Imaginal Coaching as an approach applies readily and seamlessly to coaching contexts including performance coaching, health coaching, life coaching, and team/leadership coaching.
Complete in 6–12 Months
A Transformative Approach to Coaching the Whole Person
About the Imaginal Coaching Certificate
The Imaginal Coaching Certificate is a program offered through Meridian University's Center for Transformative Learning. Designed for professionals seeking to develop a deep, integrated approach to coaching, the certificate draws on Meridian's graduate curriculum to provide a comprehensive foundation in Imaginal Coaching.
As a certificate participant, you will take courses from the anchor and other parts of Meridian's graduate curriculum offered during the period of your enrollment. This means you will engage with the same rigorous, faculty-led coursework that graduate students experience, tailored to the certificate's focus on Imaginal Coaching principles and practices.
What is Imaginal Coaching?
Coaching may be understood as a postmodern expression of transformative learning. Drawing on neuroscience, mindfulness, embodiment, and the creative arts, Imaginal Coaching is sourced in over 30 years of innovation in the theory and practice of transformative learning at Meridian University. Imaginal Coaching integrates somatic, dialogic, depth, and transpersonal dimensions of human experience. An imaginal approach to coaching activates the transformative potentials of conversation sourced in the imagination while engaging the whole person, via practices of expressive embodiment and creative action.
Imaginal coaching is a distinct approach that engages the imagination as a primary instrument for catalyzing transformative change. This recognizes that sustainable growth and change occur through the cultivation of imaginal capacities allowing for new possibilities to emerge from the liminal spaces between current reality and future potential. This approach enables coaching to engage the whole person while being finely attuned to the cultural context of the person's life-world. In Imaginal Coaching, conversational dialogue empowers well-being and creative action, serving personal and professional development.
The Context of Contemporary Coaching
Over the last 50 years, coaching as a practice for enhancing skills and capacities has grown in accelerating ways. This steep global rise of coaching can be understood as a response to the cultural crises and complexity challenges that permeate workplace teams, communities, and societies. Coaching practitioners serve in many professional domains including health, management, academics, sports, and overall personal and professional well-being. Coaching is now the globally dominant practitioner frame that is focused on enhancing individual and collective development.
A multitude of approaches to coaching have made for an eclectic marketplace lacking in sufficient structures of quality assurance. Most approaches come with their own specific concepts, principles, and practices that are aligned with very distinct outcomes. However, a versatile yet coherent approach to coaching optimally draws on many approaches, enabling integrated perspectives and practices instead of merely and sporadically choosing from an eclectic assortment.
Thematic Areas of Study
The following themes represent the key areas explored across the Imaginal Coaching curriculum. The specific courses you take will be drawn from Meridian's graduate offerings during your period of enrollment.
Module One
A Five-Layer Model: The Imaginal Core of Experience
- Coaching as Transformative Learning
- Contexts of Coaching: Performance; Health; Life; Team-Leadership
Module Two
The Body's Imaginal Knowing: Exploring the Neuroscience of Coaching
- Neuroplasticity and Brain Development
- The Gating of Experience: The Brian's Default Mode Network
- Navigating Connection: The Foundations of Safety
- Turbulence and Flow: The Vicissitudes of Motivation and Emotion
- Designed to Learn: The Brain's Cognitive Powers
- The Brain's Negative Emotional Bias
Module Three
Consciousness Alive: Engaging the Images of Perception
- Mindfulness and Contemplation
- Imagination and Activation of Trance States
- Psychoactive substances and altered states of consciousness
Module Four
Poetics of the Embodied Mind
- The Triumph of Sophistry: When Mind Turns Towards Self Deception
- Models of Structural Development
- Curiosity Drives Development
- Knowing, Thinking, and Enaction
Module Five
Exploring Mysteries of Personality
- Empathy and Resonance: It Takes Others to Become a Person
- Modeling Personality Patterns: The Enneagram and MBTI
- The Other Within: Engaging in Parts-Work like IFS plus Other Approaches to Multiplicity
Module Six
Identity as Barrier and Catalyst
- Shadows of Identity: Conflict and Scapegoating
- Freedom of Identity and Freedom from Identity
- Recognition: From Subject to Object
- Beyond Resilience, to Anti-Fragile
Module Seven
Imagining Worlds: The Cultural Context of Coaching
- Compassionate Accountability
- Dialogic Communication
- Attunement and Relationality
- The Catastrophic Risks of Chronic Liminality
- Social Imaginary and the Transindividual
- Culture as Developmental Space
Details
Certificate Details
- 16 credits of graduate-level coursework (4 courses at 4 credits each).
