What happens when a coach's lived experience — the very thing that makes them extraordinary — becomes the thing that puts them in danger? This class examines the architecture of professional safety in recovery coaching: boundaries, the Ma Space, safeguarding, and why structure is not bureaucracy but survival.
LERO Recovery Coaching Certification — streamed live 14 May 2026 · MAUNi London Recovery Coaching
Recovery coaching sits in a unique and sometimes dangerous position. The coach's greatest asset — their lived experience of addiction, chaos, and rebuilding — is also the thing that can blur the boundaries that protect both them and their client. This class, part of the LERO certification programme, examines exactly how to hold that tension professionally.
LERO — the Lived Experience Recovery Organisation model — exists to professionalise the raw power of personal recovery journeys. The core premise is simple but profound: lived experience is not just valid, it is credentialed. When structured into a skill set, it becomes one of the most credible tools available in the recovery marketplace.
The framework rests on three pillars: the personal recovery journey as the source material, a structured and credible skill set as the delivery mechanism, and the Ma Space as the relational container where the work happens.
"We take the raw, transformative power of lived experience and engineer it into a precise, measurable, and highly professional discipline."
One of the most important distinctions in this class: recovery coaching is an adult learning environment. The process may be therapeutic in feel, but the structural goal is always actionable coaching. This distinction is not semantic — it defines the scope of practice and protects both coach and client.
The coaching container is built from three components that must be in place before any session begins:
Ma is the Japanese concept of the negative space or pause between objects. In a room, it is the space that gives the furniture meaning. In music, it is the silence that makes a note land. In recovery coaching, it is the deliberate space constructed between coach and client — the container where triggers, needs, and technological inputs (EMA data, AI insights) are held and processed safely.
The Ma Space is not the coach. It is not the client. It is what exists between them — and it is where recovery actually happens. This is why boundary work is not about limiting the relationship. It is about protecting the space in which the relationship can do its work.
A LERO coach occupies a distinct lane between the clinical world (counsellors, psychiatrists doing medical treatment and deep trauma processing) and peer-based support (12-step sponsorship, guided step-work). The LERO function is skill-building, systemic navigation, and accountability — using the Four Continuums as the methodology and professional Ma Space contracting as the relationship dynamic.
This class uses a real case study to make the stakes concrete. A coach provides informal 12-step sponsorship to a young man connected to the coach's own family. The boundaries are blurred from the start. The client enters drug-induced psychosis. Over 48 hours he sends images of firearms and makes explicit death threats against the coach and their son.
The coach, relying on informal recovery protocols, initially absorbs the abuse. Desensitised by their own history of addiction and violence, they attempt to de-escalate independently. The result: severe internal dysregulation, five hours for blood pressure to return to baseline, and high risk to personal and family safety.
This is what blurred boundaries cost. Not paperwork. Not a difficult conversation. A physiological crisis and a genuine threat to life.
When an immediate violent threat is detected, the professional protocol is a four-step sequence. There is no discretion, no negotiation, no attempt to hold the coaching relationship through the crisis:
Remove yourself from the situation immediately. You are not a negotiator. You are a coach.
Police notification is mandatory when firearms are involved. This is not optional.
Duty of care supersedes client privacy in lethal scenarios. Inform parents, next of kin, or relevant parties.
Peer debrief to process the trauma. You cannot support others from a dysregulated nervous system.
The hard rule of safeguarding: personal safety supersedes all recovery theory. When threats of lethal violence are present, LERO coaching immediately ceases. Escalate, report, and remove yourself. Paperwork will not help you if you are dead.
The class closes with a synthesis that reframes every structural element of the framework. These are not bureaucratic hurdles. They are survival tools. Structured frameworks prevent codependency. Technology prevents administrative burnout — freeing coaches to remain present in the Ma Space rather than drowning in case notes. Strict safeguarding prevents physical and psychological harm.
Together, they protect the coach so that the magic of lived experience can scale safely. The manifesto for the modern LERO coach: demand structural safety, automate the friction, protect the magic.
Access the full certification curriculum, live classes, and peer community at the London Recovery Coaching Campus. Or book a private consultation to explore one-to-one coaching support.