Ananda Spiritual Counseling® Training Online
Spring 2025
Be a Channel of Higher Consciousness for Those in Need
Join Nayaswami Diksha for this one of a kind course exploring the art of Spiritual Counseling. Spiritual counseling is different from psychological counseling. It’s about counseling others from a space of uplifted consciousness in order to help them find deep, personal understanding and direction.
This training will enhance your interpersonal skills as you learn to listen actively, respond with clarity, and open the doorway for superconscious understanding and solutions. You’ll explore spiritual skills and effective communication principles that will help you guide others to find their own solutions.
6-Week Training Course
Tuition: $675
Tuition: $675
Enrollment is now closed
- 9+ hours of live webinars, available to watch anytime
- 10+ hours of on-demand video
- 10+ hours of on-demand guided practices
- 100 page manual
- Nursing CE 36 Hours
- Personal feedback from faculty
- Lifetime access to course materials
“I would highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to help others to discover their highest potential so that they can overcome their issues and grow.”
“I would highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to help others to discover their highest potential so that they can overcome their issues and grow.”
— Vas S., 2020 Graduate
— Vas S., 2020 Graduate
Why Take Ananda Spiritual Counseling Training?
- Align with your higher Self, and express your Highest potential
- Enhance your intuition
- Connect with divine wisdom
- Tap into higher guidance
- Deepen your spiritual life
- Develop your ability to be a divine friend
- Help others find solutions
What You'll Learn
This course is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Swami Kriyananda, his close, direct disciple, counseled thousands of people over more than 60 years, always on the basis of Yogananda’s guidance and teachings.
From those years of experience, he developed the approach to counseling that serves as the framework for this course.
- Cultivate and recognize true intuition
- Listen to and assess your own intuition
- Connect to someone’s higher self from your higher self
- Recognize subconscious, conscious, and superconscious thinking in yourself & others
- Find solutions & not be overwhelmed by problems
- Help others gain clarity on life’s challenges and open to new possibilities
- Avoid the temptation to try and “fix” someone
- Ask questions that will open doorways for others
- Find solutions to your own challenges
What You'll Receive
At Ananda, we have been offering quality training for decades. Now we bring this same dedication online, as we embrace the very best practices of online learning.
You’ll enjoy a user-friendly online environment that offers plentiful interaction within a highly engaged learning community, including:
- Specialized exercises and introspective practices to deepen your understanding of how to effectively counsel others
- Lively discussion forums filled with support, insights, and inspiration
- “Live” webinars covering a wide spectrum of topics with periods of Q&A
- Practice counseling sessions with fellow students and instructor feedback
- Instructional videos covering all aspects of spiritual counseling
“This course went beyond my expectations. Not only did I learn tools to help others and be of service, but I learned tools I can use to help myself live a life of joy, peace, energy, and upliftment”
“This course went beyond my expectations. Not only did I learn tools to help others and be of service, but I learned tools I can use to help myself live a life of joy, peace, energy, and upliftment”
— Claudia F., 2020 Graduate, OR
— Claudia F., 2020 Graduate, OR
Meet Your Instructor
Nayaswami Diksha
Nayaswami Diksha is a senior teacher in the Ananda School of Yoga & Meditation. She co-founded the Ananda Spiritual Counseling Training course, and co-directs the Ananda Meditation Teacher Training course. Both trainings are offered online.
Diksha has been meditating for more than 35 years, and training meditation and yoga teachers for more than 20 years. A powerful and spiritually dynamic woman of great warmth and humor, she is gifted in both intelligence and intuition. She has shared transformative spiritual teachings across the U.S., and in Canada, Europe, Israel, and India. She now teaches primarily online.
The Sanskrit word, diksha, means “giver of light”— an appropriate name, because Nayaswami Diksha has touched many hundreds of seekers as a teacher, teacher trainer, host of spiritual travels, expert on Ayurvedic wellbeing, and internationally known vegetarian chef and cookbook author.
For more than 30 years, Diksha has practiced Kriya Yoga meditation and lived a dedicated yogic lifestyle at Ananda Village. Her “Nayaswami” title reflects that her life path is one of “positive” renunciation: not self-deprivation or isolation, but a joyful expansion of consciousness and sympathy to embrace all people as her own.
Guest Teacher
Mangala has a background in a variety of healing modalities including Nursing, Ayurveda, Yoga teaching and Yoga Therapy practice and teaching.
She currently serves as the Director of the Ananda Yoga Therapy Training program. She has been a RN, Nurse Practitioner for many decades and has been involved in assisting residents of Ananda Village for over 30 years with health and illness-related situations, and also with the process of dying.
She also serves as a teacher, spiritual counselor and minister. She enjoys helping people to find positive ways to cope with and even thrive with challenges presented by illness and dying. Mangala is an Ananda minister.
Meet Your Course Assistants
Darshana is a Certified Ananda Yoga therapist and a minister. She serves with Ananda School of Yoga and Meditation as manager and certification programs coordinator.
She also teaches meditation and yoga philosophy at The Expanding Light Retreat, where she has had the opportunity to counsel many guests and students.
Trimurti supports students in online courses by sharing his long-time meditation and counseling experience.
Trimurti served as the Director of the Karma Yoga Ashram Program and is on staff at The Expanding Light Guest Services. He is a Kriyaban and an Ananda Minister.
