Training

Currently Scheduled Scottish EFT Trainings

Emotion-Focused Therapy Level 1 – 2026 (online training)

Dates: Friday 6th Feb, Mon 9th Feb, Friday 20th Feb, Monday 23rd Feb (9.30am-5pm, via zoom)

Facilitated by isEFT Trainers Joan Shearer & Ligia Manastireanu
with cameo appearance from one of the EFT originators, Prof. Robert Elliott

The Scottish Institute for Emotion-Focused Therapy is pleased to offer a 4-day training course in EFT Level 1. This course is advanced professional training and is open to qualified counsellors and psychotherapists (Postgraduate Diploma/MSc Level or above). This training will provide therapists from person-centred, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, and related backgrounds an opportunity to develop their therapeutic skills and interest in emotion-focused therapy.
EFT is an evidence-based training that has relevance to working with depression, trauma, and anxiety difficulties. It offers a transdiagnostic approach for working with a variety of mental health problems (e.g. depression, anxiety, trauma) by accessing the underlying vulnerability of the core emotional pain and transforming it, rather than focusing solely on symptoms.

Joan and Ligia have been running EFT training under the Scottish Institute since 2019. The course provides an overview of key components of the EFT model including Emotion Theory, the role of emotion and emotional awareness in function and dysfunction and methods for evoking, exploring, and transforming problematic emotion-based experiences. Participants will receive in-depth skills training through a combination of brief presentations, video demonstrations, case discussions, and supervised skill practice using personal material.

  • Day 1 AM: The origins and development of the EFT Model & getting started with Emotion Theory
  • Day 1 PM: Emotion Theory (continued) & Accessing and Regulating Emotion
  • Day 2 AM: Therapist Empathic Response Types and Emotional Deepening Model
  • Day 2 PM: Introduction to Therapeutic Tasks; Evocative Unfolding for Problematic Reaction Point Task
  • Day 3 AM: Getting Started with Two Chair Work
  • Day 3 PM: Two Chair work continued
  • Day 4AM: Empty chair dialogue for Unfinished Business
  • Day 4 PM: Review of Key Areas of Theory (Quiz); Practical Parameters in the EFT Model; Where to from here.

• This course is formally recognised by the International Society for Emotion-Focused Therapy (https://www.iseft.org/ ) and provides the first step toward certification as an EFT therapist.
• It can be taken for Continuing Professional Development credit.
• Early-bird fee before 30th November 2025: £595
• Full fee after 30th November 2025: £645
• For enquiries and registration, email: eftinstitutescotland@gmail.com

NEW: Additional Skills Practice sessions (optional and included in the course fee, online)

The aim of these sessions is to offer participants the opportunity to build on their learning from the course and to further develop their skills.

Four sessions will be scheduled, on a Monday evening in each of the following months – March, May, June and August 2026. They will be 1.5 hours, with two skills practice sessions of 45 minutes each. The sessions will be run by EFT Accredited Supervisors or Supervisors-in-training.

You can attend 2 of the skills sessions for every module in EFT training that you have registered for or completed in 2026. (ie Level 1 => 2 sessions, Level 1 & Level 2A => 4 sessions, Level 1 & Level 2B => 4 sessions).

The sessions are included in the course fees and attendance is optional. There will be a maximum number of spaces, which will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. We reserve the right to cancel the sessions if the course numbers are not sufficient to cover the cost of the sessions.

Information on the dates and how to register for the sessions will be distributed to all course participants once the details are finalised.

Emotion-Focused Therapy Level 2 – 2026 (online training)

Level 2A module – Advanced Empathic Attunement

Dates: Friday 24th April, Mon 27th April, Friday 1st May (9.30am-5pm, via zoom)

Facilitated by isEFT Trainers Joan Shearer & Ligia Manastireanu

This module will be followed by two new Masterclasses run by Prof. Robert Elliott on ‘Therapist Process in Empathic Resonance’ & ‘Integrating Empathy: An Approach to Learning Deep Empathic Immersion.’

Dates to be confirmed: 1st and 2nd June 2026  (5pm-9pm UK time, via zoom)

Level 2B module – EFT Fundamentals

Dates: Monday 31st August, Friday 4th September, Monday 7th September & Friday 11th September 2026 (9.30am-5pm, via zoom)

Facilitated by isEFT Trainers Joan Shearer & Ligia Manastireanu
with cameo appearance from one of the EFT originators, Prof. Robert Elliott

Level 2C module – Advanced Skills in EFT, will be run as masterclasses by Prof. Robert Elliott, Joan Shearer and Ligia Manastireanu

Dates: November 2026, details to be announced soon.

