Four Mondays: March 14, 21, 28, and April 4 7-8:30pm Eastern Time (U.S.) $80 per person
Compassion is a domain of ancient practice as well as of modern scientific research. In this course, we touch into both.
We gain a broad understanding of its cultural value and practice in different eras, and find our own way of accessing it as ongoing support of our emotional, mental, and relational well-being.
According to Buddhists, compassion antidotes anger and contributes to wholesomeness, but if we are out of balance, it can devolve into pity. Along with wisdom, compassion it is a key feature on the path to psycho-emotional freedom.
According to today's research, it increases happiness and social connection and buffers us, physiologically, against stress. Its a potent component of individual and collective resilience, and evolutionary biologists say it has contributed to our survival as a species!
Oftentimes self-compassion in particular feels inaccessible, and so a focus will be placed on ways to "train up" self-compassion and work with inner critics to relax back so that it may flourish.
Through reading, meditation, inquiry, and discussion we will explore our own capacities for compassion in various areas and toward various people, and note where and how it might be expanded for our own and everyone's benefit.
We will incorporate short and simple meditation exercises into our routines between sessions, and by the end we will have the foundation of a life-long meditation practice, as well as back-pocket interventions we can use in stressful everyday moments.
Note class recordings will be available to replay for 30 days if you cannot join live.
Join Sarah Jane in this exploration and reinvigorate your heart and mind this spring!