This is the webpage for participants in the 6-week Mindfulness Based Compassion Training program for health professionals. It contains details and links for your home practice each week. Each week has three sections:
- Practice – the recording of the daily meditation.
- Popular readings – popular press articles on compassion, related to the theme of the week. Reading these is optional.
- Viewings – optional video (usually less than 10 mins) – highly recommended.
Please refer back to your workbook for the full description of the week’s home practice.
WEEK 1
Practice
Body scan with affection (15 mins)
Popular readings
2015 Changing the world and ourselves through compassion – The Age
2012 10 Science-based reasons why compassion is hot! – Dr Emma Seppala
Viewings
Overcoming Compasision Fatigue – Dr Tania Singer (8:09 mins)
WEEK 2
Practice
Loving kindness
Popular readings
2013 The Compassionate Mind – Dr Seppala
Viewings
A terrific short video to shift perspective (4:25 mins).
WEEK 3
Practice
Giving and Receiving Compassion (15 mins)
Popular readings
2018 What type of meditation is best for you? – Dr Tania Singer
Viewings
Prof Germer on the Fears of Compassion (7:28 mins)
WEEK 4
Practice
Compassion for self – “self-to-self” relationship (13 mins)
Self-compassion break (4 mins 15 secs)
Popular readings
2015 – The Five Myths of Self-Compassion – Dr Kristin Neff
Viewings
Common humanity – you’ll get the idea after 6 or 7 mins (it goes for 14:50 min)
WEEK 5
Practice
Widening circles of compassion (15 mins)
Popular readings
2010 – Hands on research: The science of touch – Dr Dacher Keltner
Viewings
Dr Neff on her dimensions of self-compassion (6:19 mins).
WEEK 6
Practice
Create your own mix of practices that cultivate compassion for yourself and others.
ADDITIONAL READINGS AND LINKS
Compassion Research Centres
Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, Stanford University
The Compassionate Mind Foundation, UK
The Max Planck for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig Germany
The Compassion Initiative, Australia (Qld)
Other useful compassion links
Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkley
Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin
The Charter of Compassion, a network of compassion networks
Self-compassion, Dr Kristin Neff
Readings
Five things I wish I had known as a young doctor 2017 by Dr Robin Youngson (founder of Hearts in Healthcare).
Measuring compassion in the body 2015 by Dr Emiliana Simon-Thomas (Science Director, Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkley)
Viewings
Prof Dacher Keltner (UC Berkley) on how we are built to be kind (4:36 mins)
Short video (2:10 mins) on the innate nature of compassion.
Dr Neff on overcoming objections to self-compassion (12:23 mins).
Dr Germer on ways to respond to the resistance (backdraft) to self-compassion that can arise (8:29 mins)
Dr Karen Armstrong’s prize winning TED talk (21:28 mins)
An overview (21:54 mins) of the scientific research into compassion and mindfulness by Dr Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Science Director at the Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkley (and editor of the Oxford Handbook on Compassion Science). Dr Simon-Thomas says, “We are exquisitely built to be sensitive to other people… at the beginning of compassion is being atuned to the suffering of other people. We are biologically endowed with this capacity.”
One oncologist’s description (Dr Ranjana Srivastava – 7:25 mins) of her experience as a patient, and how her own suffering supports her capacity to offer compassionate care.