Live Online Class Sessions: Tuesdays 4:30-6:30 pm MT // February 20 – April 9, 2024
Live Online Half-Day Retreat: Saturday 9:30am-1:00pm MT // April 6th, 2024
Tuesdays // February 20 – April 9, 2024 // Live Online
“Compassion reveals to us that helping others versus helping ourselves need not be a tradeoff – through compassion, we can do both.”
In this 8-week, 15-hour course, you will learn how to intentionally cultivate self-compassion and compassion for others as a means of enhancing well-being, improving resilience, and bolstering one’s capacity to benefit others. Guided by a team of expert Naropa University instructors, you will explore an integrative approach to mindful compassion training that blends cutting-edge research from neuroscience and psychology with practices and teachings from ancient wisdom traditions.
Utilizing experiential exercises, informative readings, and compassionate “fieldwork” activities, you’ll uncover how intentional, mindful compassion creates sustainable change–including through neuroplasticity–transforming the mind and brain’s response to empathy fatigue, emotional dysregulation and social challenges. You’ll also learn how the benefits of this training extend and ripple far beyond the practitioner, increasing collective well-being in tandem with your own.
Join us for WELCOME and discover the power of compassion, as well as unique and pragmatic ways to foster mindfulness and lovingkindness for yourself, loved ones, and even the difficult people in your life.
The title WELCOME is an acronym, with each letter outlining a specific aspect of mindful-compassion that will be explored in this course:
W – Welcoming Compassion and Compassion Training
E – Embodiment: Mindfulness and Basic Goodness
L – Lovingkindness
C – Compassion: Lovingkindness for a Dear One
O – Open: Lovingkindness for Strangers
M – Maintain: Lovingkindness for a Difficult person
E – Engage: Compassion in Everyday Life
Find more details in the Program Format and Schedule section below.
Contemplative practice refers to a broad range of mindfulness approaches–including meditation, yoga, personal contemplation, and more–that can help you process difficult emotions, expand your embodied experience, and discover your most authentic self.
Click “Contemplative Education @ Naropa” in the sidebar to learn more.
How compassion training empowers us to take charge of our own neuroplasticity, and use the mind to change ingrained patterns and behaviors to those more consistent with our highest values.
Why cultivating lovingkindness for the difficult people in our lives is vital to an enduring and holistic compassion practice.
Practical methods for integrating mindful compassion into your personal, social, and professional life.
The title WELCOME is an acronym, with each letter outlining a specific aspect of mindful-compassion that will be explored in this course. Each class session has been carefully crafted to highlight a unique facet of mindful compassion, provide the scientific underpinnings of that facet, and offer contemplative practices for participants to engage what they have learned.
This 8-week course is offered from February 20 – April 9, 2024. Class sessions are held via Zoom every Tuesday from 4:30-6:30pm Mountain Time, with the exception of March 26th for Spring Break. In addition to weekly class sessions, there is a half-day Zoom retreat on Saturday April 6, 2024 from 9:30am-1:00pm Mountain Time.
What is compassion? Why have compassion, why be kind?
Science: Understanding neuroplasticity
Practice: Welcoming exercise
February 20, 2024 4:30-6:30pm MT
Embodiment in compassion training & Mindfulness of the body
Science: Embodiment and basic goodness
Practice: Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation
February 27, 2024 4:30-6:30pm MT
Lovingkindness and self-compassion
Science: Facing our Fears of Compassion
Practice: Introduction to Loving-kindness practice for self
March 5, 2024 4:30-6:30pm MT
Listening, feeling, responding
Science: Empathy versus Compassion
Practice: Lovingkindness practice for a dear one
March 12, 2024 4:30-6:30pm MT
Interdependence
Science: Relevance of Compassion for Society’s Loneliness Epidemic
“Like me” Exercise
Practice: Lovingkindness for neutral person(s)
March 19, 2024 4:30-6:30pm MT
Why have compassion for difficult people?
Science: Is compassion always nice?
Practice: Lovingkindness for a difficult person practice
April 2, 2024 4:30-6:30pm MT
Sitting and walking meditation
Lovingkindness practices
Embodiment practices
Lovingkindness practice for all beings
(Saturday) April 6, 2024 9:30am-1:00pm MT
Compassion in everyday life
Science: Growing more resourceful
Practice: Lovingkindness for all beings
April 9, 2024 4:30-6:30pm MT
Standard Price: $200
Senior Price: $180
Seniors: Please email extendedcampus@naropa.edu to request a discount code.
Naropa students, staff, faculty, and alumnx:
This iteration of WELCOME: Mindful Compassion Training, is designed for members of the public, and is not credit bearing. If you wish to audit, receive academic credit, or utilize Employee Tuition Benefits for this program, please contact the Registrar’s Office and inquire about registering for REL-190 in Spring 2024. If you have further questions, or would still like to register for this Extended Campus program, email extendedcampus@naropa.edu.
