An overview
The Chaptering course is a single, continuous formation in the practice. It is undertaken one-to-one over approximately three months, beginning with an orientation session and continuing through twelve Chaptering sessions that form three complete chapters. You undertake the work first as a participant, with your inner child authoring and leading three chapters of her own. The theory, phenomenology and practitioner disciplines are taught alongside the experience, allowing you to understand the practice from within as you learn how to hold it for another. Successful completion and assessment lead to certification in demonstrated Chaptering practice within the Inner Council framework.
Chaptering is learned most fully by being lived. A practitioner who has been accompanied through their own chapters carries first-hand knowledge of receptive, non-directive witnessing, the demands of silence and the conditions that allow the inner child’s direction to become visible. That experiential knowledge provides the foundation for learning to hold the work with others.
The shape of the three months
The first three chapters of a person’s Chaptering work are each given four sessions, allowing the additional space the inner child often draws upon while the practice finds its footing. Three chapters of four sessions make up the twelve sessions of the course.
Each chapter develops its own arc within that space. An opening session commonly establishes the landscape, relationships and direction of the chapter. The middle sessions allow its figures, encounters and movements to develop. The final session provides room for the inner child to complete the movement in her own way, often through return, rest, departure, celebration or another gesture carrying the quality of arrival.
The space between sessions also belongs to the work. Integration may continue through dreams, changes in perception, material returning to awareness and developments in the relationship with the inner child. Each session begins from the ground established by the one before it.
What is taught
Teaching is introduced alongside the unfolding work: the inner child and the imaginal; story as the narrative form through which the practice develops; the chapter as a unit and the recurrent features of its arc; the developmental framework informing the work; and the symbolic landscapes, figures, objects and movements that recur across the accumulated corpus.
These figures are taught as tendencies to be recognised, not meanings to be assigned. The participant’s encounter remains primary, and the participant’s reading remains final.
At the centre of the training is the discipline of the practitioner: establishing and maintaining the container, working principally through witnessing silence, following the developing sequence without steering it, recognising the limits of one’s role, and holding trust in the inner child’s direction alongside active professional discernment.
The wider aim is inner literacy: the developing capacity to attend to one’s inner life, recognise its symbolic language and continue the relationship with increasing independence. This reflects the Inner Council’s philosophy of Open Source Therapy, in which methods are taught transparently and the practitioner works towards transferring capacity rather than retaining authority over the process.
What is included
Orientation session
An initial one-to-one meeting in addition to the twelve Chaptering sessions. It provides an opportunity to ask questions and consider together your present relationship with the inner child, your experience of imaginal work and your readiness for the course. It establishes expectations and the conditions under which the work will proceed.
Twelve one-to-one sessions
Three complete chapters over approximately three months, each given four sessions and allowed to unfold according to the inner child’s pace.
Theory and reflective study
Teaching offered alongside the chapters, allowing understanding to develop in direct relationship with experience.
The book
A hard copy of Chaptering: Healing the Past Through Imaginal Storywork, included with the course.
Assessment and certification
Observed demonstration of the capacity to hold Chaptering within the Inner Council framework, assessed alongside successful completion of the participant work and taught elements.
Readiness
Chaptering continues from an established relationship with the inner child, and its depth depends upon the ground already prepared. The work asks for the capacity to enter and remain within an imaginal state while retaining connection with the present moment, the practitioner and the session.
Readiness is considered during the orientation process and continues to be observed as the work unfolds. Where the necessary ground is still forming, gentler preparatory work may provide the appropriate next step. A conversation is the place to determine what will serve you best.
Certification
Successful completion and assessment lead to certification in demonstrated Chaptering practice within the Inner Council framework. This attests that you have undertaken three chapters of your own and demonstrated the capacity to establish the container, work through witnessing silence and accompany another participant while allowing the inner child to lead.
Certification marks a beginning. Practitioners continue to develop through supervision, peer reflection, further study and their own ongoing inner child work. The certification sits alongside any professional qualifications or registrations a practitioner may hold and does not replace credentials required for work within a regulated clinical profession.
How to begin
The course begins with a conversation, to ask your questions, to sense whether the time is right, and to look together at where you stand in relation to the work.
The course fee is £995.