Insight into Compassion

This experiential two-day intensive focuses on compassion for mental health providers, social workers, and other clinical care professionals. This training seeks to answer the question of how we can develop compassion as part of our professional practice in a way that best impacts our clients, ourselves, and our communities. We will draw from Buddhist traditions that have long centered the cultivation and understanding of compassion as a practical technology, profound intervention, and skillful approach for our work and lives. This intensive will emphasize teachings, guided meditations, and small group processing. Participants will develop skills in compassion meditation and learn about the ethical and philosophical foundations of compassion within a caring community atmosphere. Discrete modules will draw widely from the Buddhist tradition as it relates to our contemporary settings from such early Buddhist teachings as the divine abodes (brahmavihāra), giving with proper intention (dāna), and the central value of friendship (kalyānamittatā), as well as the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of developing the skillful motivation to help others (bodhicitta) and sending and receiving compassion in the midst of suffering (tonglen). In addition, we will explore themes related to “engaged Buddhism” in which compassion can provide a skillful response to unjust social structures.

Offered by the faculty and alumni of Harvard Divinity School and led by deeply experienced Buddhist lay and monastic instructors, the program blends guided meditation sessions with readings, lectures, and in-depth discussions of applicable Buddhist knowledge and practice.

We will be applying for social work CE accreditation under the NASW-MA Chapter. Please check back in for details on the status of accreditation. 

This program meets the requirement for the formal mindfulness training required for DBT-LBC certification (coupled with an ongoing mindfulness practice routine).