The Trainers

Joan Shearer is a humanistic psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and trainer, specialising in emotion-focused therapy. Initially trained in the person-centred approach at the University of Strathclyde, Joan then pursued training in emotion-focused therapy under Professor Robert Elliott (a co-founder of the EFT model), becoming a is-EFT certified therapist, supervisor and trainer. She is a co-founder and Director of the Scottish Institute of Emotion-focused Therapy. Joan is passionate about training and has experience delivering training in counselling skills, MSc and CPD courses. While her main interest is in clinical work and training, Joan also has an interest in client factors research and worked on a social anxiety research project at the University of Strathclyde. In addition to her work as a trainer, she also currently works in the out-patient service of a private psychiatric hospital and has a private practice offering psychotherapy to individuals and clinical supervision for individual and groups.

Ligia Manastireanu trained as an EFT supervisor and trainer with Professor Robert Elliott, and they have been collaborating in various ways since 2017. Ligia has been delivering EFT training in Scotland, as well as internationally. She is a co-founder and director of the Scottish Institute for Emotion Focused Therapy (SI-EFT). Ligia is bringing her extensive clinical experience of working with clients with complex presentations and her passion for supporting therapists in their professional development, through the different roles she has had as a clinical lead, supervisor, and trainer. Alongside her SI-EFT colleagues, she is dedicating her time to supporting the development of the EFT community in Scotland, through seeing EFT supervisees, offering EFT training, as well as networking and further CPD opportunities. Ligia has conducted research in Collaborative Case Formulation in EFT and she is bringing her work and research findings into the EFT training.

Trainers offering Masterclasses

Robert Elliott, Ph.D. (preferred pronouns: they/them), is professor emeritus of counselling at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland).  They received their PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1978, and are also professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Toledo (Ohio). Their main interests are practice, supervision, training, and research on EFT and related therapies. They co-authored Facilitating emotional change (1993), Learning emotion-focused psychotherapy(2004/2025), Research methods in clinical psychology (1994/2002/2015), Essentials of Descriptive-Interpretive Qualitative Research (2021), and Emotion-Focused Counselling in Action (2021), as well as 200 journal articles and book chapters. Robert is past president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and previously co-edited the journals Psychotherapy Research, and Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies.  They are a fellow in the divisions of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association, and received the Distinguished Research Career Award of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and the Carl Rogers Award from the Division of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association. They now live in Northern California, in the ancestral lands of the indigenous Ohlone people, where they continue to enjoy developing, writing about and running EFT training, as well as walking, running, science fiction, poetry, and all kinds of music.

Lorna Dawson (Formerly Carrick) MSc, preferred pronouns she/her is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Strathclyde Where she teaches on the MSc’s in Person-Centred Psychotherapy and Counselling and on the Counselling Unit’s Advanced Professional Training Programme. She has a private practice that includes EFT Therapy, Supervision and Training.

She has developed several mental health projects and is a founder Member of the Clydesdale Counselling and Human Development Project which received NHS and third sector funding for over17 years.  Her main interests are practice supervision, training and research, development of theory particularly in: Trauma and Crisis, Social Anxiety, PCE Counselling for Depression and Pre-therapy for clients with psychological contact difficulties.

Lorna has an MA Honors Degree in Psychology from The University of Glasgow and worked as a Clinical Psychologist for Tayside NHS prior to becoming Director of the Strathclyde Children in Care Scheme for the Strathclyde Social Work Department. She has a MSc in Counselling and Psychotherapy from The University of Strathclyde and has been a Mental health therapist for more than 35 years.

EFT level 3, Hosted by SI-EFT [Zoom]: Ligia Manastireanu & Joan Shearer

    • 8 X Monday afternoons; group supervision
    • One series currently running
    • Recruiting for new 2025 series to start September 2025

The course can count as CPD (20 hrs) and forms part of the IS-EFT Accreditation process (See Training Standards at http://www.iseft.org/ )

Format: The course format is group supervision, using an EFT approach to supervision.

In EFT Supervision there are four main ways of working:

  1. Using client recordings
  2. Case Formulation
  3. Personal work on stuck areas of practice
  4. Embodied supervision (Th. embodies client).

Delivery: online using zoom.

If you wish to enquire about this course, please contact us by clicking here!