Cultivating Compassion

Live online | with Eva Papadopoulo | starting 22 July, 2021 | Thursdays 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm (AEST) | $550 inc GST

*May course fully booked. Contact [email protected] if you would like to go on the wait list

~ for those with some experience and knowledge of mindfulness practice

This program will revitalise your mindfulness practice, support your confidence in working with your psychological inner life, and build compassion skills and practices that can be transformative – for yourself and in your relationships with others. It is an invitation to dive deeply into your personal journey.

We will discover how compassion is an empowering response to threat, stress and distress, and how to make compassionate action our natural mode as we move through life. This is a great opportunity to release past hurts, meet current difficulties with courage and wisdom and cultivate peace.

We will draw on the wisdom of the group, Internal Family Systems practice, Western scientific knowledge, Buddhist psychology and the recent work of pioneers in the cultivation of compassion including Kristen Neff, Chris Germer, Fritz Koster, Erik van den Brink and Paul Gilbert and Bob Stahl.

The course involves:

an individual phone interview, and ongoing support from your teacher
a 2.5 hour class, over six weeks, plus one full retreat day
mindfulness, compassion and body awareness training
an exploration of your own patterns and how to transform them
scientific rationale for the practice
access to Openground audio app for practice and a 100 page course book
an optional session online with the teacher to help explore and digest the personal material emerging. (There will be an additional fee for this session.)

Deepening mindfulness

Develop your skills and enrich your understanding of mindfulness as a ground for compassionate action.

Practice compassion

Connect with your tender and courageous heart with the help of the group and the teacher

Ethics and wisdom

Clarify your values, ethics and boundaries in the light of growing wisdom and respect for yourself and others.

Register Here

Why learn compassionate action with Openground?

Timothea Goddard - Practice mindfulness with an experienced teacher

Personal attention and skilled teaching

We take a genuine, personal approach, and our highly trained, experienced, and dedicated teachers go the extra mile to help you engage with your practice in ways that can bring real transformation through the learning. An individual interview, followed by deep listening and skilful emotional work will help you get the most out of this course.

MBSR as a pre-requisite

Practicing self-compassion and compassion for others can bring up strong feelings including sadness, grief, anger, guilt and shame. Because of this we recommend that everyone in the course has some previous mindfulness training - like MSBR - so that you have some skills and stability of mind as you build your capacity for compassion.

Drawing on Internal Family Systems

We will actively draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS) to support the training. IFS is an evidence-based, non-pathologizing approach to human experience that welcomes the complex multi-faceted experience of being. It naturally supports the cultivation of awareness and compassion in an intelligent, empowering and skilful way.

Break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your heart.

You stop feeding on the love that is the wellspring of your vitality, but now the time has come, your time to live, to celebrate and to see the goodness that you are.

There is no evil, no wrong in you or in any other. There is only the thought of it, and the thought has no substance.

If one comes in the name of truth, forgive the thought for it’s unknowing. Do not fight it, just let it go and breathe the goodness that you are.

Adapted from Kirpal Venanji, a Hindu Monk

Your questions, answered

Who should come to the Living with Wisdom and Compassion course?

This course is for those with some prior experience of mindfulness (like having completed MBSR). See if these questions resonate with you....

Would you like to continue to befriend your humanness – realizing that no one is ‘perfect’?
Are you interested in learning how to bring a kinder approach towards yourself and the way you relate to others?
Are you interested in growing and deepening empathy — a key emotional intelligence skill and a hallmark strength for leaders?
Do you feel regret about past actions and would like to develop self-forgiveness?
Do you care about the world and want to find more empowering ways of expressing your care and values?
Are you on a first-name basis with your self-critic?
Do you have unrealistic expectations of yourself?
Are you interested in knowing more about what drives human beings to act in the ways we do - getting more clear about what Buddhist psychology and evolutionary biology have to offer?

If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, the Living with Wisdom and Compassion course can help you make peace with the past and affect the way you relate to yourself and others from here on.
What will be covered in the LWC course?

This program is practical and pragmatic as well as grounded in helpful theory and practice. Cultivating compassion can bring up strong feelings. We will especially draw on Internal Family Systems Therapy to help digest and transform past hurts and difficulties.
We will draw on Buddhist psychology in the cultivation of ethics and wisdom and work actively with practices of mindfulness and compassion. We will also draw on the theoretical ground from Western traditions of psychology, biology and systems theory including Non Violent Communication, Internal Family Systems, evolutionary biology, ethical decision-making and the transformational work of Joanna Macey.

Adelle,

"Since doing the course my major transformation has been in my daily work as a family doctor. Instead of being the best doctor I can so that patients will admire me and appreciate me I am aware that I am regularly “putting myself in my patients shoes.” I want their lives to be better and their suffering to diminish. Whether that is through my doctoring or something not related to me is not relevant."
(Adele, GP)