An Overview and History of the Program
Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) is an evidence-based modular training that teaches the science and skills people need to reduce stress, build resilience, and cultivate lives of well-being, engagement, and purpose in our ever more interdependent world. It empowers people to develop a more resilient mind, heart, and body by combining skills taught separately in other trainings—mindfulness, compassion, imagery, and breath-work—into one step-by-step introduction, providing the most cost-effective way of educating lay and professional groups in the full spectrum of mind/body research and contemplative skills.
Research and Application
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 role stress, enhances resilience and overall functioning, and markedly decreases post-traumatic symptoms including intrusive thinking and traumatic avoidance. Ongoing studies of the training are underway.
History
CBRT was developed in 1998 by Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, Founder and Director of Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, by integrating timeless techniques of contemplative self-regulation from India and Tibet with contemporary breakthroughs in neuroscience, positive psychology, and optimal health. It has been offered continuously since then at New York Hospital, the University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, as well as a range of area schools and businesses including two underserved NYC public schools, The Calhoun School, The Rebecca School, Appnexus, and the New York Public Library.
About the Institute
Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science teaches people in all walks of life timeless contemplative skills informed by current neuropsychology to empower themselves and others to cultivate a wise mind, warm heart, and altruistic way of life in our interdependent world. View our website »
About Dr. Joe Loizzo
Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, is a Harvard-trained contemplative psychotherapist, Buddhist scholar, and author with over four decades’ experience integrating Indo-Tibetan mind science and healing arts into modern neuropsychology, psychotherapy, and clinical research. He is founder and director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a clinician in private practice in Manhattan.
Joe is the author of numerous scholarly review articles on contemplative neuropsychiatry and psychotherapy. His translation study, Nagarjuna’s Reason Sixty with Candrakirti’s Commentary, was one of the inaugural volumes in the American Institute of Buddhist Studies Translation Series distributed by the Columbia University Press. His comprehensive textbook, Sustainable Happiness: The Mind Science Of Well-Being, Altruism, and Inspiration was published by Routledge in 2012. He is executive editor of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation, a groundbreaking collection of essays by pioneers of the fast-emerging and highly promising new field of contemplative psychotherapy (Routledge, 2017).
Other Faculty
Fiona Brandon, MPS, MA, MFT, is the Director of the Nalanda Institute’s Compassion Based Resilience Training (CBRT) and Embodied Psychotherapy programs. As a licensed psychotherapist, she integrates Buddhist psychology, depth psychology, expressive arts therapy, dream imagery, and sensorimotor psychotherapy in her work with adults and couples. Fiona is also a co-editor and contributor of the anthology Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation (2nd ed.). As a graduate of the Masters program in Counseling Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Fiona’s research focused on the meditative practice of Authentic Movement and the use of symbols and dream imagery in psychotherapy. Learn more at fionabrandon.com
Moustafa Abdelrahman, MBA. CBRT Facilitator. Moustafa is a meditation teacher and Contemplative Therapist. He is certified by the University of Toronto as an Applied Mindfulness Meditation Specialist and holds a Certificate in Contemplative Psychotherapy from Nalanda Institute/Diploma from the Institute of Traditional Medicine. Abdelrahman teaches a variety of mindfulness certificate courses at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto and has facilitated mindfulness workshops for a wide range of corporate and nonprofit organizations, including the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He is a Senior Teacher for the Meditation Teacher Training at X-Hale Meditation & Wellness Centre and leads the Mindfulness Meditation program at the 519, a City of Toronto agency supporting the LGBTQ2S communities.
