Transformative Couples Therapy® Seven Channels Process Training Group

Sponsored by: Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute

DATE(S): Afternoon sessions: 9/26/25, 10/17/25, 11/21/25, 12/12/25, 1/6/26, 3/13/26, 5/8/26
LOCATION: Charlottesville, VA and Live Online
PRESENTER(S): David Mars, LMFT 
DATE(S): Morning sessions: 9/26/25, 10/17/25, 11/21/25, 12/12/25, 1/6/26, 3/13/26, 5/8/26
LOCATION: Charlottesville, VA and Live Online
PRESENTER(S): David Mars, LMFT 
 

Presenter

David Mars, Ph.D. has developed the TCT method so therapists can help couple members relate to each other from their self-at-best, often beginning in the first session. This method cultivates healthy patterns of love and respect-based awareness to create positive changes in everyday living within the marriage. With Dr. Mars’ unique process, therapists evoke in couples bodily-felt awareness of specifically what they long for. And then couples receive the guidance to grow the necessary capacities to experience growing peace, love-based inspiration and stabile safety to love and be loved in a balanced way in their lives.

In the 1980 and 1990’s he developed an innovative treatment process that utilized highly sensitive computerized biofeedback with couples to reveal their unconscious bodily responses. This created a high capacity to track moment-to-moment psychophysiology and a heightened awareness of how valuable this skills are to effectively treat couples. In addition, as an Authentic Movement group leader and practitioner for over 30 years, he developed and teaches therapists and couples mindful alternatives to negative judgment. He has developed methods to transfer the above-named skills of attunement to therapists in all of the TCT training programs.

David Mars, Ph.D., MFT has presented workshops, courses, webinars, and online supervision worldwide for over thirty years. He was a Faculty member of the AEDP Institute for eleven of those years and is the developer of AEDP for Couples (AEDPfC). All of his offerings of training, supervision, writing and innovation are now based at the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute of which he is the director and founder.

 

Course Description

The Seven Channels Process Group series focuses on giving and receiving the transformative gifts of the kind of secure base that we aspire to create as therapists. Our focus will be integrating and deepening the self of the therapist. We will work to offer alternative pathways to the counter-transference reactivity that can show up in us with certain psychotherapy clients and especially in working with couples.

 We will practice whole body moment-to-moment somatic tracking and speak in explicit I-statements about our internal experience. This produces an atmosphere of subtle discernment and evokes surprises of emergent selective perception, bottom-up awareness, selective reception and mindful expression.   This small group series accesses and builds upon self-at-best skill development of heart-to-heart compassion, inner reflection and acknowledgment of self and other. We will be learning about affective neuroscience and transforming attachment patterns via teaching moments integrated with the experience of the group sessions.

 

Target Audience

Target Audience: Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Therapists, MFTs and Social Workers

 

Learning Objectives

  • Describe dorsal vagal response.
  • Identify two ways to establish a secure base.
  • Describe two ways to regulate emotional reactivity. 
  • Name the Seven Channels of Experience. 
  • Demonstrate moment-to-moment tracking through the seven Channels of Experience 
  • Transform affect through slowing down the process and generate an experience of safety and connection. 
  • Show the safe base generated through deepening the therapeutic bonds within the coaching context of the group sessions.
  • Recognize openings to create successful relational engagement.
  • Show how dissociation can be identified and reduced through engaging the caregiving system.
  • Explain how being in an active, relationally attuned meditative state in sessions helps to prevent therapist burnout and improve treatment outcomes.
  • Define the value of the core affect of surprise.  (*Frederickson, 2013)
  • Integrate core affect through slowing down. (*Iwakabe, S., Edlin, J., Fosha, D., Gretton, H., Joseph, A. J., Nunnink, S. E., Nakamura, K., & Thoma, N. C., 2020
 

Agenda

9:30 AM TO 11:30 AM SEVEN CHANNELS PROCESS TRAINING™ GROUP: Morning Sessions

9:30-9:50am: Orientation and opening five-minute Channels of Experience meditation

9:50-10:15am: Check-in and discussion of each participant’s response to the meditation and any breakthroughs of awareness that they want to share are invited. Questions about the Seven Channels of Experience™ and about mindful and selective perception, selective reception and selective expression are all part of the process.

10:15 to 11:15am: Facilitated interaction that demonstrates a growing grounded skillfulness in affective regulation and moment-to-moment tracking. Practice in the use of I-language, I-Thou (Buber) consciousness and a deepening capacity to access Channels of Experience that are “crimped” by defensive exclusion and are therefore less accessible.

1:15-11:30am: Metaprocessing the experience of the group and closing

4:00 PM TO 6:00 PM SEVEN CHANNELS PROCESS TRAINING™ GROUP: Afternoon Sessions

4:00-4:20pm: Orientation and opening five-minute Channels of Experience meditation

4:20-4:45pm: Check-in and discussion of each participant’s response to the meditation and any breakthroughs of awareness that they want to share are invited. Questions about the Seven Channels of Experience™ and about mindful and selective perception, selective reception and selective expression are all part of the process.

4:45 to 5:45: Facilitated interaction that demonstrates a growing grounded skillfulness in affective regulation and moment-to-moment tracking. Practice in the use of I-language, I-Thou (Buber) consciousness and a deepening capacity to access Channels of Experience that are “crimped” by defensive exclusion and are therefore less accessible.

5:45-6:00pm: Metaprocessing the experience of the group and closing 

 

Continuing Education Credits

The cost for 16 Continuing Education (CE) credits will be $40. An email from Credits Education will be sent to all participants who complete the course.

 

Delivery Method and Interactivity

Live online

 
 
 

Continuing Education

Satisfactory Completion
Participants must have paid tuition fee, signed in, attended the entire seminar, completed an evaluation, and signed out in order to receive a certificate. Failure to sign in or out will result in forfeiture of credit for the entire course. No exceptions will be made. Partial credit is not available. Certificates available after satisfactory course completion at credits.education

Counselors/Marriage and Family Therapists
CA: 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 16 hours of continuing education credits for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
 
All Other States: Most other states accept CAMFT approved courses for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs.  Check with your state board.
 

Special Needs - If you require ADA accommodations please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification.

Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often. If you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board's approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling.

 

Refund and Grievance Policy - Click here to see our Refund and Grievance Policy.

Attendance Policy and Certificate Delivery Information - Click here for information about receiving credits.

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 to David Mars, PhD by email at davidmarsphd@gmail.com. If you have a need for ADA accommodation, please contact davidmarsphd@gmail.com

Questions about Registration and Course Content? - Click here to contact Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute
Questions about Certificates and Accreditation? - Click here to Contact the CE Director