Elevate your professional practice with mental health coaching services through this comprehensive 1-year online training in virtue psychology, offering transformative insights into human nature, emotions, and enduring happiness. 1 year online program starts Aug 25th, 2025.
Class starts in 41 days!
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Build Emotional Intelligence. Support your clients' mental and emotional well-being.
The Fundamentals of Virtue Psychology Certification (171-HR) equips advisors, holistic health providers, and personal growth facilitators with evidence based, time-tested coaching methods to give your clients
happiness, emotional intelligence, and self-mastery — while growing your professional practice.
This approach to coaching is rooted in Virtue Psychology—an Ayurveda-aligned framework developed over 2,300 years, from ancient Greek philosophy through the Roman and Christian eras, and confirmed by modern insights from positive psychology. Using this model, you will address the root causes of disordered emotions, disordered goals, and disordered mental habits in your clients, training their heart and mind to restore balance. You will
- Lead your clients to the true aims of a fulfilled life
- Assess 11 root causes of distraction & emotional disorder
- Map interconnections between 11 passions (emotions) that shape behavior
- Apply practical tools to overcome inner conflict and build virtue-based habits that support lasting change
The result is a stronger, more ordered inner life—marked by self-mastery, emotional clarity, and well-being that is both sustainable and deeply human.
Whether you're supporting clients through burnout, helping them navigate emotional stuckness, or empowering them to live with greater meaning, this training offers a powerful, classical foundation for real and lasting transformation. This well-established method has been used successfully for over 2 millennia, and is confirmed by
modern science backed research in positive psychology.
Why Add Mental Health Coaching to Your Wellness Business?
Your clients seek more than just physical health—they want emotional well-being, mental clarity, and stress resilience. By integrating virtue psychology into your coaching practice, you'll:
- Increase Value to Clients - Help clients overcome emotional obstacles that significantly impact their health progress.
- Gain Deeper Understanding - Reach more accurately into the heart of your clients, improving compliance and client satisfaction.
- Expand Your Services - Offer a holistic approach that combines Ayurveda qualitative assessment with mental health coaching.
How You Can Use This Certification in Your Practice
By completing this program, you'll gain the tools to:
- Add emotional and fulfillment coaching to your current offerings
- Help clients accurately assess and overcome their emotional struggles and motivations, and improve life vision.
- Grow your reputation as a holistic mental health & life coach expert
With 171 hours of professional training, you'll be confident in delivering high-value insight that sets your practice apart.
Click to Receive a $250 Scholarship
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By the end of this course you will be able to coach your clients in:
- High Functioning & Leadership - Gain self-awareness and control, emotional stability & inner peace - yielding improved relationships and a warm, vibrant emotional life in sync with natural meaning & value of human affairs.
- Happiness & Human Fulfillment - Get a practical understanding of joy and the steps to happiness that is independent of circumstances.
- Emotional Intelligence - Gain emotional intelligence grounded in thousands of years of insight into human nature and the passions.
- Emotional Disorders - Gain insight into the development of and coach clients through emotional turmoil.
- Mind-Body Connection - Connect physical health and Ayurveda constitution to specific emotions and personality traits, and the diet, lifestyle, and herbs to restore balance.
- Freedom - Help your clients prevent and recover from trauma, addiction, distraction, and spiritual dryness, and overcome obstacles & triggering mental patterns.
This approach to psychological well-being and happiness is based on the
classical study of human nature that forms the basis of Greek and
Ayurveda philosophy, and was the
dominant mental health model from 300 BC through the Middle Ages in Christian Europe.
In the West, this model was replaced by Freudian psychotherapy (its opposite) in the 1890s.
Ayurveda & the Virtues
Ayurveda & the virtues form a seamless
habit based theory of wellness.
Ayurveda describes how habits change the body. The virtues describe how habit changes the mind. Ayurveda balances the qualities of the body (called gunas). Virtue psychology balances the qualities of the mind (virtues and passions).
Ayurveda & Virtue Psychology have the same philosophical roots, and are natural complements.
Through mind-body support & awareness, this course connects individual constitution and the body to unique emotion and personality traits, enabling health & wellness practitioners to freely dovetail between and heal physical and mental impediments.
A major focus of the course is
identification of the root causes of disordered emotions, overwhelm, distempered passions, addiction and trauma, and
tools for high functioning, leadership, and happiness.
In this 1-year online training program you will discover practical methods to assess & correct imbalances in your clients' emotions and mental habits (virtues).
This course is part of a 2 year series.
