31 March 2025

The wait is over.  I know so many people have been waiting for this. Thank you so much for your patience.  The new format EMDR Basic and Beyond Integrated Training is now open for registrations.   By “Integrated” we mean that all elements of the EMDR Association of Australia (EMDRAA) Basic EMDR curriculum are incorporated   This means that everyone will complete their Basic EMDR training to EMDRAA standards, including the essential 10 hours of Case Consultation.   That’s the “Basic” part. And the “Beyond” part takes you well beyond the EMDRAA curriculum, covered non-standard variations of EMDR for complex PTSD and personality disorders, a wide range of assessment, stabilisation and resourcing  strategies, and a huge library of regularly updated resources – over 1800 files.

We have been planning to move towards an integrated training for some time, but EMDRAA has recently introduced some changes in the curriculum that actually have major implications for how the training can be structured, and this has pushed us forward.  The amount of pre-training didactic instruction allowed for in the curriculum has been increased by a factor of five.  So now you can space out your didactic learning more easily, share learning exercises with fellow trainees  between training days, and this will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the conceptual foundations of EMDR.  That’s a good thing.  Shapiro’s Adaptive Information Processing model has many practical implications for the therapist, some quite subtle, and a solid grounding here makes for high fidelity EMDR and better outcomes.  This change in turn means that there can be less didactic instruction in the training days, and this in turn means that there is more opportunity for time spent building and practising practical skills.

We have put in literally hundreds of hours reconstructing the training from the ground up, and in the pre-training days you will have interactive lectures, videos, readings, and peer group exercises.  This is another new element in the training.  We know that trainees who practice with other trainees between training days are more confident in their execution of EMDR skills, and so peer group activities between training days are a mandatory requirement of the training.

But a full training day (7 active hours) of practical exercises would be exhausting for most people, the cognitive load exceeding most people’s capacity.  So the training has been broken down into half day modules of 3.5 hours. Some of the lighter days will have two modules; morning and afternoon.  Some days of intensive practice  and those with Case Consultation will have just one module, 3.5 hours, either morning or afternoon.   We are also considering an evening only training for those who don’t want / can’t take time off work.  If this interests you, please let us know.

The other change from EMDRAA has been the in the requirement that Case Consultation be conducted in groups of no more than four people per hour, with an Accredited Consultant.   The curriculum requirement is 10 hours of Case Consultation. Based on what many Accredited Consultants charge, that works out around $50-60 per person, per hour. So the curriculum requirement of 10 hours would add $500 – 600 to the cost of the training.  The price of the training has gone up because of this, but we have absorbed half of this extra cost, and kept the price rise to $300, our first in 4 years.

Although the EMDRAA curriculum includes a requirement for 10 hours of Case Consultation, very few trainings offer it as an integral part of their training.   In most cases it’s an additional extra.  Here at Therapist Training we have taken the view that Case Consultation should not be an optional extra (which we know most people don’t take because of the expense), but should be an integral part of the training.  So we have built Case Consultation time into the training days, so that everybody participates in this important aspect of training.  That will certainly put us at a commercial disadvantage to other trainings, but we think it is the right thing to do.

We are very excited about this new development and look forward to sharing it with you.

Graham & Min Taylor
31 March 2025