What’s Inside the 6 Pillars of Intimacy® Certification

If you’re comparing certification programs, you want the contents. The 6 Pillars of Intimacy Certified Coaching Program includes ten training modules, a training manual, and six coaching tools you’ll use in real conversations. You complete a written exam and a coaching demonstration before you’re certified. Every piece is described below so you can decide for yourself whether it fits what you’re looking for.

The ten training modules

Two modules lay the foundation: why marriages drift, and how to see a couple’s story as structure. Six modules go one per pillar, Emotional, Physical, Financial, Spiritual, Recreational, and Sexual Intimacy. In each you learn what that pillar is and what a couple sounds like when it’s under strain. The last two are coaching practice labs. There you take everything you’ve read and use it on real coaching scenarios before you sit across from a couple in a live session.

Each module pairs with a training video and a live session. You read the framework, then you watch it demonstrated and practice it yourself. The two practice labs matter more than their placement at the end suggests. That’s where you take a sample story and work it through the framework out loud, and you get feedback before a real couple is sitting across from you.

Two further modules close the program: one prepares you for the written exam and the coaching demonstration, and one covers the certification standards and what happens once you are certified. A bonus module covers the coaching conversations that follow the first one.

The manual

The written manual carries the full framework, all ten modules in writing, and the reference material you’ll keep returning to as you prepare to coach. You read each module before the live session covering it. We built that order into the program on purpose.

The coaching tools

You take six tools with you into real coaching conversations:

• The Diagnostic Tool. You use it to listen past what a couple is loudly complaining about and work toward which pillar is under strain underneath it. You come out of it with a coaching hypothesis, one pillar to name and one next step to offer.
• The From Story to Structure Worksheet. You use it to map what a couple brings you: what is loud, and what sits underneath it that you can start with.
• The First Conversation Flow. You use it to lead an initial coaching conversation, so both spouses feel heard and safe and you leave the first session with one focus.
• The Reframe Guide. You use it to turn a couple’s blame or discouragement into something structural they can work on together. With it you have somewhere to take a conversation that has stalled in accusation.
• The Triage and Referral Guide. You use it to tell a coaching conversation from one that needs a licensed professional, and to make that referral without it feeling like you’ve failed the couple. With it you stay inside the scope of coaching.
• Weekly Reps. You complete these short practice exercises on your own between sessions, using a real conversation or situation. The framework becomes a habit before you lead it live with a couple.

The written exam and coaching demonstration

Certification closes with two requirements. You take a written exam covering the framework and the tools, and you give a coaching demonstration, live or recorded, where you show how you’d lead a real conversation. Both exist to confirm you can use the framework with a couple in the room.

How the cohort runs

Each cohort holds twelve spots. A couple coaching together takes one spot between them. The next cohort starts January 2027, and one deposit is already in. The program runs ten weeks.

You meet in live sessions, and most weeks there is an optional Thursday call for questions and coaching challenges as you work through the material. You can ask what you’re stuck on the same week it comes up.

What a graduate can do

In Alisa’s words: a certified coach can take what a couple is saying about their marriage and turn that story into a clear, structured coaching conversation using The 6 Pillars of Intimacy, identify where the marriage may be under strain, help the couple see the issue without blame, choose a starting point, guide intentional next steps, and recognize when the situation needs support beyond coaching.

What it costs

We set pricing for each cohort, and it can change from one to the next. The current price is on the certification page.

Ready to see it as a whole

This page lists the parts. For who the program is for and how to enroll, see the certification page. Tony talks through why we built the program in the first place in episode 907, “This is Bigger Than Us”.