Charlotte Z. Rotterdam is a contemplative educator, Buddhist teacher, and meditation instructor. She is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa University and an Instructor in Naropa’s Core College, World Wisdom Department, and Graduate School of Psychology. She co-developed and teaches Naropa’s Mindful Compassion Training, a secular program to cultivate compassion in personal, professional and societal contexts. She is the Lead Teacher of the Mother Lineage (Magyu Lopön) at Tara Mandala Retreat Center. Charlotte received a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. The mother of two boys, she has published essays on the intersection of spiritual practice and daily life in Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, Mandala and Fearless Nest, an anthology.
Erika Berland is a dancer, performer, Certified Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering(R), Registered Movement Therapist and Licensed Massage Therapist. She was a founding faculty member of the MFA: Contemporary Performance program at Naropa University (2004-2020) where she developed and taught a two-year curriculum integrating movement, somatics and meditation. She has presented her workshop, “The Physical Art of Sitting”, based on her book of the same title published in 2017, throughout the US along with workshops internationally in movement and Body-Mind Centering®. She has been a member of the teaching team for the Mindfulness Compassion Initiative since the program’s launch in 2017.
Carla Burns, MDiv, is an Instructor in Naropa’s Core College, and Graduate School of Psychology, with an emphasis on the exploration of loving-kindness through the wisdom of the body, emotions, and the elements. She is particularly passionate about the ways in which contemplative practice communities can come to understand multiple ways of being and knowing, and how we embody and utilize space as a means to personal, collective and cosmic liberation. In addition, she is certified Mindfulness Instructor at Naropa University, co-developed Naropa’s Embodied Mindfulness in Teaching Training program and is the Program Manager for the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education.
Jordan Quaglia, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of the Cognitive and Affective Science Laboratory, and Research Director of the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa University. His research, supported by funding from Mind and Life Institute and John Templeton Foundation, has been featured in leading scientific journals and books, and relies on a range of tools, from neuroscientific measures to virtual reality, to study topics such as mindfulness and compassion.
For more about Jordan: www.JordanQuaglia.com
About Naropa
Located in Boulder, Colorado, Naropa University is a Buddhist-inspired, nonsectarian liberal arts university that is recognized as the birthplace of the mindfulness movement. Naropa offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs that emphasize professional and personal growth, intellectual development, and cultivating compassion.
Academics
Contemplative education brings together the best of Western scholarship and Eastern world wisdom traditions. Therefore, your pursuit of wisdom at Naropa means learning both about academic subjects and about your own place in the world. This innovative approach places Naropa on the cutting edge of the newest and most effective methods of teaching and learning.
Admissions & Aid
If you’re seeking an education that resonates with both personal fulfillment and global impact, Naropa could be your top choice. At Naropa, you will experience a comprehensive curriculum that integrates the best of Eastern and Western educational approaches. Explore how Naropa can fuel your journey of intellectual and spiritual development.
Life at Naropa
Through its incredibly vibrant and welcoming community, “Naropa offers a home for those who aren’t willing to conform to convention—the mystic, the healer, the prophet, the rebel, the artist, the revolutionary, the oddball—those who are incredible contributors to the evolution of society and of our planet.”—Core Associate Professor Zvi Ish-Shalom
The Naropa Difference
How is Naropa different from other universities? At Naropa, a liberal arts education balances rigorous academics with powerful interpersonal skills and self-awareness to educate the whole person. Naropa’s contemplative approach is inspired by Buddhist philosophy and the conviction that we can build a diverse, contemplative, enlightened society when we have transformed education to affirm the basic goodness of every person.
Support Naropa
At a time when the value of higher education is being questioned, Naropa University stands firmly rooted in its mission to create a more just and regenerative world by nurturing insight, awareness, courage, and compassion in its students. By making a gift to Naropa, you play a pivotal role in helping to create the authentic, effective & mindful leaders that the world desperately needs.
From Naropa University: Due to adverse weather conditions, all Naropa campuses will be closed on 05/06/26. All classes that require a physical presence on campus will be canceled. Classes that are delivered online in our low-residency programs are to meet as scheduled.
Regardless of Naropa University’s decision, if you ever believe the weather conditions are unsafe, please contact your supervisor and professors.Graduate School of Counseling concentrations listed below will be offering online and low-residency courses to start their programs in January 2026 as well as our Summer 2026 terms.
Beginning a graduate program in Spring 2026 or Summer 2026 means that you will have access to apply for Graduate Plus loans as these loans will be eliminated at the federal level starting in Fall 2026.
Contact Admissions (admissions@naropa.edu) today to learn how you can begin the next step in your graduate education journey.
