With Dr. Joe Loizzo, Geri Loizzo and Megan Mook

Note: this training is for enrolled students

This 100-hour certificate teacher training program is for you if you want to deepen your compassion meditation or become a compassion teacher. It’s for business people, doctors, yoga teachers, coaches, therapists and other professionals who want to skillfully and knowledgeably integrate compassion teaching — or simply the practice of compassion — into their work.

Curriculum

Now that mindfulness has become a household word … and begun to transform our way of living and working, the next wave in the confluence of modern science and timeless contemplation is the emerging new research and clinical application of compassion training.

While most of us have been taught to think of love and compassion as luxuries that make us vulnerable or weak, and were led to believe that emotions can’t be trained, decades of research have turned these myths on their head. Recent science has taught us that positive social emotions — love, compassion, joy, equanimity — like medicine help us heal, grow, and change, and that compassion in particular is trainable and quickly alters the way the brain responds to emotional stress. Since emotional stress and reactivity are the main source of wear-and-tear on our brains, and the main cause behind the growing pandemic of hate, violence, trauma, empathy burnout, and compassion fatigue, each of us can benefit greatly from compassion training. Amazingly, it takes only minimal training — four to eight weekly classes — for novices to learn to turn stressful interactions into meaningful social engagement and fundamental well-being.

Compassion is the new mindfulness.

This unprecedented program is based on the same timeless methods that researchers have found effective in the neuroscience lab and psychiatry clinic. It trains meditation and yoga teachers to share these with students in light of the latest neuroscience and psychotherapy, as well as time-tested theory and practices from classic Buddhist and Hindu traditions. This program reviews the basic insights and methods of mindful self-healing and then surveys the four key principles of compassion training — unbiased empathy, self-transcendence, universal compassion, and altruism, along with the four main practices aligned with them: equalizing self and other, self-compassion, giving and taking, and exchanging self-enclosure for altruism.

Schedule

Come learn with us how to develop more compassion for yourself and others. Here’s how the program is structured:

March Retreat: Foundations of Mindfulness-Based Compassion Training
Two Modes of Attention-Training and the Four Steps of Cultivating Compassion

Class 1: Breaking the Stress-Reactive Cycle with Focused Attention Training
Class 2: Freeing the Mind for Present Living with Open Awareness Training
Class 3: Exposing Implicit Bias and Social Stress-Reactivity with Equal Empathy
Class 4: Correcting Social Stress-Reactivity and Negativity Bias with Self-Compassion
Class 5: Healing Traumatic Emotion and Core Shame Identity with Self-Transcendence

April Retreat: Empathy for Ourselves and Others: The Gateway to Wise Compassion Equal Empathy, Self-Compassion, Wise Compassion, and Altruism

Class 6: Cultivating Unbiased Compassion with the Art of Giving and Taking
Class 7: Extending Wise Compassion with Giving and Taking on the Breath
Class 8: Becoming a Heroic Altruist with Gratitude and Mentor-Bonding
Class 9: Creating a Heroic Altruist’s Self and Life with Role-Modeling Imagery
Class 10: Sustaining an Altruist’s Life with Heroic Posture, Breathing and Flow States

June Retreat: Living the Solution / Start Your Own Chain-Reaction of Compassion
. Own Your Natural Genius for Altruism by Becoming a Compassion Teacher

All students who pass this training will receive a certificate for Teaching Compassion Meditation from the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science and The Path.

Co-sponsored with The Path and Pure Yoga

For enrolled students only

Faculty: Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD; Geri Loizzo, Megan Mook, MA

Schedule/Dates: Students attend 3 afternoon retreats on a weekend (one Saturday and two Sundays) and 10 Wednesday evening classes.

Retreats 1:30–6:30pm: Saturday, March 10; Sunday, April 22; Sunday, June 3
Wednesday evening classes 6:30–9:00pm: March 14, 21, 28; April 11, 18, 25; May 2, 9, 16, 23