The MAP Certification: A Student's Perspective

It’s exam season for the September 2023 intake of MAP* Certification students, and it’s exhilarating to see a flurry of posts in the Certification group announcing the names of students who passed their exams and got certified! Most of the students and certified practitioners are from the USA, and we also have people from various parts of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, particularly Singapore.

I’m blessed to be one of the certified practitioners assisting my Trainer — Sofie Hon, in this intake, which ended in early May this year. There’s a deep satisfaction in witnessing and offering gentle guidance to the class participants in small breakout groups. After spending seven months together, many are psyched to get certified and launch their MAP coaching practice. I am so happy for them!

Having recently watched Disney Pixar’s Inside-Out 2 animated movie, I’m seeing the old lady Nostalgia peeking out in my mind’s eye. It was thrilling learning each new procedure and the intense and deeply profound experiences accumulated through giving and receiving MAP sessions through weekly supervised sessions when I took the program a year before this intake in September 2022. I quickly got certified in April 2023.

The MAP Coaching Institute (MCI) is truly an amazing training institute that values the spirit of experiential learning and collaboration. Writing articles for the Institute while I deepen my learning has been an honor. Here are some exciting projects I participated in over the past two years.

• Interviewed Colette and Valentin Streicher, who are the co-founders of the MAP Method™, Trainers of the certification program, experienced Coaches who have created various specialty MAP Programs, fellow practitioners, and my fellow classmates when we were about to graduate from the program.
• Joined part of the very first team of Practitioners in Singapore to host a 2-day live MAP booth at the 2024 Spiritual & Wellness Convention.
• We also created a short program focused on caring for our mental and emotional well-being.

As you can probably tell, MAP has become an essential daily part of my life. Its certification program, along with its local and global communities, have done wonders for me, so I want to share why I recommend it to anyone passionate about healing and personal growth.

The program is people-centered.

My MAP classmates come from various personal and professional backgrounds. In the two class intakes I’ve taken, I’ve met a few hypnotherapists, a counselor, a marketing coach, a nurse, a beauty aesthetician, a medical doctor, a couple of math and science tutors, a few life coaches, a couple of parenting coaches, etc.

Some had powerful experiences through private sessions, or the group Coaching program facilitated by MCI. Others were blown away by the founder Colette Streicher’s signature MAP Experience workshop and immediately signed up for the certification program. Some people even watched the Facebook Ad and knew they had to take this program even before experiencing it firsthand.

Everyone is welcome to take the program, and we benefit greatly from practicing with one another.

It has a great structure for experiential learning.

Kudos to Valentin Streicher for creating such a wonderful program! He designed it to make it easy to learn and practice MAP in a step-by-step format without getting too bogged down by heavy neuroscience and psychology concepts. I love that it’s structured so that students, even without any personal growth background, can gain practice and confidence as we go through the program.

Val’s inspiration for structuring the program came from his drumming and BodyTalk™ background. While learning drumming in high school, he was given a new drum score to learn and practice at home each week. Once he had performed well on the drum score, his instructor gave him a more difficult drum score to learn and practice. Val also modeled the program after the BodyTalk modular system.

Initially, I felt overwhelmed and impatient to go through the seven-month program and wanted to get certified immediately. After trying to rush through the program for the first month, I decided to ease into its pace and take it step by step.

There are plenty of opportunities for learning and safe practice through the weekly two-hour lessons (with replays included) and the almost daily schedule of live supervised group practice sessions that I can book for additional practice and integration. Through the supervised sessions, I interacted and practiced with students from other intakes at various stages in their learning. As you can imagine, a lot can happen within seven months, so it’s common to see some students drop out of their original intakes due to other commitments. But I often see them pick up the pace again by enrolling in a new intake. I love how the Institute does its best to ensure we complete our program and get certified.

Another beautiful aspect of these supervised sessions is how the MAP Supervisors usually pair up a brand-new student with another student about to complete the program. The new student gets a sneak preview of what’s to come by being a client of the advanced student, and the advanced student is reminded of how effective even an introductory session can be.

Val emphasized that these supervised sessions are a non-negotiable part of the program, as they help the students practice MAP in a safe environment and learn from a wealth of experiences. This is where the students receive life-changing experiences and help other classmates change their lives.

Everyone is profoundly changed by the program.

We are living in increasingly uncertain and chaotic times. Grief is a common experience among my classmates, whether it’s grief through a sudden, abrupt loss of loved ones or grief through losing a job, things, or relationships important to them. I love how MAP works as a versatile and effective tool to help us cope with these deep uncertainties and grief.

Valentin Streicher calls MAP a deep coaching strategy. He explained:

“With MAP, you can create a plan for the future, but you’re also giving a space for the person to recognize why they are doing what they’re doing right now, then we neutralize and change the motivation. MAP is a blend of letting go of the past and planning a new future.”

MAP has been a lifesaver, offering us all more hope for the future while helping us to release emotional baggage from the past. Let me show you what I mean.

Here are some inspiring life stories from some of my MAP classmates.

Julie Cornish felt her life fall apart when she needed to care for their two young boys as a single mom. In her search for hypnotherapy sessions, she chanced upon a hypnotherapist, Elynn Light, who recommended she try out MAP instead. Julie was blown away after the third session and needed to know more. She registered for the certification program and started her first class two months after her first MAP session. She now works as a parenting coach and integrates MAP in her coaching sessions.

Juliet Bouldin (Torres), a licensed Esthetician, was grateful for how Luisa Marin, a certified MAP Practitioner, helped her mother, who fell ill with cancer. Her mother was non-responsive and non-verbal but became present and verbal after receiving a short 30-minute MAP session! Juliet and her father also received private sessions to help cope with this difficult situation. Though Juliet’s mother eventually passed away as the cancer progressed, she was so clear that MAP is her way forward. She dove into the year-long group coaching program and then took on the certification program. She specializes in doing MAP for people struggling with divorce and grief.

Midway through the seven-month certification program, Vickie Menendez experienced the sudden loss of her two children, who passed away merely 12 days apart from each other. Before these two tragedies, she had lost two other children. Faced with such devastating losses, she miraculously found the inner strength to help herself and others who have lost their children by writing a memoir about it. She continued to use MAP for herself whenever strong, painful emotions resurfaced while writing her life story. Vickie left our class intake but quickly rejoined the next intake and got certified this year. Her upcoming memoir on transforming pain into purpose will be published later this year. This is an incredible feat done in such a short amount of time while she was in deep grief.

My MAP classmates are amazing. I am honored to get to know them all and witness how the current practitioners are actively spreading the magic of MAP to more people.

Closing Thoughts

Since its creation in 2017, the MAP Certification Program has undergone several refinements and will continue to evolve. All certification students are given lifetime access to the group coaching program and the latest version of the certification program at no additional charge. I love this act of generosity from the Institute.

This program is a worthwhile investment for people who want a gentle and effective way to help themselves, their loved ones, and their clients let go of their past and move toward a more desirable future.

I hope that reading this article has piqued your interest in MAP! If you’d like to learn more about the MAP Certification Program, please visit the Certification page for more details and book an application call with our friendly Program Advisor — Dyan Ferguson.