The Brain Coach Bootcamp is a unique and premium continuing education program designed for coaches, therapists, health and wellness industry professionals, trainers, HR professionals, and educators.

In 2022 our enrolment payment options were:

• Full fee $1595.00 AUD
• 4 x monthly payments of $399.00 AUD
• Full fee $1197.00 USD
• 4 x monthly payments of $317.00 USD

Students should set aside 2-3 hours per day, Monday to Friday for the duration of the Brain Coach Bootcamp.

The daily hours includes online video lectures + 90-minute group call.

Each lesson is split into 6 to 8 short pre-recorded lectures of about 10 minutes (including theory + practical application + homework suggestions).

Extra reading provided in the course library is OPTIONAL.

Once the Bootcamp is complete you retain LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP so you can dip into and out of any lessons and resources at any time. All alumni are granted access to future course updates and materials.

Please PRE-REGISTER your interest and receive early notification of future intakes in 2022 and beyond.

Live Q&A calls run for 90 minutes.

Daily calls are held via Zoom alternating between 7am or 8pm AEST/Sydney, NSW, Australia.

e.g. Mon 8pm, Tues 7am, Wed 8pm, Thur 7am etc

See here for a global time zone conversion tool

The 90-minute live calls include:

1. Overview of main ideas to focus on from the online lecture,
2. Updates of any newly published research,
3. Discussion about translating the neuroscience theory into practice,
4. 15-20 minutes of breakout rooms where small student groups come together for discussion,
5. Q&A with Sarah.

Questions can be submitted via email to those who can’t attend a daily call.

All Q&A calls are recorded and available on the student portal for those who can’t attend.

1. BEGIN Introduction to Health Neuroscience

We’ll take a look at the seductive allure of neuroscience. You’ll be introduced to a foundational model of the course, the Bottom-Up Outside-In Top-Down framework. We’ll discuss what neuroscience can and can’t tell us about ourselves, and you’ll learn essential tips to tease out neuro-fact from neuro-fiction.

2. BRAIN An Overview of Nervous System Anatomy

I’ll take you on a whistle-stop tour through the brain to the peripheral, autonomic and enteric (gut) nervous systems. You’ll learn a ‘handy’ way to discuss brain anatomy with clients, and we’ll discuss what the mind is and where it might be found.

3. SYNAPSE Neurons, Synapses and Neural communication

In this lesson, we’ll take a look at the nuts and bolts of how neurons communicate electrically and chemically. You’ll understand how synapses function and all about neurotransmitter systems. Finally, you'll learn simple and relevant ways to communicate this information with others.

4. WIRE Neuroplasticity.

Can your thoughts really rewire your brain? Do we produce new brain cells throughout life? What are synaptogenesis, neurogenesis, and cortical reorganisation, and when, where and why do they occur? You’ll learn the second foundational model of the course, the REFIRE method.

5. THINK The Cognitive Brain

You’ll receive a simple overview of the prefrontal cortex and its role in cognition (thinking). You’ll learn how the brain pays attention, makes decisions, and why it can’t multi-task. We’ll take a look at how emotions and thinking are intimately intertwined, and how to foster metacognition (thinking about thinking) in the people you work with.

6. FEEL The Emotional Brain

In this lesson, we’ll continue our exploration of how thinking and feeling are entwined. We’ll dig into the contemporary neuroscience of emotions. Finally, you'll receive a primer in the neurobiology of anxiety and depression.

7. AIM The Neuroscience of Motivation

You’ll get clear on the neuroscience of motivation. And you’ll be introduced to another foundation model ‘The Will, the Wont and the Way’. We’ll discuss mental rehearsal or visualisation, and revise the latest research on fixed and growth mindsets.

8. CHANGE The Neuroscience of Habit and Change

Understanding habits and facilitating change are fundamental to your work with clients. But what happens in the brain when habits are formed? If the brain is plastic, why is it so hard to break an old habit, and do we form new 'good' habits instead?

9. MIND The Mind-Body Connection

Can you really change your health by changing your thoughts? We’ll discuss evidence from mind-body medicine research. We’ll take a look at the amazing power of placebo (and its ‘dark side’, the nocebo effect) and how it directly relates to the quality of the therapeutic relationship. Finally, we’ll look at psychoneuroimmunology and the neuroscience of the mind-brain-immune connection.

10. AGE The Ageing Brain

We’ll consider the neuroscience of brain ageing. Is memory loss inevitable with age? You’ll get clear on what the research says about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia (and the difference between the two). Learn why ageing is also about growing in experience, wisdom and judgment. You’ll discover the difference between normal memory lapses and memory problems that need to be addressed by a medical professional.

