believe they must settle for a sex life that feels too small. In truth, sex has no expiration date when we focus on erotic expression instead of the “act” of sex. You’ll learn how to help aging partners adopt a playful, pleasure-based spirit of engagement that enables eros to expand amidst physical and genital decline.

Skills: Befriending, Creating a Sustainability Plan

Class #24

Monday, August 18, 2025

Erotic Sustainability

  • Why Aging Couples Stop Having Sex
  • Working with Grief & Loss
  • The Unspoken Truth about Menopause
  • Reinventing Eros in our Senior Years
  • Genital Prime vs. Sexual Prime
  • The Wonderful World of Whole-Body Sex

Class #25

Monday, September 15, 2025

The Path and Practice of Awakened Intimacy

  • Waking Up Is Hard to Do (And Oh, So Rewarding!)
  • Meeting Our Pain Points to Grow Our PEP (Pure Erotic Potential)
  • Stage 3: Sexual Alchemy
  • Course Integration & Completion

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

Program Details

Format

24 online , 4.5 hour, synchronous classes

Dates

May 19, 2024 – September 15, 2025

Timetable

View the full course timetable here.

OBJECTIVES

You must apply ($75 fee), be accepted, and then register ($750 deposit).

REGULAR TUITION: $5150

Pay In Full


$4,900
(savings $250)

Payment Plan

$250 admin fee
$5400
4 installments of $1,350

Read our Financial Terms and Conditions Here

There is a $75 application fee to apply, payable through Paypal.

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

FAQs

The Passion & Presence® Certificate Training is primarily for helping professionals, although anyone who wants to help couples/partners have pleasurable and connecting sex may apply to the program. If you are not a licensed professional, you may need additional training or qualifications to practice sex therapy with couples. We require you to adhere to the practice guidelines in your area.

Expect to spend an average of 8-12 hours per month on the course, which includes:

  • One or two synchronous/live virtual 4.5-hour classes
  • Participating in a 90-minute peer group
  • 1-2 hours of reading or listening to recordings
  • An individual session with a practice partner

The training consists of 25 live/synchronous virtual classes and supplemental video and auditory recordings by Maci and other experts to watch or listen to between sessions.

You will have lifetime access to the materials unless you withdraw before completing the training. Upon withdrawal, you will no longer be able to access the learning portal.

We want to ensure a fit between what you want to learn and what we offer. Specifically, we want to know your goals for taking the program, how you will practice the skills outside of class, and that you are comfortable and aligned with our mindful, experiential approach. 

If you have not had previous training in Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy, you must take a Hakomi intro workshop before starting the Passion and Presence practitioner training. Click here to find upcoming workshops.

We want you to explore your feelings and reactions to the material throughout the course. The peer gatherings are a place to do that. You will also discuss reflection questions on readings and recordings and practice the skills together.

If you must miss a meeting, please notify your group leader in advance. If more than one person will be absent from a peer meeting, please reschedule the session so enough people are present each time.

This course provides 100 credits through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT). These hours can go toward certification or certification renewal as a Sex Therapist. The training organizers will charge a one-time fee of $175 for anyone who wants CE credits. This fee will be due before the start of the program. CEs are only available to licensed helping professionals. Students who want AASECT CEUs will receive a certificate of completion at the end of each of the ten segments upon completing an evaluation and short quiz. 

Disclaimer: Completion of this program does not ensure or guarantee AASECT certification. Moreover, to become a Certified Sex Therapist, you must take additional courses, acquire practice hours, and receive 50 hours of supervision from an ASSECT-certified Supervisor. For further information, please contact info@assect.org. 

Note: You must join AASECT from the beginning if you want to apply for credit from this program toward certification. 

To read the certification requirements click here.

A Passion & Presence® Practitioner. You can become a Certified Passion & Presence® practitioner by meeting the following requirements:

  • Verification that you are a mental health professional, sex therapist, sex educator or coach, counseling or social work graduate student, or medical professional.
  • Completing the program in its entirety
  • Adhering to the attendance policy
  • Having a minimum of two 1:1 case consultation sessions with Maci (for an additional fee)
  • Submitting session write-ups on your experience using the Passion & Presence® approach with three couples.

The holding deposit and application fee are non-refundable. You will have until the end of the second segment of the training to receive a partial refund. There will be no refunds after September 9, 2024. Please read our Financial Terms and Conditions carefully to understand our policies. 

Be aware that if you withdraw, you will lose access to the learning portal.

Upon receiving your non-refundable $750 holding deposit, you will sign a Financial Agreement Form indicating whether you want to pay in full or use a payment plan. You’ll also sign an Enrollment Agreement with participation guidelines. Once we receive those two contracts, we’ll send instructions to access the online portal and a copy of the course book.

Mindful Couples
Sex Therapy

Certificate Program

Ready to Get Started?

There is a $75 application fee to apply, payable through Paypal.