Teach the wisdom of mindfulness, the artful care of compassion, and the science of resilience.
Much more than meditation teacher training, this comprehensive 5 to 8-month cross-training in stress reduction, resilience and self-healing gives participants the knowledge, experience and confidence to teach CBRT to those in their community who need enduring resilience in these challenging times.
Watch the Training Overview
Watch Joe Loizzo, creator of CBRT, and lead facilitators Fiona Brandon and Moustafa Abdelrahman, share an overview of the teacher training.
Why Should I Take This Course?
- Learn to teach CBRT, an evidence-based program developed and field-tested over 20 years.
- Make a difference by enlivening your community, workplace or professional practice with more compassion, resilience and well-being.
- Build your teaching confidence through peer-to-peer teach backs as well as supervised group instruction.
- Deepen your own contemplative practice through guided meditations, teachings and group discussions.
- Gain a deeper understanding of the science behind the practices of mindfulness, compassion and breath-work.
- Join a community of supportive like-minded professionals: Our CBRT students come from a wide range of professional backgrounds including front line healthcare workers, mental health counselors, educators, business leaders and ministers, but all share a deep desire to help build more compassionate communities.
Save 10% with the Early Bird discount through April 30th!
What is CBRT?
Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) was developed for Columbia Presbyterian Hospital by Harvard-trained Dr. Joe Loizzo and field-tested over the past 20 years in various hospitals, businesses and schools. The program integrates timeless techniques of contemplative self-regulation from India and Tibet — mindfulness, compassion meditation, imagery and breath work — with contemporary breakthroughs in neuroscience, positive psychology, and optimal health.
Research studies conducted at Weill Cornell Medicine and Albert Einstein College of Medicine with women recovering from breast cancer found that CBRT…
- Reduces biomarkers of stress,
- Improves quality of life,
- Lowers social-emotional and cultural stress,
- Enhances resilience and overall functioning,
- Markedly decreases post-traumatic symptoms including intrusive thinking and traumatic avoidance.
What You’ll Learn to Teach
The Eight Progressive Practices of Mindfulness and Compassion
This includes breath and posture practices that build resilience by helping the automatic nervous system support the process of stress reduction and self-healing.
The Fourfold Nature of Stress, Mindfulness, Compassion, and Resilience
Learn to define and explain the four phase cycle of stress and trauma; mindfulness and its four scopes of practice; compassion and its four levels of practice; resilience and its four progressive states and traits.
The Gentle Power of Contemplative Methods
Learn clear explanations of how current neuropsychology demonstrates the power of contemplative methods to transform the isolated processing of stress and trauma into prosocial processing that fuels open engagement, healing and resilience.
How to Transform a Learning Group into a Community
Learn the techniques and the confidence to transform a contemplative skills learning group into an emotionally open and caring community. A community that can spark and sustain the growth of each participant towards greater resilience, engagement, and purpose.
Living a Life with Contemplative Practice
Learn how to integrate contemplative practice into your life and work to deliver Compassion-Based Resilience Training that others can meaningfully integrate into their life and work.
Curriculum: How the Course is Designed
Overview
The unique essence of our course is to combine mindfulness and compassion with breath work that builds pliancy throughout our nervous system. This holistic approach nourishes the nervous system in ways a neck-up approach simply cannot. Mindfulness lays the foundation for more abundant compassion, while breath work practices open the natural pathways of the body to share this compassion joyfully.
Mindfulness
The training begins with four mindfulness-based personal healing modules that break the cycle of stress and lead to a more balanced and rejuvenated state of well-being.
Module I – Embracing Suffering with Body Mindfulness
Practice Body Mindfulness to reconnect with our inner lives and begin releasing the survival habits of stress, trauma and reactivity.
Module II – Stopping Reactive Habits with Mindful Sensitivity
Practice Mindful Sensitivity to deepen the capacity for conscious self-regulation and cultivate balanced awareness.
Module III – Breaking Free of Stress with Mindful Awareness
Practice Mindful Awareness to cut through the mesh of reactive habits and stress instincts that normally block the full openness and clarity of our mind.
Module IV – Mindful Insight: The Lifelong Path of Self-Healing
Practice Mindful Insight to cut the roots of reactivity and grow proactive new ways of being in the world.
Compassion
The training continues with four compassion-based relational healing modules that build resilience, prevent burnout and increase our capacity to care for ourselves and others.
Module V – Disarming Social Stress and Bias with Equal Empathy and Resonant Breathing
Practice Equal Empathy to unlearn implicit social survival biases while deepening and expanding our sense of connection to others.
Module VI – Healing Reactive Emotions and Beliefs with Self-Compassion and Gentle Vase Breathing
Practice Self-Compassion to develop a wise, caring mind that orients to our common humanity.
Module VII – Cultivating Prosocial Emotions with Wise Give and Take and Sealed Vase Breathing
Practice Wise Give and Take to explore our boundless human potential for care and strengthen our social muscles of love, joy and equanimity.
Module VIII – Embodying a Resilient Self and Life with Caring Imagery and Diver’s Breath
Practice role model visualizations to stretch our sense of self into a fully empowered, resilient and compassionate self.
What People Are Saying
Taking the CBRT teacher training course was a great experience not only because it restarted my own practice and deep reflection of the role contemplation plays in all our lives but also because it provided me with rich and practical resources to share with my clients in my psychotherapy practice.