11. AHA! The Neuroscience of Creativity and Insight

Explore the concept of flow and how it turns everyday experiences into an opportunity for self-fulfilment and mental wellbeing. Learn how to foster creativity, and what happens in your client’s brain during insight or ‘aha’ moments.

12. CALM Stress, Mindfulness, and Meditation.

This lesson has been designed to look at the neurobiology of the stress response, and the best ways we know to buffer stress. We’ll examine what neuroscience says about meditation, and how it affects brain structure and function.

13. CONNECT Belief and Belonging.

Our brain has a fundamental need to connect and understanding this is vital to your work. We learn how friends and family impact cognitive reserve and take a look at research showing that having passion and purpose protects against brain ageing.

14. MOVE Brain Health and Physical Exercise

Get clear on why the best exercise for the brain is physical exercise. We’ll discuss the relationship between exercise, mood and mental health, and we’ll take a look at how exercise promotes neuroplasticity and slows brain ageing.

15. NOURISH Nutrition and the Gut-Brain Connection.

Examine the current evidence on the best diet for brain health. We’ll also explore the research on the gut-brain-microbiome connection. And we’ll take a look at brain ‘super-foods’, and the effects of sugar, coffee, grains and alcohol on the brain—what does the research say?

16. SLEEP Sleep and Napping

We’ll delve into sleep (and napping), circadian rhythms, and learn why they are vital to brain health and performance. Learn about the intimate interplay between neurotransmitters, sleep and mental health, and the role for sleep in promoting neuroplasticity. Finally, we consider what happens to your brain when you dream.

17. CHALLENGE Brain Health and Mental Exercise.

What is cognitive reserve and why is building it useful? What does the research say about computer-based cognitive brain-training? Take a look at evidence why you should partner with your client to become their brain-training coach.

Yes!

The Brain Coach Bootcamp offers students the equivalent of 34 hours of professional development training, which is formally recorded on a certificate after course completion.

The certificate of completion states students have completed training in ‘Applied Neuroscience and Brain Health’.

The course is NOT a professional qualification. It is for professional development purposes.

The Neuroscience Academy is an approved provider of Continuing Coach Education for 2021/22 for 28 hours CCE + 8 hours RD. See here for ICF details.

Many organisation and accreditation bodies allow members to self-assess their professional development. Please check your individual circumstances with your organisation/accreditor.

Contact us if you have suggested organisations or accreditation bodies.

Here in Australia, many students have applied for CPD points with the Australian Psychological Society (APS), the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, and NSW Teacher Identified Professional Development (TIPD).

To gain a certificate of completion and to be eligible to apply for professional development hours/points you’ll need to pass the multi-choice test with an 80% pass rate. The quiz is released during the final week of the course.

By completing Brain Coach Bootcamp students will be able to:

1. Understand how neuroscience can impact and provide insights into coaching conversations. Understand the distinction between coaching and mental health disciplines, and the important of referrals to appropriate other professionals when required.
2. Develop a shared language for discussion the brain in coaching conversations.
3. Describe the interrelationship between the mind (top-down), body (bottom-up) and environment (outside-in) on brain health and wellbeing.
4. Recognise the pitfalls and biases and loss of client agency introduced when using incorrect neuroscience explanations such as ‘the lizard brain’ in coaching conversations
5. Understand basic brain anatomy and neurophysiology, and explain using simple language and models basic brain anatomy and neurophysiology to clients.
6. Understand the neurobiology of neuroplasticity including the role of neuroplasticity in development, healing and behavioural change.
7. Use a simple story to describe the various types of neuroplasticity to clients, including synaptic plasticity, cortical reorganisation and neurogenesis.
8. Describe the role of the prefrontal cortex in higher-order executive functions and cognition including attention and decision-making.
9. Recognise how emotions (affect) and thinking (cognition) are intimately intertwined.
10. Understand the neurobiology of metacognition and how to foster ‘thinking about thinking’ with clients.
11. Understand the contemporary neuroscience of emotions, how the brain predicts emotional responses and how one can learn new appropriate responses by practice. Utilise this knowledge in preparation for coaching sessions when extreme emotions may be involved.
12. Understand the neuroscience behind the various processes of reaching a goal including planning, visualising, attention, willpower, and motivation.
13. Appreciate the neurobiology of mental rehearsal and how it can be used to practice appropriate emotional responses in advance. Create a visualization script for clients.
14. Describe the latest research on fixed and growth mindsets.
15. Understand that habits and facilitating change are fundamental to work with coaching clients. Explain in simple terms what happens in the brain when habits are formed and how to break bad habits.
16. Describe the neuroscience of the placebo effect and its ‘active ingredient’ is the therapeutic relationship. Reflect on the evidence from placebo research and how this informs the establishment of trust and rapport.
17. Differentiate and describe normal aging and cognitive decline associated with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Understand when to recognise abnormal memory loss and when to refer to medical professionals.
18. Recognise the importance of exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress reduction, social connection, belief and mental challenge in promoting cognitive reserve and mind health, and for providing a foundation for change (neuroplasticity).
19. Design a brain wellness program for clients based on the seven pillars of brain health.
20. Understand and describe the neurobiology of the stress responses. Encourage clients to find a ‘place or moment of calm’.
21. Discuss evidence for mindfulness and mediation in reducing the stress response and building resilience.

