🕒 6–8 Months
On-line + Live 3-Day Intensive
For Registered Nurses including NPs, CNSs & PSWs
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The Becoming Method® resolves trauma at the root in 3 to 7 sessions — a guarantee you can make to every client, from day one.
CNA-Accredited · Trusted by 80 clinicians across Canada · OAMHP/CCPA Approval pending
Anecdotal evidence suggests that suicidal ideation may shift within a single session. Depression often lifts within three. Symptoms such as anxiety, PTSD, and chronic emotional reactivity frequently resolve within seven to eight sessions.
Based on anecdotal clinical observation, not a controlled outcome study. Individual results vary.
This isn’t a one-day technique workshop. In BEC111, you work through the Becoming Method® as a living clinical process — session by session — building the self-awareness, emotional regulation, and clinical judgment it takes to apply it with confidence. You start using it with clients before the course is even finished. Early clinical observations suggest significant symptom resolution within three to seven sessions across depression, PTSD, and chronic emotional reactivity.
Built on over two decades of clinical practice across nursing, psychotherapy, and community health — and integrating the convergent insights of van der Kolk, Levine, Porges, Siegel, and Schwartz — not adapted from theory alone.
Each 90-minute session follows a defined cyclical structure — from intention-setting and consciousness mapping through conscious forgiveness and reconciliation. Not a loose framework you have to assemble yourself.
Delivered in a capped cohort model with case consultation on your own client work built into every Zoom session — so you’re never applying a new method alone.
Most trauma training is designed around what happened — the event, the history, the diagnosis. BEC111 starts somewhere different. Trauma, in the Becoming Method®, is the holistic overwhelm of the nervous system brought on by perception — not by the size of the event. This is the shift Polyvagal Theory opened: from what happened to you to what happened inside you. Which means every client you see — not just the ones labelled — is a candidate for this work. BEC111 is for any regulated health professional ready to work from that understanding.
Not right for you if: you have no prior clinical training or professional registration. BEC111 is a CE course for practicing professionals. It is not an introductory program and is not designed for personal healing work.
Join the clinicians already using this process with real clients — before the September cohort fills.
BEC111 gave me a way to see what was actually happening in my clients’ nervous systems, not just in their stories. One family I’d worked with for years shifted more in three Becoming Method® sessions than they had in the previous twelve months of crisis work. Having a coherent, phase-based process has completely changed how I approach complex cases.
A. Clarke, MSW, RSWCommunity Mental Health, Ontario
I expected another ‘interesting’ trauma training; what I got was a method I use every week. The Becoming Method® helped me connect chronic anxiety and relationship patterns back to identity disruption and dysregulation in a way my clients could actually understand. Several long-term clients have told me, ‘This is the first time therapy feels like it’s going somewhere.’ My practice is sharper and more anchored because of this course.
J. Patel, RPPrivate Practice, Toronto
As a nurse, I wasn’t sure how a psychotherapy training would translate to front-line care. It did. BEC111 gave me language for what I already see in emergency and community visits — shutdown, hyperarousal, dissociation — and practical steps I can use right in my scope. I’m more confident de-escalating, and patients report feeling ‘seen’ in a new way. It has meaningfully improved how I show up at the bedside.
M. Johnson, RNCommunity & Emergency Nursing, Brampton
BEC111 is delivered in two phases: a 3-day in-person intensive at the Becoming Institute’s Brampton location, followed by four monthly half-day sessions via Zoom. Together, they total 38.5 contact hours.
In person · 80 Devon Road, Unit 2, Brampton, ON
Via Zoom, hosted through our secure Brightspace platform
Orientation to the Becoming Method®’s nine-step process. Introduction to the Smashing the Mirror™ trauma framework and the Levels of Consciousness (readiness) assessment.
How to identify and work with the Trauma Triangle through structured truth-telling, and how to facilitate the conscious forgiveness process without pressuring the client.
How reconciliation functions as a measurable clinical outcome, how to help clients reach peace consciousness, and how to close a therapeutic arc.
