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A specialist practitioner training for counsellors, coaches, therapists and other helping professionals who want to work more deeply with triggers, projection, unmet needs and relational patterns. Integrate meditative, experiential and body-aware approaches into your work with individuals and relationships.
Go beyond the story. Learn to work with the relationship underneath it
People rarely come for therapy because of what is happening on the outside of a relationships. They come because they feel rejected, controlled, abandoned, invisible, angry, confused, or unable to stop reacting to someone they love.
However, what appears on the surface is almost always connected to something much older and deeper within each of them. When love becomes mixed up with differing wants, needs, rescuing, sacrificing or outright war, there is always an underlying dynamic whereby one person fights for freedom while the other becomes increasingly afraid of losing the relationship.
If we work only with the surface arguments, we can miss this deeper movement entirely.
This training is for practitioners who want to understand and work with these deeper relational dynamics.
It builds upon the counselling and facilitation skills developed in Inner Alchemy Facilitator Training and moves into a deeper exploration of projection, relational roles, emotional dependency, inner polarity and the unconscious ways in which people lose touch with themselves in relationship.
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Our earliest relationships teach us a great deal about love.
They teach us how to gain approval, what happens when we say no, how safe it is to be different, and whether being accepted means we have to adapt ourselves. These strategies then follow us into adulthood, emerging as patterns in the way we relate. Usually, one person gives way - the other fights. One want more intimacy - the other withdraws. One takes responsibility for everything while the other avoids responsibility altogether.
As practitioners, it is very easy to become drawn into these dynamics and begin trying to fix or create some peace in what is happening. We may get caught up in the client’s hopes, offering approval, advice, reassurance or solutions. But in reality, this rarely helps - in fact, the therapist then becomes yet another authority figure for the clients to follow - someone to please, depend upon, resist or rebel against - If you ever feel drained after a session it’s sure sign that you’ve fallen into this trap.
Effective relationship work requires more than understanding the client’s story. It requires us to become aware of what is happening beneath it, and also of what is happening within ourselves while we listen.
This meditative approach helps the you to recognise the clients projection without becoming caught up in it, and also notice when your own patterns have quietly entered the room.
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One of the deeper enquiries within this work is the difference between love and the desires we so easily mix with it. There is nothing wrong with wanting closeness, affection, companionship - such longing is part of being human. But the difficulty begins when our happiness, worth or sense of safety becomes dependent upon another person becoming who we need them to be. Then things become messy.
Our perceptions around love are often blinded by past experiences. A client may say they love someone while desperately wanting them to change. They might try to rescue and call it care. They sacrifice and call it love.
Rather than immediately trying to alter the outer situation, we become curious about what it is revealing about the person’s inner world.
In this work, we support the movement from their idea or ‘dream’ of love toward a more conscious love, that is rooted in reality. We explore what prevents a person from contacting their inner truth during conflict, and guide toward greater self-acceptance. Toward experiencing their inner strength, and learning how to support themselves in the moments they lose touch with that.
The meditative approach helps someone to gain distance from the story rather than getting lost in it.
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To deepen the exploration of relationship,, the training also explores the inner masculine and feminine - not as socially imposed gender roles, but as different qualities and movements within us.
How do these two aspects relate internally? Which is more dominant? Which has been neglected or pushed aside? What attitudes do they carry towards one another? What might allow a more natural balance to emerge?
Often one side of our nature becomes highly developed while another is judged, suppressed or projected onto somebody else. Bringing awareness to this can reveal an entirely different layer beneath relationship difficulties. It can also open questions around work, creativity, direction, purpose and how a person wishes to live.
In truth, there are four personalities relating to each other in a relationship, each with their own needs and wants, which adds further complexity and confusion when conflicts arises.
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Advanced relational work requires the ability to rest in a state of presence without wanting anything from the client. In this work you’ll explore your own hidden desires and expectations, becoming aware of moments such as:
When you try to fix
When you take sides
When behaviour irritates or unsettles you?
When your own hopes for the client, or for the relationship, begin influencing the session
The aim is not to become a perfectly neutral practitioner. It is to develop enough awareness to recognise your internal state of being and reactions when they arise, allow them to be there without judgement, and return to presence rather than allow them to unconsciously direct the work.
Practice, reflection and feedback therefore form an important part of the training.
We are not simply learning about relationships, we are learning how to sit alongside the complexity of relationship without needing to solve it. In truth, it is this that allows space for tensions to subside and solutions to unfold.
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Relationship Alchemy Practitioner Training is intended for people who already have experience of working therapeutically with others.
You may be a counsellor, therapist, coach, experienced facilitator or practitioner whose work regularly touches relationship, emotion and personal development.
You should already feel comfortable listening to personal issues and holding space for others.
This is not an introductory counselling-skills course. It is an opportunity to deepen the way you understand relational dynamics and develop a more experiential, meditative and body-aware approach to working with them.
Entry therefore follows completion of Inner Alchemy Facilitator Training.
What you’ll learn
Module 3: Adult Relating - Love, Desire & Projection
This module moves into the dynamics of adult relationship and what happens when love becomes entangled with desires and expectations.
You’ll learn to recognise when a client’s attention has become fixed on what their partner needs to change, and how to bring the enquiry back to the client’s own experience without dismissing what is happening in the relationship.
We explore desire, expectation and projection; how qualities we feel are missing in ourselves can be sought through another person; and how to support clients to reconnect with what lies beneath - their true needs and feelings.