- Complete in 6 to 12 months — take 8 credits per quarter (6 months) or 4 credits per quarter (12 months).
- Courses are drawn from Meridian's graduate curriculum offered during the period of enrollment.
- Content and collaboration via Meridian's social learning platform.
Tuition
$476 per credit
Total certificate cost: $7,616 (16 credits)
Credits earned through the certificate may be applied toward a Meridian University graduate degree program, as applicable.
Accreditation
The Imaginal Coaching Certificate is part of Meridian University's California state approval and WSCUC (WASC) accreditation. WSCUC is a higher education accreditor recognized by the United States Department of Education. WSCUC is also the accreditor for Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California at Berkeley.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the application requirements?
The documents below are required to complete an application for certificate programs:
- Certificate Application (opens in a new tab)
- Application Fee: A non-refundable application fee of $50 USD is required to process your application at the time of submission
- Official Bachelor's Transcript: Must be received in a sealed envelope and may be mailed directly to the University's Los Angeles Campus (2450 Colorado Avenue, Suite 100E, Santa Monica, CA 90404) from the academic institution. Electronic transcripts are accepted if sent directly from the academic institution to admissions@meridianuniversity.edu
- Personal Statement (500 words): Included as part of the application form and should highlight the formative and significant experiences in your life, and how those experiences have influenced you in choosing to pursue a certificate program
- Information Meeting Attendance: In addition to submitting application materials, it is necessary that applicants attend an information meeting with certificate program faculty prior to moving forward in the application process. Prior to scheduling an information meeting, we require prospects to meet with an Admissions Advisor to discuss their certificate program interests further
- If you have not already done so, please schedule this Advising Appointment using this link. Once you meet this requirement, we will follow up with the next steps to schedule an Information Meeting with the faculty
What is the Imaginal Coaching Certificate?
The Imaginal Coaching Certificate is a 16-credit program offered by Meridian University that provides a comprehensive foundation in Imaginal Coaching. The certificate draws on courses from Meridian's graduate curriculum, offering rigorous, faculty-led coursework aligned with the certificate's focus area.
How long does it take to complete the certificate?
The certificate can be completed in as few as 6 months (taking 8 credits per quarter) or up to 12 months (taking 4 credits per quarter). Each course is 4 credits, and the program requires a total of 16 credits.
How much does the certificate cost?
Tuition for the Imaginal Coaching Certificate is $476 per credit. The total cost for the 16-credit certificate is $7,616.
Can I apply these credits toward a Meridian degree?
Yes. Credits earned in the Imaginal Coaching Certificate may be applied toward a Meridian University graduate degree program, as applicable. This allows you to build on your certificate work if you choose to pursue further graduate study at Meridian.
Is the certificate accredited?
Yes. The Imaginal Coaching Certificate is part of Meridian University's California state approval and WSCUC (WASC) accreditation. WSCUC is a higher education accreditor recognized by the United States Department of Education, and is also the accreditor for Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California at Berkeley.
What courses will I take as part of the certificate?
Certificate participants take courses from Meridian's graduate curriculum that are offered during the period of their enrollment. The specific courses available each quarter are drawn from the anchor and other parts of the graduate curriculum, providing a rich and varied learning experience grounded in the certificate's focus area.
What technology do I need to participate?
You will need an email account, a high-speed internet connection, and access to a computer, iOS or Android device. For live video sessions, you will need a webcam and microphone for your device. Course video calls are conducted with participants video-enabled.
How many courses do I need to complete?
The certificate requires four courses. At Meridian, each course is 4 credits, so the 16-credit certificate is completed by taking four courses. You can take up to two courses per quarter (8 credits) to finish in 6 months, or one course per quarter (4 credits) to finish in 12 months.
How can I reach program support?
The program support team will be available to assist from start to finish. Please send your questions, requests, or issues to admissions@meridianuniversity.edu