Establishing partnership and safety in real cases from your own practice.
Truth-telling and intervening at the moment of rupture.
Somatic awareness and IFS-informed reconciliation work.
Integration, case consultation, and opening the next chapter of practice.
Each Zoom session combines live instruction, guided practice, case consultation on your own clinical work — including how each case connects to family, cultural, or community context — and review of your monthly self-evaluation submission.
BEC111 is the foundational course in the Becoming Method® — twenty years of clinical inquiry distilled into a teachable, supervisable, regulator-aligned methodology. The Method integrates the convergent insights of Diamond, Hawkins, Blakely, van der Kolk, Levine, and Porges into a coherent, phase-based approach to trauma recovery, delivered here as a nine-step clinical process you practise and are evaluated on.
Disciplined witnessing of what happened, what was lost, and what was adapted to in order to survive.
Release of inherited contracts, ancestral burdens, and self-judgements that block coherence, agency, and authenticity.
Reintegration of self, relationship, and community — a return to connection across personal, familial, and systemic fields.
“Psychological safety is not the absence of difficulty. It is the disciplined, regulated, ethically grounded presence within which lasting recovery becomes possible.”
The Becoming Method® is a registered mark of Becoming Institute Inc. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Ph.D. (Nursing), RN-Psychotherapist
Dr. Joan Samuels-Dennis, Ph.D., RN-Psychotherapist, is a Canadian nurse, psychotherapist, and educator with more than 25 years of clinical, community, and public health practice, much of it with populations affected by structural violence, displacement, and intergenerational trauma. That work is the direct source of the Becoming Method®’s community and cultural-context focus — it wasn’t added as theory, it came out of practice. She is also the principal architect of the Advanced Practice RN-Psychotherapist Standards & Competencies, a framework defining nursing psychotherapy as an advanced clinical role in Canada.
As Founder and President of Becoming Institute Inc., she trains nurses and allied professionals to work as Trauma Recovery Specialists and RN-Psychotherapists across health systems and communities.
M.A. · RP
Jenn Cardoso is a Registered Psychotherapist and somatic practitioner whose work centers on embodiment, relational awareness, and trauma-responsive healing. Her teaching is grounded in the understanding that the body holds essential knowledge — and that learning must attend to both physiological and relational experience.
With training in counselling psychology, somatic approaches, and trauma-informed movement, Jenn supports practitioners in developing presence, attunement, and nervous-system literacy. Her work emphasizes how safety, connection, and meaning are cultivated through embodied practice rather than technique alone.
MSW · RSW
Chantal Gray is a Registered Social Worker and clinical leader whose work centers on trauma-informed, culturally responsive care across the lifespan. She brings extensive experience supporting children, families, and communities through intergenerational trauma, life transitions, and systemic stressors.
As Co-Founder and Clinical Director of Winrose Oasis Counselling Services, Chantal has led the development of holistic, community-anchored clinical programs grounded in safety, cultural humility, and relational care. Her practice integrates evidence-based approaches — including trauma counselling, play-based interventions, and EMDR — within a framework that honours family systems and cultural context.
Yes — and it’s actually designed for that. The Becoming Method® is built on the premise that trauma is a nervous-system response to perceived overwhelm, not a diagnosis. Chronic anxiety, depression, relationship conflict, identity struggles, and burnout are all presentations of dysregulation. If your clients carry any of those — and they do — this course is directly applicable to your existing caseload, starting week one.
No. BEC111 doesn’t replace those modalities — it gives them a coherent sequence to sit inside. Many graduates say it’s the first training that helped them understand why their existing tools work and when to use which one. You’ll leave with a framework that integrates what you already do, not a replacement for it.
BEC111 is designed for regulated health professionals across nursing, psychotherapy, social work, counselling, and allied health — not one discipline. The seven learning outcomes are mapped to competencies recognized across the CNA, CRPO, OCSWSSW, and CCPA frameworks. The course teaches the Becoming Method® as a clinical process you apply within whatever scope you already practice in.