- Course 1 (year 1) emphasizes a vision of mental health, human happiness, human nature, and excellence. (Character Strengths Coach)
- Course 2 (year 2) deepens your understanding of mental disorder and the classical clinical model for restoring mental health. (Mental Health Coach level)
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Upon graduating, you will be
given a certificate demonstrating your professional qualifications to legally practice as a
character strengths coach in the United States and meet with clients.
A character strengths coach is a wellness coach who supports clients working towards the flourishing they seek, offering them practical strategies and helping them marshal their inner strengths for success.
The field of wellness coaching has been growing steadily for years. "According to some surveys, 60% of Americans want health coaching, but 80% of them have never had it offered to them." (Source: Health Coaching Gains Favor Among Consumers, Insurers, & Employers)
This course meets this need, while equipping you to provide a positive vision of psychological well-being, something often missing in the modern world.
Joyful Belly is licensed to teach Virtue Psychology by the state of North Carolina Board of Community Colleges (not an accrediting agency). This course is an occupational training course that may be taken to being your career, to expand existing professional skills or practice, or for personal interest or development.
By the end of this program you
will know, in practical detail, the classical approach to human nature, the passions (emotions), and virtues, including:
- What it is that makes a person truly, enduringly happy.
- The role of the various passions (emotions)--love, hatred, anger, sadness, avoidance, desire, etc.--in achieving happiness, and how the passions can undermine happiness as well.
- How the passions and virtues interact with and support each other in the formation of character: for example, why one cannot have perfect fortitude without hope or charity without faith, or why temperance helps you achieve justice.
- Why developing a virtuous character is an essential part of becoming happy. Concrete, practical approaches to managing one's passions and strengthening the virtues of a noble character. How to avoid unhealthy behaviors that can easily feel like virtue, but are not.
Individuals, teachers, directors, spiritual advisors, human resources managers, wellness coaches, and those wishing to start a career in coaching will use this knowledge to:
- Educate others about the classical approach to human functioning, happiness, and virtue.
- Guide & mentor others, providing insight and practical strategies for human flourishing, for managing passions, increasing virtue, and directing others to happiness.
- Build more effective teams in any professional setting.
- Offer character strengths coaching either standalone, or alongside existing services you provide as a counselor, wellness coach, teacher, spiritual director, etc.
Here are some examples:
- Wellness coaches will learn a time-tested understanding of motivation and success, along with practical strategies, that they can share with clients to help them achieve well-being.
- Teachers will be better able to guide students, understand their emotions and desires, and help them advance toward virtue.
- Mental health professionals will learn models of human functioning and flourishing, beyond pathology alone. They will also gain a detailed understanding of the traditional psychology that has left a mark on Western societies, helping them to better communicate with and aid clients from these cultures.
- Ministers or spiritual directors will learn new skills for advising those who seek their help, according to an ancient Christian understanding of emotional health and moral growth.
- Individuals will find greater peace, emotional freedom, and character excellence.
A character strengths coach is not a mental health therapist, mental health counselor, or psychologist. As such, a coach cannot diagnose or treat formal mental illnesses; clients in need of such services should be referred to relevant specialists. Additionally, even in the domain of virtue (as distinct from mental illness) certified coaches are still only educators in the eyes of the law. Legally, you will be able to listen to people's concerns and educate them on the traditional virtue-based perspective on and approach to those topics, helping them to find practical ways to address their own concerns. Please seek legal advice in your state if you have questions about your scope of practice after graduating.
Growing Demand for Mental Health & Wellness Services
Americans use mental health services at a growing rate, especially in younger groups--a trend which suggests the increase will continue. The growth may be linked to greater social recognition of mental health issues and willingness to access services, which would also suggest continued increase. (Source: Mental health care accounts for a growing number of private insurance claims)
"Probably 20% of people in the country have some form of mental health issue at some point in their lives...on a continuum from very little to very severe." (Source: What Mental Health Statistics Can Tell Us)
Health coaching is a particular growth sector: "Market data estimates that the total U.S. health coaching market was worth $6.14 billion in 2017, up 15% from 2014. The total market is forecast to grow at a 5.4% average annual pace, to $7.85 billion by 2022, with 121,000 coaches practicing." "According to some surveys, 60% of Americans want health coaching, but 80% of them have never had it offered to them." (Source: Health Coaching Gains Favor Among Consumers, Insurers, & Employers)
This year-long class follows a college semester schedule. We will meet once
weekly for a live class discussion. At
home exercises & suggested reading will supplement presentations to ensure you attain a firm grasp of virtue psychology and virtue based coaching methods. Buddy assessments with
fellow students and practice consultations with
outside clients will hone your assessment & coaching skills.
