Program guide
Life-changing experiences can quickly shift our perspectives, our values, and how we relate to the world around us. They can awaken new interests and desires, clarify purpose and direction, or stir up grief and confusion. Without a process for integration, the opportunities for growth these experiences open can quickly fade behind old patterns, routines and beliefs. Integration is the process of turning these experiences into meaningful lived change.
Nature-Based Integration Coaching helps clients develop a coherent, unified and purposeful experience of themselves in their life, their work, and the world. As their coach, you guide that work: helping them explore and integrate the impact and meaning of all parts of their journey.
You are already the person people come to when they want to change. You may be a certified coach, a licensed therapist, a guide or a facilitator who has a long history of client work and no credential that fits it.
What you have in common is that you have been on the other side of an expanded experience yourself, and you want to be a professional resource to the people coming back from theirs.
NBIC assumes you can already hold a conversation with someone who is processing something important in their lives. It teaches you what to do with the specific material an expanded, life-changing experience leaves behind.
NBIC focuses on the integration process and does not train facilitation, diagnosing, dosing, or administering.Program length
8 to 12 months
Training hours
120, of which 60+ are live
Live calls
Twice a month
Starting
Upon acceptance
Format
Self-paced video lessons, anchored by live integration calls, community, and project-based mentoring
In person
Two gatherings
You finish with
A professional certification in Nature-Based Integration Coaching
Each unit includes a set of video lessons with a comprehensive lesson guide, stated learning outcomes, and real life nature-based practices: solo in a natural setting, and in pairs with others in the program. Every unit closes with a written Reflection on Learning, and the units map to a stated competency framework, NBICS1 through NBICS9. See all the competencies here.
01
Included lessons: 4
The arc of the integration experience, how to place a client on it, the markers that move a client from peak experience to lasting and meaningful change, and the resistance patterns that show up at each stage.
You'll learn to see beneath a client's story, distinguishing genuine integration from spiritual bypassing, and recognizing where real change is happening and where insight has yet to become embodied.
02
Included lessons: 4
Discover the brain as a landscape, and the brain and body as an integrated system.
You'll be able to help your client understand why the weeks after an experience matter and how to tend that critical period.
03
Included lessons: 10
Understand the common experiences clients arrive from, and what each tends to leave behind, so you can coach their integration from an informed starting point.
You'll be able to receive a client's account of any gateway without needing them to educate you first.
04
Included lessons: 9
Work through the stages of a transformational process, how to assess client readiness, the contraindications that signal caution, the challenges that commonly arise during integration, and how to navigate them.
You'll be able to help clients discern when and how to move forward. When a journey is not the next right step, you'll help them recognize what is emerging instead.
05
Included lessons: 6
Learn and practice complementary techniques and tools for your coaching, including partswork, gestalt and ceremony.
You'll help clients bring what they value and believe into greater alignment with how they actually live and relate in the world.
06
Included lessons: 3
Learn to interrupt the daily habits that quietly rebuild a client's old identity, use ritual and ceremony to mark change so that it holds, and coach them toward an integrated sense of who they have become.
07
Included lessons: 9
NBIC approaches trauma, grief, and shadow through a nature-connected, mythic, and non-pathologizing lens. Rather than asking only, "What is wrong?" we learn to ask, "What happened, what adapted, and what might this experience be asking of you now?"
You'll be able to approach trauma, grief, and shadow without immediately pathologizing the experience, helping clients explore what happened, what adapted, and how to make soulful meaning of the adaptations of survival and how they can be brought into the present moment.
08
Included: 20+ lessons, plus weekly business mentoring calls
Visioning, focusing and planning your practice, then building, growing and scaling it. Runs alongside a full year of business mentoring.
You'll be able to name, price and offer your integration coaching service.
What if you finish the program but still have not found any paying clients?
If you have followed all of the steps and participated in all of the requirements, and you still have not landed at least one paying client by the time the program is done, your mentoring and supervision continue at no cost for another six months.
Prefer to read this guide offline, or pass it along? The same guide is available as a PDF.
Download the PDFOver the course of 8 to 12 months you will complete the lessons at a timely pace, holding the responsibility of creating meaningful engagement with the community.
Most lessons include a personal reflective exercise, partner practice and written reflection. You can expect 2 to 4 hours of learning engagement per lesson. A large part of this program is your real life practice.
The final requirement for certification is a capstone project, where you create your integration coaching service. This project represents something you are passionate about and will become your contribution to the field of integration.
Live mentoring is included in the community space, as well as regular mentoring office hours, so you can get 1:1 support when you need it.
How you attend the two in-person gatherings is up to you: virtually, or in person in Colorado, USA.
Enrolling in NBIC means you are part of a greater community anchored in earth-centered values and inspiring vision. Membership in the EBI Nature-Connected Community continues after you certify.
We looked at what integration coaches charge, how long a typical engagement runs, and what it costs to start a practice. Then we set that against our current tuition of $8,700 (2026-2027). Priced the way we teach it, three to six clients will cover your tuition.
You can find more details about ROI, including the sources we used, here on this page.
See what the data shows →As of 2026, we have graduated two cohorts and are still collecting income data on their businesses. What we can offer at this time are safe assumptions drawn from what the industry is showing and how we teach students to price their work and build referral relationships.
NBIC is a professional certification from the Earth-Based Institute. There are three main requirements for the certification:
Live mentoring and support is consistent and available throughout the program.
ICF credentialing available. While NBIC includes the ICF's Professional Coaching concepts and competencies, it is not accredited by the ICF. EBI's Nature-Connected Coaching program is an ICF Level 2 accredited coaching certification, and it can be combined with NBIC to position you as a professionally credentialed integration coach. The ICF reports that credentialed coaches earn on average about $10,000 a year more than coaches without a credential (2025 ICF Global Coaching Study).
When NBIC is bundled with Nature-Connected Coaching, the combined training meets the coach-education requirement toward an ICF credential. The Nature-Connected Coaching program carries 315 ICF Level 2 accredited hours (NCC).
At this time, NBIC does not carry continuing-education credits.
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The ICF Level 2 accreditation is held by Nature-Connected Coaching. NBIC is a professional certification from the Earth-Based Institute and is not itself accredited by the ICF.
Integration coaching is a distinct coaching discipline that aligns with the ICF's competencies for professional coaches. It is not therapy, not medical treatment, not diagnosis, and not facilitation.
As a Nature-Based Integration Coach you work with people before and after expanded experiences; help them prepare with clear intention; help them make meaning of what happened and translate it into aligned behavior and deeper fulfillment; use nature-based practice as a working method; and recognize when something is outside your scope and refer it onward.
NBIC prepares you to be the integration specialist in an interdisciplinary ecosystem of care, bringing a skill set that complements the work of therapists, physicians, facilitators, and other practitioners. Our focus is integration: helping clients make meaning, deepen discernment, embody insight, and navigate what comes next. Facilitation, administration, sourcing, psychedelic recommendations, diagnosis, and clinical treatment are outside the scopes of this program.
Next steps
Once accepted to the program, you can start right away. Enrolling now gives you access to the curriculum, the community, the live calls and the business mentoring.
The most useful next step is usually a conversation with our team. We will walk you through the structure and help you determine if it is a good fit for you.
Schedule a conversationIf you already know this is right, the application is hereEarth-Based Institute does not approve or disapprove, suggest, advocate, or make referrals or connections to any psychedelic substances, sources, or providers.
Earth-Based Institute is an ICF Level 2-accredited training organization. We've certified Nature-Connected Coaches since 2008, alongside offering programs for personal growth, leadership, and 1:1 coaching.
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