You’ll learn when to support and when to challenge, helping a client grow in strength and awareness and take greater responsibility for their own experience rather than making the other person responsible for it.
The work is to help the client move beyond the surface story and become curious about what sits underneath it, so they can express themselves from a more grounded space and begin to recognise the shift that becomes possible from there.
You’ll become aware of your own triggers during a session and how to support yourself back into presence, thereby inviting the client to join you in that space.
Core themes: adult relationship dynamics, love and desire, expectation, projection, unmet needs, dependency, self-abandonment, autonomy, coming back to self, conscious relating and supervised relational practice.
Module 4: Inner Polarity - Masculine, Feminine & the Relationship Within
The final module explores the inner masculine and feminine and how this inner relationship can shape the relationships we create outside ourselves.
You’ll experience this inner polarity for yourself, using techniques that bring each side more clearly into awareness, and begin to recognise areas of your own life where greater balance can be fostered.
You’ll learn to recognise when particular qualities have become overdeveloped or rejected, and how those qualities can then be projected onto a partner - through attraction, conflict, dependency, admiration or strong rejection.
You’ll become aware of how the polarity within shows up in relationship; how different aspects of ourselves relate to different aspects of the other, creating desire or resistance, ease or tension.
In learning to bring awareness to these aspects of self, and supporting the integration of rejected parts, a client can gain deeper insight into what may help bring more harmony, choice and freedom to the relationship.
Through practising sessions, you’ll explore how to help clients recognise what they may be projecting onto the other, support greater acceptance of their own inner nature, and deepen understanding of the underlying conflicts at play.
Core themes: inner masculine and feminine, inner polarity, projection, parental echoes, attraction and conflict, rejected qualities, reclaiming disowned aspects, balance, authenticity, integration and supervised relational practice.
If you’d like to start getting to the root of relationships issues and stop going round in circles trying to bring more harmony or better communication in your clients relationships, or if you’d like to stop feeling responsible or exhausted after your sessions… then
Join Me Live Online!
Frequently Asked Questions
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Relationship Alchemy Practitioner Training is Level 2 of the four-module practitioner pathway and comprises Modules 3 and 4.
It builds on the counselling and facilitation skills developed in Inner Alchemy Facilitator Training and teaches a structured method for working with adult relationship dynamics, projection, unmet needs, dependency, love, desire and inner polarity.
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Module 3: Adult Relating — Love, Desire & Projection explores what happens when love becomes entangled with expectations, unmet needs, dependency and attempts to change the other person.
Module 4: Inner Polarity — Masculine, Feminine & the Relationship Within explores how different inner qualities relate to one another, how rejected or underdeveloped aspects can be projected onto partners, and how this influences attraction, conflict and dependency.
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You will learn a structured approach that combines:
the five typical stages of relating
adult relationship dynamics
emotional triggers and unconscious expectations
projection and relational roles
love, desire and unmet needs
dependency, autonomy and self-abandonment
Gestalt-based experiential techniques
present-moment and body-aware counselling
support versus challenge
helping clients return attention from the partner to their own experience
inner masculine and feminine polarity
reclaiming projected or rejected qualities
supervised relational practice
This gives you a practical framework for understanding what is happening beneath the surface story of a relationship and deciding how to work with it.
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The five-stage model describes common movements relationships can pass through, from early attraction and idealisation, through adaptation and conflict, into crisis or the possibility of more conscious relating.
The model helps practitioners recognise where a relationship dynamic is operating, what is driving the conflict at that stage and what kind of awareness or intervention may support movement rather than simply trying to resolve the latest argument.
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Rather than focusing only on who said or did what, the practitioner explores the deeper dynamics underneath the conflict.
This may include projection, unmet needs, fear of abandonment, loss of autonomy, self-abandonment, expectations or qualities that one person is unconsciously asking the other to provide.
The client is gradually supported to move from focusing exclusively on what the other person must change towards greater awareness of their own inner experience and participation in the dynamic.
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The training makes an important distinction between love itself and the desires or expectations that can become mixed with it.
A person may genuinely love their partner while also believing that their happiness, worth or security depends on that partner behaving in a particular way.
The work helps clients recognise this distinction and move towards a way of relating that is grounded more in reality, self-awareness and inner support than dependency.
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Inner polarity refers to the different masculine and feminine qualities or movements within a person, rather than fixed social gender roles.
The training explores which qualities may be dominant, neglected, rejected or projected onto a partner. Understanding this inner relationship can reveal deeper layers beneath attraction, conflict, dependency and the qualities we seek from other people.
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The method is useful for understanding relationship dynamics whether the client attends individually or the work involves relationships more directly.
Its foundation is not simply improving communication between two people. It is helping clients understand the unconscious patterns, projections and inner dynamics they bring into relationship.
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Relationship Alchemy Practitioner Training is for people who already have experience supporting others therapeutically and feel comfortable listening to personal and emotional issues.
It is suitable for counsellors, therapists, coaches, experienced facilitators and other helping practitioners who want a more structured, experiential and meditative method for working with relationship dynamics.
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Yes. Entry follows completion of Inner Alchemy Facilitator Training — Level 1.
Level 1 establishes the counselling, facilitation, present-moment and primal-relating foundations used throughout the work. Level 2 then develops those skills specifically for adult relationship and relational practice.
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No. It is a specialist practitioner training in relationship dynamics and relational work, not a standalone professional counselling qualification.
It is designed to deepen and extend existing counselling, therapeutic, coaching or facilitation skills.