Suzanne and her husband Koral live near Ananda Village. They are kriyabans and active members in the Ananda community. Suzanne is a certified Ananda Yoga & Meditation teacher as well as a spiritual counselor.
With her background in nursing, she uses her skills as a spiritual counselor to assist people in seeing the spiritual component of coping with and navigating health challenges.
Bev is a Kriyaban, and has been an Ananda Meditation teacher since 2013. She teaches meditation classes both online and at a local library.
Since completing the Ananda Spiritual Counseling course, she has counseled others, and assists students in learning this valuable skill.
Pasqualina had a long and varied career as an educator and currently is a householder yogini raising teenagers.
She is a Kriyaban and serves mainly at the Ananda Center in Rhode Island, U.S. where she teaches meditation and yoga and various classes on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.
She also offers spiritual counseling as part of her service and assists with Ananda online trainings.
Jeff is a Kriyaban and an Ananda meditation teacher. He also completed the Ananda Spiritual Counseling course
He enjoys teaching meditation both online and at a local yoga studio. Jeff has a career as an educator in health and fitness, teaching Exercise Therapy and Mental Toughness, where his spiritual counseling knowledge is highly beneficial.
Visnja is a Kriyaban and a spiritual counselor. She completed both the Meditation Teacher Training and the Spiritual Counseling Training.
Her background is in physiotherapy, yoga and massage therapy. Through those practices combined with meditation she has overcome a difficult illness. Her experiences have inspired her to support others in their life journey.
LaTonya is a Kriyaban, and a spiritual practitioner with myriad gifts including being a psychotherapist. She completed both the Spiritual Counselor and Meditation Teacher Training at Ananda. She uses her gifts to support others on their life journey.
She enjoys learning and bringing joy to others. She has found this meaningful and humbling on her spiritual path.
FAQs
Don’t worry. We have students from all over the world. This course is almost entirely “asynchronous.” This means that you can participate at the hours of the day that work best for you. There are several live webinars but they are video-recorded so those who cannot attend live can watch them later.
All those who satisfactorily complete the course, will receive a course completion document. This is not, however a certification course, which would require a much longer training.
This training helps to equip you with tools and knowledge to help people that come to you seeking spiritual perspective on their life’s issues.
It’s not a training to set you up as a professional spiritual counselor.
Yes, you’ll have lots of interaction! In fact, many of your assignments require it. There are discussion forums, live one-to-one practice teaching fellow students via Zoom. Plentiful interaction is a best practice in online learning, and this course is structured entirely around best practices.
You need to be able to use Zoom for the counseling sessions, record the sessions in Gallery View, upload the videos to YouTube or Vimeo, and post the links on the course site.
You will be free to do your coursework at whatever time of day suits your schedule. We expect you to log in and do some work (often just 15 minutes) on multiple days each week. Also, during several weeks of the course, you will need enough flexibility to find a mutually agreeable time to meet with classmates for practice counseling via internet video (using Zoom). This is usually quite easy to do.
You should expect to spend 6-8 hours per week on your coursework; 2-3 of those hours will be for guided meditation practice.
We realize that emergencies can arise. We will work with you to try to find a solution—and the more advance notice we receive, the more likely it is that we can find a solution. But please realize that, because all students move through the course together, we can do only so much to accommodate late assignments, even for emergencies.
Under Yoga Alliance’s temporary provision for online training, this course will count for Ananda’s Level 2 (300-hour) Yoga Teacher Training.
Ananda Meditation Teacher Training is NOT a prerequisite for Ananda Spiritual Counseling Training.
Yes, you can take the meditation teacher training after this course.
“I highly recommend this course to anyone who is looking to be of service to others or to deepen one’s own spiritual practices. …This course has exceeded all my expectations.”
“I highly recommend this course to anyone who is looking to be of service to others or to deepen one’s own spiritual practices. …This course has exceeded all my expectations.”
— Shikha, 2021 Graduate
— Shikha, 2021 Graduate
What Our Graduates Say
Program Details
- What is Intuition and How Can You Recognize It?
- Aids and Blocks to Intuition
- Personal Inventory on Levels of Consciousness
- How to Receive Guidance in Meditation
- Understanding Levels of Consciousness
- Deeper into the Levels of Consciousness
- Recognizing Each Level of Consciousness in Ourselves & In Those We Counsel
- The Essence of Spiritual Counseling
- Principles of Spiritual Counseling
- How to Listen & Ask Questions
- Introduction to Energy Tools
- Techniques to Work with Emotions
- How to Use Energy Tools in Counseling:
- Direct Energy Upward
- How to Receive Higher Guidance
- Fill Yourself with Light
- Cultivate Faith
- Expand Your Light
- Tips for Dealing with Illness & Dying
- How to Help a Dying Person
- Coping with Grief
- Building a Spiritual Foundation
- Living Intuition
Ananda Spiritual Counseling Training Online
Connect with divine wisdom and help others find solutions!
Dates: Spring 2025
Tuition: $675
Under a temporary provision made by Yoga Alliance, the online version of Ananda Spiritual Counseling Training will qualify for credit toward Level 2 Ananda Yoga Teacher certification. It will also qualify as 36-hours of in-person continuing education hours for RYTs.
Provider approved by California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number 10747, for 36 contact hours.