Most trauma frameworks address one domain — cognitive, somatic, or relational. The Becoming Method® is a phase-based, nine-step process that moves through truth-telling, conscious forgiveness, and reconciliation as sequential, teachable, and evaluable clinical stages. It integrates the convergent insights of van der Kolk, Levine, Porges, Siegel, and Schwartz — and adds a decolonized, community-level lens that most single-modality trainings don’t include.
It’s built into the curriculum, not appended to it. Days 1, 2 and 3 of the intensive specifically cover how systemic oppression, cultural context, and intergenerational trauma shape a client’s nervous-system presentation — and how to work with that context directly in session, as part of the clinical process rather than as a separate diversity module.
Yes. All four dimensions map to established constructs in trauma-informed and psychotherapy literature: somatic/nervous-system regulation, cognitive and narrative processing, self-concept and identity, and sense of purpose or connection to community. Each has a specific, teachable clinical technique. You decide how much weight to give each dimension with any given client, exactly as you would with any clinical framework.
BEC111 provides 38.5 contact hours recognized under the CNA continuing education framework. You receive a certificate of completion with learning objectives, contact hours, and documented competency areas. OAMHP and CCPA pre-accreditation has been submitted — check with your specific regulatory body for self-reporting requirements.
Sessions are recorded and accessible through Brightspace. Live attendance is strongly encouraged — case consultation is built into real-time group discussion and cannot be fully replicated asynchronously. If you miss a session, a written clinical reflection submission is required in its place.
BEC111 is capped at 15 participants. The small cohort size is intentional — case consultation on your own client work is built into every Zoom session, which requires the kind of trust and depth that only a contained group can hold.
Full refunds are available up to 14 days before the start of your cohort’s 3-day intensive. After that point, you can receive a credit toward a future offering of BEC111. No refunds are issued within 7 days of the intensive start date or after the cohort has begun.
BEC111 has no prerequisite for standalone CE participants. It is also the required foundational course within the Becoming Institute’s 12-month RN-Psychotherapist Credentialing Program — participants on that pathway must complete BEC101 first.
Book a 15-minute call with an Academic Advisor. We’ll answer your specific questions, walk you through what a typical session looks like, and help you figure out whether BEC111 fits your practice and your schedule — no pressure, no pitch.
BEC111 is recognized under the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) continuing education framework and provides 38.5 documented contact hours. It has also been submitted for pre-accreditation with the Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals (OAMHP) and the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). Participants who complete all course requirements receive a CE certificate they can self-report toward continuing competency requirements with multiple regulatory bodies.
RNs, NPs, RPNs, CNSs, PHNs, PMHNs · 38.5 hours recognized under the CNA continuing education framework.
Psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers, psychologists · 38.5 hours submitted for pre-accreditation (self-reported CE usable once approved).
Counsellors and psychotherapists, national · 38.5 hours submitted for pre-accreditation (pending). Participants receive full documentation to self-report CE in the interim.
Note for Registered Social Workers: The Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW) does not pre-approve individual courses — social workers self-report their own continuing education hours. BEC111’s documented learning objectives, contact hours, and OAMHP pre-accreditation give you everything you need to self-report this course toward your continuing competence requirements.
If your college or association is not listed above, you can still self-report BEC111 using the detailed learning outcomes and contact-hour documentation provided with your certificate.
Certificates of completion are issued by Becoming Institute Inc. upon successful fulfillment of all course requirements.
38.5 accredited contact hours and a certificate of completion — with only 15 seats per cohort, secure yours for September.
There’s no shortage of trauma trainings. What’s harder to find is a course that gives you a full, sequenced process — one that accounts for culture and community, nervous-system state, and identity, not just one more technique added to your toolkit.
This work isn’t easy. It asks a lot of you — your time, your patience, your willingness to keep going when a case doesn’t respond to standard technique, and your willingness to see each client inside their full context. BEC111 gives you a process, a peer group, and a structured way to keep sharpening your practice over time.
Questions? Email info@becominginstitute.ca or call (647) 265-0804