Live classes will also be
recorded for your convenience.
Some of your fellow students will be
new to the field of mental health. Others will already be counselors, teachers, spiritual advisors, ministers, coaches, and other professional roles.
Some will come from an interest in classical mental health models, or from a religious or spiritual interest. No prior experience is necessary.
Though Christianity adopted and strongly contributed to the Greek theory of the virtues, this course is suitable to individuals of any faith background.
Happiness, character, nobility, holiness - these are just some of the psychological benefits of studying the virtues. Though a familiar concept, how many of us know the practical tools necessary to improve character strength and effectiveness?
The study of virtues is the study of
excellence. The classical, time-tested model of the virtues was the dominant model for psychological wellness for 2,300 years. Throughout most of history, education in the virtues was considered essential to the development of the person.
This thought provoking course explores history's practical answer to modern mental health and wellness. The program is based on the works of Josef Pieper, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the greatest minds of western civilization.
The virtues were developed by Greek philosophers from antiquity, and provided a model for mental well-being for thousands of years before it was replaced by modern psychology. But has something valuable been lost in modern psychological methods? This course brings the wisdom and insight of a longstanding tradition into the modern era.
The classical approach to mental well-being and happiness is a detailed, extensive approach built up over many centuries and includes some of the
most penetrating and insightful thoughts of all time.
It is a positive model, presenting a theory of wellness. It does not focus on disorders only, as newer psychological systems have generally done. It offers perspectives and practical advice from Greek antiquity through the medieval Christian period and up to the modern day.
As the medieval model is inherently spiritual in nature, their mental health paradigm includes answers to questions about meaning and value which are impossible to approach in the secular materialistic sciences.
The medieval psychological model concludes with a whole, unified vision of reality that includes the self in relation to God and nature - leading to lasting fulfillment.
Module: Happiness / Unhappiness
This module includes practical tips for actualizing many of the benefits of the spiritual life:
- Creating well-ordered desires: Overcoming 11 distractions
- Training & directing the mind (reason & will) towards fulfillment (of our human nature) - As the will is the decision making organ, the medieval model places special emphasis on this nexus point of mental health.
- Human orientation to the good, the true, and the beautiful.
- Classical answers to deeper questions of cosmology & reality
Module: Passion, Emotion, and Instinct
In this section you will map out the passions (emotions) and their inter-relationships in depth giving you a holistic vision of each, and its causes and effects. You will use these insights to offer your clients key interventions for improvement.
- Emotions expressing direct desires
- Love (amor)
- Hate (odium)
- Desire (desiderium/concupiscentia)
- Avoidance (fuga/abominatio)
- Pleasure/joy (delectatio/gaudium/laetitia)
- Pain/sadness (dolor/tristitia)
- Emotions assessing ease / difficulty
- Hope (spes)
- Despair (desperatio)
- Fear (timor)
- Daring (audacia)
- Anger (ira)
Module: The Virtues
In this module you will discover how to lead clients to excellent mental habits & character, with practical methods to strengthen the seven virtues along with
essential subvirtues for diagnostic assessment. You will use these to assess this virtue in others, pinpoint deficiencies of this virtue, and learn practical tips to grow in each virtue.
- Cardinal Virtues
- Prudence - Improving goals & finding excellent means (wisdom)
- Justice - Doing what is excellent. Also becoming kind, building relationships
- Fortitude - Growing in strength in difficult circumstances
- Temperance - Attaining serenity, and overcoming emotional and physical addictions
- Theological Virtues
- Faith - Having a solid foundation for confidence (following truth)
- Hope - Fundamentals of reaching for greatness
- Love (Charity) - An in depth study of true love as it relates to fulfillment
Get the a complete description of each module
From mathematician at Harvard, to muslim in Morocco, to meditating yogi, John found Jesus after a personal crisis left Him in deep need of the Lord. Returning to his roots in the Catholic Church, John now uses his passionate academic skills to present classical health & wellness paradigms in engaging, practical language for modern use.
John lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and 7 kids. He is director of joyfulbelly.com, a popular website dedicated to natural health. He is president of the National Association of Ayurvedic Schools and Colleges, and director of intelligentherb.com. He has a degree in mathematics and computer science from Harvard University.
Total tuition & application fees for this 1 year Ayurvedic course if you register now will be $2,699.
Click here to apply for a partial scholarship.
Financial aid is offered based on income. Scholarships may not be combined with other discounts.
For complete tuition & fee information, please see our course catalog.
Note: Your payments are
non-refundablePlease make certain you will be able to attend before you register.
Click here to see our full
Refund / Return Policy .
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