Live Online Class Sessions: Wednesdays 6:30-8:30pm MT // Feb 22nd-Apr 12th, 2023
Live Online Half-Day Retreat: Saturday 9:30am-1:00pm MT // Apr 8th, 2023
Feb 22nd-Apr 12th, 2023 // 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.
With support from Extended Campus, Naropa University’s Cognitive and Affective Science Lab is conducting an online research study examining compassion training’s effect on personal and social well-being.
Thanks to your incredible support, applications to participate in the study are now CLOSED! We encourage you to learn alongside our study participants by registering for the WELCOME course.
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 22nd-April 12th, 2023. Class sessions are held via Zoom every Wednesday from 6:30-8:30pm Mountain Time, with the exception of March 29th for Spring Break. In addition to weekly class sessions, there is a half-day Zoom retreat on Saturday April 8th, 2023 from 9:30am-1:00pm Mountain Time.
What is compassion? Why have compassion, why be kind?
Science: Understanding neuroplasticity
Practice: Welcoming exercise
February 22nd, 2023 6:30-8:30pm MT
Embodiment in compassion training & Mindfulness of the body
Science: Embodiment and basic goodness
Practice: Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation
March 1st, 2023 6:30-8:30pm MT
Lovingkindness and self-compassion
Science: Facing our Fears of Compassion
Practice: Introduction to Loving-kindness practice for self
March 8th, 2023 6:30-8:30pm MT
Listening, feeling, responding
Science: Empathy versus Compassion
Practice: Lovingkindness practice for a dear one
March 15th, 2023 6:30-8:30pm MT
Interdependence
Science: Relevance of Compassion for Society’s Loneliness Epidemic
“Like me” Exercise
Practice: Lovingkindness for neutral person(s)
March 22nd, 2023 6:30-8:30pm MT
Why have compassion for difficult people?
Science: Is compassion always nice?
Practice: Lovingkindness for a difficult person practice
April 5th, 2023 6:30-8:30pm MT
Sitting and walking meditation
Lovingkindness practices
Embodiment practices
Lovingkindness practice for all beings
(Saturday) April 8th, 2023 9:30am-1:00pm MT
Compassion in everyday life
Science: Growing more resourceful
Practice: Lovingkindness for all beings
April 12th 2023 6:30-8:30pm 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 Fall 2022. 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