…an extremely well conceptualized, designed and executed program (both levels). I found particularly noteworthy how much I could personally gain ( knowledge/ experience) by teaching a group myself; I expected it but not to the extent it happened. All in all a truly profound experience on many levels.
The CBRT Teacher Training was a journey into both my development as a teacher and into my own personal growth. I felt very supported by the teachers and the practical aspect helped me gain confidence in my own teaching as well as the opportunity to learn with and from my peers. It has been life changing and I am now teaching the CBRT internationally.
The CBRT teacher training program provided me with the skills, structure and confidence to begin teaching meditation. After many years as a practitioner I’m now able to teach different types of meditation and breathwork and explain the benefits to students at many experience levels. I will be sharing the material from this course for years to come.
Save 10% with the Early Bird discount through April 30th!
Program Details
The program includes two levels.
Level 1: Teaching Fundamentals
- 5 months
- Covers the eight CBRT modules in-depth
- Weekly live online 90-minute meetings that include: lecture, group discussion, breakout groups and practice sessions with peers
- Student portal with 24 pre-recorded class summary videos, 16 recorded guided meditations, a student manual and supplementary scientific and scholarly readings
- Weekly self-study: daily meditation practices and assigned readings
- Requirements for the training include a daily meditation practice for at least two years and some familiarity with the positive health benefits of contemplative living
Level 2: Teacher Practicum
- 3 months
- Level 1 graduates receive guidance and support setting up and leading their own CBRT group
- Students receive 3 group supervisions and 1 one-on-one supervision with core CBRT faculty
- Students are required to write a short reflection paper describing their experience of running their group
- Graduates of Level 2 are certified as CBRT Teachers and become part of the Certified CBRT Teacher Network
To be certified as a CBRT Teacher, students need to complete both Level 1 and Level 2.
Program Requirements
- Students participate in 1.5 hour weekly live online meetings
- 10–15 minutes of daily meditation
- 30 minutes to an hour of assigned reading and watching video instruction
Certified Teacher Network
Graduates of Level 2 are automatically enrolled in the certified teacher network for 1 year after graduation* which includes:
- A yearly online retreat with core faculty open to all graduates
- A dedicated website with all the tools needed to teach your own CBRT class: a student manual, 24 pre-recorded class videos, 16 guided meditations, and a collection of research articles
- Marketing material templates to promote your classes
- Teacher photo and bio listed on the Nalanda Institute website
- Monthly video conference with other certified teachers
- Opportunities to teach CBRT through Nalanda Institute
- Access to CBRT core faculty for ongoing support
*After one year, students are asked to pay a $100 admin fee to keep their community membership active.
Schedule
Level 1 Teaching Fundamentals:
May 21 – Oct 22, 2025
Weekly Wednesday class, 3:30 – 5:30pm PT / 6:30 – 8:30pm ET
All classes are recorded and available to review anytime
$1250
Level 2 Teacher Practicum:
Oct 29, Dec 3, Jan 7, 2026
Class meets monthly on a Wednesday,
3:30 5:00pm PT / 6:30 – 8:00pm ET
$600
Levels 1 + 2
$1,850
*Please note: there are no refunds once participants have access to the student website
Save 10% with the Early Bird discount through April 30th!
For any questions about the program, please contact Fiona Brandon: fiona@nalandainstitute.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do I need to participate in this training?
You will need a computer with Zoom installed. We also recommend a comfortable and quiet space for the meditations.
If I miss a class, are there make-up classes?
There are no make-up classes, but instructors record every session and will make that recording available to you after each class. In addition all of the course materials and meditations are available to you online.
I can’t make the course times, will you offer courses at another time?
CBRT Teacher Training is offered once a year in the spring.
Is there homework? How much?
Between weekly meetings students are encouraged to practice the assigned meditations on a daily basis. The meditations are generally no longer than 10–15 minutes. Students are also assigned around 50 minutes of video lectures to watch and/or one chapter a week from the student manual. The chapters are between 20–30 pages.
How much time will I need to put in every week?
Students participate in 1.5 hour weekly live online meetings, plus 10–15 minutes of daily meditation, and 30 minutes to an hour of assigned reading.
What is the refund policy?
Tuition is non-refundable once the class starts.
Is this course aimed at novice or experienced contemplative practitioners?
The training asks that participants have at least 2 years of a consistent contemplative practice of any kind, including mindfulness, loving-kindness and compassion, TM, the Relaxation Response, visualization, Hatha Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Dzog-chen, Mahamudra, Vedanta, Tantra, Tai-chi, Qi-gong, Orthodox Heart Prayer, Christian Spiritual Exercises, Sufi meditation, Jewish contemplation, Kabbalah, Kirtan and Indigenous chanting.
Can I download the class materials (audio and video)?
Students can download audio files, the student manual and supplemental reading materials. Videos are not downloadable.
Can I pay in installments?
Nalanda Institute asks that all students pay in full prior to the first class. If this is not possible, reach out to the director of the program fiona@nalandainstitute.org.
Do you offer full scholarships?
At this time the Institute offers partial tuition scholarships. The Institute does offer some full scholarships to those who self identify as a member of a marginalized community including BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. Reach out to the director of the program fiona@nalandainstitute.org for full scholarship guidelines.
Save 10% with the Early Bird discount through April 30th!