No background in science is needed for this course.

Lessons are designed for helping professionals working in the health, wellbeing education, and coaching industries.

But anyone with an interest in learning about the brain is more than welcome!

My mission is to make neuroscience accessible and relevant to your life at the work you do. I don’t educate neuroscientists. I educate people who’ve never read a research paper in their life.

You can also get an idea of my style by watching my TEDx talk or excerpts from my TV show. If you follow along with my presentation style, you’ll easily be able to follow along with this course!

I created my site www.drsarahmckay.com to give you access to the latest neuroscience research relevant to brain health and wellbeing.

Feeling nervous or scared is completely normal. So I’ve created a private Facebook group for all those enrolled in the course so you can share, support, and learn from each other. I’ll check in regularly to keep you on track and do a little extra ‘hand-holding’.

The Neuroscience Academy is a course firmly grounded in evidence-based medicine. I refer to academic papers and scientific research frequently but simply. If you’re unfamiliar with the scientific method and evidence-based approach, you’re still more than welcome to sign up and explore the world of neuroscience with me. Yes, I do err on the side of science, but with a good dose of warmth and humility.

The core text I refer to is Bear, Connors & Paradiso, Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain (4th ed), but students are NOT required to have their own copy.

The curriculum has been designed to provide continuing professional education for qualified health and wellness practitioners, teachers, and those in coaching practice.

The course offers no ‘magic bullet’ solutions to your parent’s dementia, your child’s autism diagnosis or brain injury. Nor does the course solve business cash-flow or offer business advice or coaching.

I’m a neuroscientist, not a medical professional and as such, I offer no medical advice, nor do I make any claims about health outcomes for you or your clients, patients or students. I’m not a trained business coach or advisor, and I make no claims about outcomes for your business, or your coaching or wellness practice.

However, I do hope to inform, inspire and enlighten you to the beauty and wonder that is the world of neuroscience research.

CLICK HERE TO READ DISCLAIMER

Much of what I teach is based on the principles of psychoeducation.

You'll be encouraged to create neuroscience-informed content (the 'what') and neuroscience-informed tools (the 'how') for use in your client work.

The rationale behind a psychoeducational approach is that, given a clear understanding of their condition and self-knowledge about their individual strengths, resources, and coping skills, clients are more relaxed and better equipped to deal with their problem(s), which contributes to their emotional wellbeing.

If you're interested read more here:

Towards a neuroscience-informed coaching practice: opportunities and limitations. (2021) Sarah M McKay & Sarah Smith. 

Neuroscience provides coaches with a compelling lens through which to view their coachee’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

However, enthusiasm for integrating neuroscience into coaching often outpaces the coach’s knowledge of the subject matter.

In addition, there is no empirical evidence for the use of neuroscience within positive psychology coaching (PPC) per se.

To address these concerns, this chapter considers the lessons learned from two disciplines that have scrutinised the opportunities and limitations of translating neuroscience into practice in other disciplines (education and psychoeducation in the mental health setting.)

Opportunities exist for the thoughtful development of neuroscience-informed coaching practice including

(i) the development of neuroscience-informed content for coaching conversations (the ‘what’),

(ii) the development of neuroscience-informed structures or tools for the delivery of coaching (the ‘how’), and

(iii) validation of coaching efficacy using neuroscience technology (e.g. testing how coaching ‘works’).

Attention needs to turn towards the training of coaches in how to assess, understand and integrate neuroscientific research to ensure the continuation of evidence-based coaching practice.

More and better could be done if neuroscientists and practitioners acknowledge the limits of their disciplines and start talking and listening to each other. The integration of neuroscience into coaching could benefit from a thoughtful, cooperative and systematic approach. 

Benefits:

Despite the recognition that neuroscience and coaching have “…not yet established consistent dialogues underpinned by experimental research...” (Pereira Dias et al., 2015), coaching is not immune to the enthusiasm for all things brain.

This enthusiasm is evidenced by books, training programs and magazine articles on the topic of “neuro-coaching” or “brain-based coaching” and application of neuroscience in the workplace (e.g. Rock & Page, 2009; Swart et al., 2015).

