Professional development · Coaching
The Professional Coaching Program for Dive Instructors. Seventeen weeks, online, alongside your season. The World Happiness Academy's Transpersonal Coaching Program — ICF Level 1 accredited education, 102 contact hours — taught in a cohort of dive professionals and practised on the conversations you already have every day.
Join any week. The English group meets live on Tuesdays (11:00 Miami time); the Spanish group meets live on Wednesdays (19:00 Madrid time). New participants are welcomed every week. Sessions are recorded.
An instructor gives answers: the skill, the standard, the correction. A coach asks the question that lets a person find their own. Most of what decides whether a student keeps diving happens in conversation — before the water and after it.
You already hold those conversations. The nervous student on the boat. The divemaster candidate who has lost confidence. The colleague in the eleventh week of a long season. This programme gives them a professional method, an ethical frame and an internationally recognised standard.
It is also a second profession. Coaching is work you can do on land, in any season, from anywhere.
Professional development — coaching
Start here
A 20-hour course for dive professionals: five live online sessions, guided practice on land and a certificate of completion. Learn to ask, listen and hold the conversation before and after the dive. €777.
See the courseMeasured, not assumed.
Coaching: a 2023 meta-analysis restricted to randomised controlled trials (37 studies, 2,528 participants) found a statistically significant effect of workplace coaching across leadership and personal outcomes. de Haan & Nilsson, Academy of Management Learning & Education.
doi.org/10.5465/amle.2022.0107Diving: in a survey of more than 12,000 divers, 37% of women and 24% of men reported at least one panic experience while diving; the authors point to anxiety before entering the water as the best predictor. Colvard & Colvard, summarised in Alert Diver.
alertdiver.euDiving: a 2023 review in International Maritime Health sets out how stress and panic contribute to diving incidents and what professionals can do to help divers manage them.
International Maritime HealthWe make no claim that coaching prevents incidents. The claim is narrower: the conversation before the dive matters, and it can be trained.
The MD-1, MD-2 and MD-3 online courses of Mindful Diving™, included in your tuition.
Included: online course access. The in-water sessions each level requires are completed with a Participating Center or an MDI PRO under Standard v2.0 and are arranged with them. Enrolling in the coaching programme does not by itself award any MD level.
How it fits
Your agency rating
What you teach underwater and how.
Unchanged.
Mindful Diving™ levels (MD-1 → MD-5) and MDI PRO
How the dive is experienced.
Unchanged.
Professional Coaching Program
How you hold the conversation on land.
New, separate, optional.
A coaching qualification is not a diving level. It adds a profession; it changes no standard.
Week · title · ICF competency in focus · in the diving world.
Week 1
The Coach as Conscious Catalyst
ICF competency: Embodies a Coaching Mindset
In the diving world: From telling to asking: the instructor's habit of giving the answer, and what changes when you hold it back.
Week 2
Ethics as the Ground
ICF competency: Demonstrates Ethical Practice
In the diving world: Scope on a dive boat: coaching is not instruction, not therapy, not medical advice. Agency standards come first. Confidentiality in a small team.
Week 3
Presence as Practice
ICF competency: Maintains Presence
In the diving world: Your own state before you brief: ARRIVE and the Attention Cycle as the coach's preparation.
Week 4
Agreement, Trust, Sacred Container
ICF competency: Establishes Agreements · Cultivates Trust and Safety
In the diving world: Room to name a fear or ask for support without pressure to prove anything. The Buddy Agreement as a model of contracting.
Week 5
The Disciplines of Listening
ICF competency: Listens Actively
In the diving world: The surface interval as a listening room. FFLN as a structure for hearing what the dive was like, not only what happened.
Week 6
Powerful Questions
ICF competency: Evokes Awareness
In the diving world: Beyond "any questions?". The Readiness Scan as inquiry, not checklist.
Week 7
NLP for the Transpersonal Coach
ICF competency: Listens Actively · Evokes Awareness
In the diving world: The language of a briefing: reframing, and clean use of words with a nervous diver.
Week 8
ROUSER — Pillars and Archetypes
ICF competency: Coaching Mindset · Agreements
In the diving world: Your leadership profile as instructor, team lead or center owner.
Week 9
Koshas and the ICEF Architecture
ICF competency: Maintains Presence
In the diving world: Reading the whole person on the bench. FP20 before and after: measured, not assumed.
Week 10
Foundational Hypnotherapy for Coaches
ICF competency: Cultivates Trust and Safety
In the diving world: Attention and relaxation skills, on land only, inside a clear scope of practice.
Week 11
ITM — Shadow, Gift, Essence in Practice
ICF competency: Ethical Practice · Trust and Safety
In the diving world: Fear as information. Working alongside The Diving Mind: signal, story or cargo.
Week 12
Evoking Awareness
ICF competency: Evokes Awareness
In the diving world: Coaching the returning diver, the diver who stopped, and the professional who has lost the joy of it.
Week 13
Action, Accountability, Growth
ICF competency: Facilitates Client Growth
In the diving world: Beyond: carrying the dive into daily life. The Surfacing as a coaching agenda. Sustainable careers and instructor wellbeing.
Week 14
Transpersonal Coaching in Practice
ICF competency: All competencies integrated
In the diving world: Full sessions with dive-world clients: students, divemaster candidates, crew, center owners.
Week 15
Practicum Intensive
ICF competency: All competencies under observation
In the diving world: Observed sessions and feedback.
Week 16
Performance Evaluation Preparation
ICF competency: All competencies, refined
In the diving world: ICF exam preparation. Designing a coaching offer beside your diving work, including the off-season.
Week 17
Performance Evaluation and Closing Retreat
ICF competency: Final evaluation at the ACC standard
In the diving world: Capstone: your coaching identity as a dive professional.
The hours, competencies, mentor coaching and evaluation are those of the accredited Level 1 programme. The diving application is how this cohort practises them.
Where the named models live
Before · Below · Between · Beyond
The arc your coaching follows. Coaching lives in Before, Between and Beyond.
MD-1 → MD-3 — included
The shared practice language of the cohort.
The Diving Mind — Psychology of Fear
The companion for weeks 11–12.
Mindful Breath™
The companion for weeks 3 and 10, on land.
FP20
The measure used in week 9.
Pillar 3, Instructor Wellbeing
The reason this programme exists on this site.
You do not need to be an MDI PRO to enrol.
Already took Developing a Coaching Mindset? Its €777 is credited: €1,723 for dive professionals.
Tuition is paid to the Mindful Diving Institute, an initiative of the World Happiness Foundation. The coaching programme is delivered by the World Happiness Academy. We confirm your professional rating before onboarding. Refunds follow the refund policy.
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The Transpersonal Coaching Program is delivered by the World Happiness Academy. ICF, ACC, PCC and MCC are marks of the International Coaching Federation. The Mindful Diving Institute is not a diving agency and not an ICF accredited provider; it hosts this cohort for dive professionals.