Deliberate Practice in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

A free training from Sentio University, co-authored by Sam Jinich and Hanna Levenson.

Emotionally focused couples therapy hinges on the therapist's ability to track moment-to-moment emotional cycles between partners and intervene precisely as they unfold. Like other experiential modalities, EFCT is hard to teach through reading alone, because the work lives in attunement, pacing, and the therapist's own affect. This page collects Sentio University's free deliberate practice resources for couples therapists trained in EFCT: a full webinar with Sam Jinich and Hanna Levenson, two senior EFT trainers, plus structured guidance on how to run the exercises with peers or in supervision. The recording is unedited, free to share, and designed to be paired with a real supervisor or study partner.

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What you will learn

This training is structured around five concrete skill targets that supervisors and peer practice groups can rehearse together.

  • How to track the emotional cycle between partners in real time and rehearse interventions on each beat
  • How to access primary attachment emotions safely during a session
  • How to slow down a couple in conflict without losing connection to either partner
  • How to fit EFCT skill-building into your existing supervision rhythm
  • How senior EFT trainers think about teaching attunement and pacing to early-career therapists

Watch the webinar

Deliberate Practice for Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, with Sam Jinich and Hanna Levenson. Free to share.

This webinar accompanies the APA book Deliberate Practice in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy by Levenson, Jinich, Vaz, and Rousmaniere, part of The Essentials of Deliberate Practice series. The book contains the full set of exercises demonstrated in the video. Buy on Amazon.

How to use this with peers or supervisors

The webinar is most useful when paired with structured practice afterward. We recommend a two-session model. In the first session, watch the recording with a peer or supervision group and pause at each demonstrated exercise to discuss how it would fit your current caseload. In the second session, run one of the exercises live. One person plays the therapist, one plays the client, and a third observes and offers structured feedback against a specific behavioral target, such as "tracks the emotional cycle" or "stays with the primary emotion rather than the surface complaint." Five to ten minutes of focused rehearsal followed by feedback tends to produce more growth than longer unstructured roleplay. Licensed clinicians who want to take this further can join Sentio's ongoing deliberate practice consultation group, which meets regularly and is open to clinicians worldwide.

Going deeper: Deliberate Practice Supervision

The webinar above demonstrates what deliberate practice looks like inside EFCT. Doing deliberate practice supervision well is a separate skill, and one that is hard to acquire from didactic content alone. The method has to be practiced under feedback, the same way the clinical skill itself does. A single weekend workshop tends not to give supervisors enough repetitions to develop the experiential muscle they need. Sentio runs an intensive year-long clinical supervisor training built around this principle. For the longer rationale for that format, see Why One Weekend Supervisor Trainings Fall Short.

About the authors

Sam Jinich, PhD is the Director of the San Francisco Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy and a Certified EFT Therapist, Supervisor, and Trainer recognized by ICEEFT (the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy). Born in Mexico City, he is bicultural and fluent in English and Spanish. He trains mental health professionals to become Certified EFT Therapists and maintains a private practice focused on couples work.

Hanna Levenson, PhD is Professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and a Certified EFT supervisor and therapist. She has specialized in brief psychotherapy as a clinician, teacher, and researcher for over 45 years and is the author of Time Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy and Brief Dynamic Therapy (APA Books). She is a Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy.

Tony Rousmaniere, PsyD is the President of Sentio University and Executive Director of the Sentio Counseling Center. He is past-president of the psychotherapy division of the American Psychological Association and the author of over 20 books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training, including The Essentials of Deliberate Practice book series (APA Books).

Alexandre Vaz, PhD is the Chief Academic Officer of Sentio University and co-founder of the Deliberate Practice Institute. He is co-editor of The Essentials of Deliberate Practice book series (APA Books) and host of Psychotherapy Expert Talks.

Related Sentio resources

Frequently asked questions

  • Deliberate practice in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy is structured, repetitive rehearsal of specific clinical skills, such as tracking the emotional cycle, accessing primary attachment emotions, and pacing interventions with both partners, with feedback from a peer or supervisor. It differs from didactic learning because the therapist actually practices the skill under simulated conditions rather than only studying or discussing it.

  • Licensed clinicians, supervisors, and graduate students who already have some exposure to EFT or EFCT and want a practical method for building their experiential couples therapy skills. It is also useful for supervisors who want to introduce deliberate practice into existing group supervision.

  • No. The exercises are designed to be useful at multiple training levels. Therapists earlier in their EFCT journey tend to get the most value from cycle tracking and primary emotion drills. More advanced clinicians can use exercises that integrate attachment frame and within-session repair work.

  • Yes. The webinar is free, unedited, and free to share with colleagues, students, and supervisees. Sentio University is a 501©(3) nonprofit and releases its training resources openly.

  • ICEEFT-certified EFT trainings teach the model. Deliberate practice trains the skill. The two are complementary. This webinar shows how to add rehearsal-based skill building to the training pathways most clinicians already use, including ICEEFT certification paths.