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ATTENDANCE POLICY

We ask participants in the Academy's cohort-based courses to attend all course sessions. These are interactive courses where the practices you learn from week to week build on each other. Attending and contributing consistently will improve the experience for you and your peers.

Participants who attend at least 6/8 sessions will receive a certificate of completion.

DESCRIPTION

Nalanda Institute’s Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) is a complete, evidence-based training in stress-reduction and self-healing developed and tested at the university hospitals of Columbia and Cornell, where it has been offered continuously since 1998.

CBRT integrates contemplative healing practices from India and Tibet and modern science. Through mindfulness, compassion, imagery, and breath-work, it helps people access the capabilities for healing and growth that we all carry.

These practices are especially relevant for providers who encounter stress, pain, and trauma in their jobs, in addition to the personal and social stress. The cumulative effects of feeling threatened, or witnessing violence against others, wear on our physical and mental health and can limit our capacity to connect with others.

CBRT offers tools to protect your own well-being and extend care. We start by training ourselves to pay attention to the present by noticing our breathing bodies. In a state of calm, we will explore practices that can be used to:

• Repair the effects of stress
• Increase our ability to face discomfort and suffering
• Reassess our thoughts and experiences
• Pause during moments of stressful reactivity, and choose how we want to respond
• Grow the capacities we already have for openness, playfulness, learning, connection, and joy
• Offer compassion to ourselves and others

The focus of this course is on developing a personal meditation practice that works for you. These practices can be a form of protection from chronic exposure to stress and trauma, and can help prevent compassion fatigue and burnout.

The skills you develop will help you navigate your role as service provider, supervisor, or leader, as well as other relationships. They include skills to soothe our nervous systems during stressful situations, think more flexibly, and extend empathy and compassion to an increasingly wider circle of people, even those we consider difficult or have viewed as “other.”

Capacity in this course is limited to 25 learners to promote interaction and engagement among participants and instructors.

CBRT was developed in 1998 by Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, Founder and Director of Nalanda Institute.

 

WHAT TO EXPECT

This is an experiential course designed to help you explore meditation practices and integrate what you find helpful into your everyday life. Each session will include:

Practicing meditation together. The instructor will guide 1-2 meditations during class each week so learners can practice in community. You will receive audio and video recordings to help you practice between sessions. Many practices in this course can be done in less than 20 minutes, or they can be extended.

Reflection. There will be time for self-inquiry and mindful sharing. Experiencing meditation for yourself and reflecting on that experience are the foundations of this course.

Research. We will introduce research and insights about the nature of stress and the effectiveness of contemplative practices from neuroscience, psychology, medicine, and more.

Kind connections. We will practice extending kindness and acceptance to ourselves and other group members while together.

Learners will have access to Nalanda Institute’s comprehensive CBRT student manual, research articles for optional reading, and guided audio and video meditations.

We recommend a quiet, private space for this course. Learners will need a computer with Zoom access. Meditations can be done sitting, standing, or laying down. Learners may choose to meditate on or off-camera. We will also spend time talking in pairs, small groups, and large groups, and encourage people to turn their cameras on for these conversations, wherever possible.

COURSE OUTLINE

Part I: 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.

Week 1: Embracing suffering with body mindfulness
Week 2: Stopping reactive habits with mindful sensitivity
Week 3: Breaking free of stress with mindful awareness
Week 4: Mindful insight: the lifelong path of self-healing

Part II: 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.

Week 5: Disarming social stress and bias with equal empathy
Week 6: Healing reactive emotions and beliefs with self-compassion
Week 7: Cultivating prosocial emotions with wise give and take
Week 8: Embodying a resilient self and life with caring imagery

 

ELIGIBILITY

This course is for any staff of NYC non-profit community-based organizations or government agencies who deliver social services in New York City.

All levels of meditation experience are welcome, including no prior experience.

This is a comprehensive training program designed to help you explore meditation, integrate the practices you find helpful into your life, and strengthen your mindfulness and compassion skills. Each week builds on the prior week, so we ask that learners commit to attending at least 6/8 live sessions. Additionally, learners who can dedicate time to practicing meditation between sessions – even 20 minutes or less per day - may enjoy this course most.

HOW TO APPLY

The next cohort of CBRT will be announced in Spring 2024. Join our mailing list to be notified.