ACT in Practice with Dr. Steven C. Hayes (Praxis)

This is the second in a two course sequences that begins with ACT Immersion. It teaches ACT as a form of process-based therapy. In ten modules it provides 25 hours of training, with multiple "real plays" in which Dr. Hayes does actual work volunteers wanting help. You can see a "sneak peak" of the course here.

Dr. Hayes originated ACT in 1981 and views himself as the co-developer of what has become a communitarian effort to create a new scientific approach to behavioral science and its role in the life sciences generally. Dr Hayes offered this as a description of why you might want to train with him:

There are many voices in ACT and CBS. I encourage serious students of ACT and CBS more generally to take advantage of that, and most especially to join ACBS. But there is a benefit that may come from training with me so as to form a gut level understanding of the arc of this work. Literally everyone in the ACT universe was trained or heavily influenced by someone, who was trained or heavily influenced by someone (etc), who was trained by one of my nearly 60 Ph.D. students, who was trained by me. Either that, or more direct versions of that same weird sentence. Mind you there are people in the ACT universe now who know far more than me in many areas of the work. There are better ACT therapists, better ACT trainers, better ACT scientists, and better ACT writers. That is true of RFT, Functional Contextualism, and CBS as well. And of course all of that began long ago in strands of work that came together. But there may be a value in studying with the guy who lit the match on this new phase of a tradition, even if he is hardly responsible for the bonfire that is now burning 40 years later. This two course sequence is my personal best effort to walk you through the arc of that work, and give you the tools you may need to understand what ACT is, where it came from, where it is going, and how to do it. Almost always ACT Immersion is the place to start, in my opinion. It's the online version of how I trained my own students. It's not a "beginners" course. Even very experienced ACT people tell me is one of the best courses in ACT they've taken because now they more fully understand what those many voices in the ACT community are really talking about. I call it a "foundational course." But then if you are ready to be stretched, and you've applied ACT to many clients, and you've done a BootCamp or come to ACBS WorldCons and you are ready to look at the future of ACT as form of process-based therapy, you will be uplifted by ACT in Practice. These two courses took everything I've got in order to produce them. I spent several months and many hundreds of hours on each of them and they've since been tweaked in a careful roll out with smaller cohorts of student over nearly a year. Now, finally, both of them are available continuously. I stand behind them.

It's a no-risk proposition to try either one of them out because you can get your money back if you change your mind within the first two weeks. If you are from the developing world or just cannot afford what they cost (about a Starbuck's a day in the extended payment option) there is a scholarship program -- you can email team@act.courses to ask about it.