CPD10 Compassion Focused Yoga Therapy and Meditation Teacher Training with James Kirby

So from the very first hours of our lives right through to our last moments, kindness, gentleness, warmth and compassion are the things that can sustain us and help us bear the setbacks, tragedies and suffering that life will rain on us.

Paul Gilbert, PhD

The last decade has seen considerable research showing that cultivating compassion has a major impact on emotional states, social relationships and even physical processes.

This 4-day workshop represents a unique opportunity for yoga teachers and mental health professionals to gain a strong foundation in CFT for yoga teachers and therapists alike.

Compassion Focused Therapy and Meditation has significant effects on the physiological responses of the bodily processes, including heart rate variability and vagal tone. It is a wonderful (and ancient) antidote to managing anger, trauma, PTSD, anxiety and depression.

In this course, we will use ancient meditation techniques combined with yoga postures to learn how to effect positive and compassionate change in brain and body. Buddhist and yogic masters have long taught how the simple mental mastery of the breath can change us for the better, both physiologically and mentally. They combine compassion meditation for structural reintegration in both brain and body. Buddhist and Yogis have long used these simple breath, flow and compassion practices to change lives.

Buddhist masters encourage us to literally “take the medicine”, which is the breath and the love contained within our hearts. Whilst these practices seem essentially easy at first glance, they can take a lifetime to master and cultivate in both the brain and body.

We encourage our Yoga teachers and therapists alike to gain these skills for themselves and basic compassion focused counselling skills to assist others. Compassion focused therapy does not fatigue the brain, unlike empathy in the therapeutic relationship may do. Empathy in the brain mimics the pain response. To provide mindful and compassionate care for ourselves and others as the therapist, we must learn these present -moment- awareness compassionate skills.

This intensive workshop enables participants to bring an evolutionary framework to the conceptualisation of mental health problems and their alleviation.

Participants complete the workshop with an understanding of compassion as flow: compassion to others, being open to compassion from others, and compassion towards oneself. The course is designed to encourage the use of practices that stimulate compassionate mental states and those that build a sense of the compassionate self-identity.