Even the Harvard Business Review devoted its 2019 special issue to “The Brain Science Behind Business” and included pieces on ‘Engaging and Persuading Others’, ‘The Brain Science Behind Trust’ and how to ‘Stimulate Your Customer’s Lizard Brain To Make A Sale’ (Bernstein & Hock, 2019).

The assumption is if you are a coach, manager or leader working with the minds of clients or employees, it makes sense to understand how the brain works.

Proponents argue that by understanding the brain, the coach can “tailor their coaching practice to be in alignment with a client's way of thinking and behaving” (Bossons et al., 2015). Boyatzis and Jack claim that by using functional brain imaging, “neuroscience can shed light on the underlying mechanisms of coaching”, i.e. show how coaching changes the brain (Boyatzis & Jack, 2018).

Rock and colleagues also propose that a “brain-based approach” should underpin and explain every good coaching model (Rock & Page, 2009).

The benefits of integrating a discussion of brain anatomy or physiology into a coaching conversation are understandably appealing, not least because a client is more likely to be persuaded by the seductive allure of the neuroscience content!

Helping a coachee understand how their brain changes in response to experience (neuroplasticity), and giving information about brain structures and functions is said to build trust, instil hope, and influence thought patterns (Ardern, 2015; Duenyas & Luke, 2019). Brain-based descriptions of psychological challenges, Ardern says, externalise and demystify the patient experience.

CHALLENGES

Unfortunately, enthusiasm for “using neuroscience” in a coaching conversation often outpaces the coach’s knowledge.

As Brann (2017) notes, coaches often expect neuroscience to provide nicely pre-packed coaching tools and techniques, and this is rarely the case.

Instead, the challenge for the coach is to keep up to date with the relevant neuroscience literature and make meaning of it.

To put the task into perspective, a search of the biomedical literature database PubMed using the terms ‘brain’ and ‘anxiety’ generated 3,589 papers published in 2020 alone.

To complicate matters, even within a narrow discipline there are scientific disputes. For example, among neuroscientists studying fear and anxiety, there is considerable disagreement about how to define fear, if fear is innate or learned, and which neural networks are involved (Mobbs et al., 2019).

For the non-expert, it is easy to be confused, and the risk is for haphazard integration of out-dated or misunderstood neuroscience concepts. It is well-documented that poor neuroscience literacy leads to the belief and sharing of neuromyths — defined as the misunderstanding, misreading, or a misquoting of brain science facts (Im et al., 2018; OECD, 2008)

To date, there is no coaching framework or method in the academic literature that tests the use of neuroscience-informed explanations of human behaviour or any practice of ‘neuro-coaching’.

As pointed out in Grant’s 2015 paper Coaching the brain: Neuro-science or neuro-nonsense?, there is “…little empirical data that directly links neuroscience research to coaching-specific outcomes” (Grant, 2015). In the same issue of The Coaching Psychologist, O’Broin acknowledges that a ‘brain-based’ approach to coaching is inherently appealing but cautions against “overstating the current ability” of neuroscience to explain how and why coaching works (O’Brion, 2015).

Despite the absence of a neuroscience-framework for coaching, opportunities exist for the development of a neuroscience-informed evidence-based approach to coaching and PPC in particular.

As the saying goes, “absence of evidence” is not “evidence of absence” and the enthusiasm for using neuroscience in coaching is certainly present.

Other professional disciplines have grappled with the same opportunities, pitfalls and seductive allure of translating neuroscience into evidence-based practice, including law (Meynen, 2016), counselling (Wilkinson, 2018) and education (Anderson & Della Sala, 2012).

Howdy! You must be from the US!

Here in Australia, and in New Zealand and the UK, we spell ‘enrollment’ and ‘enroll’ with only one ‘l’, i.e. ‘enrolment’ and ‘enrol’.

You might have also noticed I spell ‘visualization’ with the letter ‘s’, i.e. ‘visualisation’.

We welcome students from all over the world, and learning about spelling differences and similarities is part of the grand adventure.

We want you to be satisfied with your purchase, and to give your best effort to apply the strategies and learnings from the course.

As the teaching takes place over two weeks, we offer a 7-day refund period for purchase if you believe the course is of unacceptable quality or does not match the curriculum description.

Refunds will NOT be provided more than 7 days following the date of purchase. After Day 7 all payments are non-refundable and you are responsible for full payment of the fees for the program whether or not you complete the program. Refunds will not be made due to a change of mind or similar.

Please note: If you opt for a Payment Plan and you do not request a refund within 7 days, you are legally required to complete all the remaining payments of your payment plan.

All refunds are discretionary as determined by Dr Sarah McKay trading as Think Brain Pty Ltd ABN 19626919266.

We may revise and update Terms of Use or Refund Policy from time to time in our sole discretion. All changes are effective immediately when we post them.

Current students & alumni: Click here to log in.