Somatic Self-Compassion® Online (Gift Economy course)

Click here to register for this program Click here to register for Continuing Education credits

Welcome to the Somatic Self-Compassion® Online (SSCON) 13-week training! I’m so glad that you’re here!

We all want to live our most authentic lives. We all want to be as happy as possible. We all want to have solid tools for managing life’s inevitable stress. Somatic Self-Compassion training is birthed out of a series of understandings about the stressful world we are living in today and addresses that understanding with methods for helping us be our most authentic, happy, emotionally well-equipped selves.

 

you feel out of alignment with your purpose and you want to motivate yourself to realign and act from a place of love;

you feel disconnected from your body and yearn to connect with this source of information, wisdom, permission-giving, nurturing and pleasure;

you feel stressed: you want to understand why and then collect tools to support yourself in the heat of the moment as well as sustainably into the future;

you want to forgive your body;

you are tired of putting everyone else’s needs first to the detriment of your own;

you want support to develop your own sustainable self-compassion practice;

you want to take a journey with like-minded people who will support you as you go.

 

 

Hi, I’m Kristy Arbon, the developer and facilitator of this program. I have been teaching self-compassion skills to individuals and groups for 6 years, and I developed this program in response to a need for a body-based self-compassion curriculum that uses methods to motivate self-compassion practice in daily life and offers an ongoing community to support practice. Self-compassion is my life’s practice and I feel called to service in the HeartWorks community through regular opportunities to connect, practice, and grow with you all.

 

 

Intention of the training

Somatic Self-Compassion™ is a body-focussed skills training program offered in a group setting designed to give you the knowledge and tools to listen to your body and respond with compassion to live more intentionally and easefully in the world. In this non-clinical program (ie not group therapy) training will be offered in three stages (called journeys), sequenced in a way so that each component builds on the last:

 

This 4-week journey is designed to gather the group and set the foundation for a self-compassion practice through learning what self-compassion is and how self-compassion practice fits in with your sense of purpose, your goals, your strengths and the ways you can naturally motivate yourself. We will spend time reflecting on our personal preferences and style so that we have a good sense of what we need when we start to work with ways to bring more intentional compassion practices to our daily life.

 

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This 5-week journey is designed to introduce you to the body and the neurochemicals that affect how we feel; inform you on ways to develop an understanding of messages from your body; normalize the mechanisms of stress; assist you to practice self-care through self-compassion; and introduce you to sensory modulation (tending to our stress through our senses). Below is a video from the middle of SSCON, to give you an idea of the content of this journey.

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This 4-week journey is designed to support your ongoing self-compassion practice through identifying and fostering sources of personal pleasure and wellbeing; connecting practice to your sense of spirituality; strengthening community bonds for continuing practice connections; and creating rituals for practice beyond our time together in SSCON.

 

When

We’ll meet every Friday (US time) between November 22 and February 21, except December 27.

You can find a timezone conversion chart for your local timezone here:

Time converter at worldtimebuddy.com

Times will be:

Fridays 6pm US Central Time

Saturdays 12midnight UK Time (sorry, my friends)

Saturdays 11am Australian Eastern Time

Where

We will meet on in a video conference platform called Zoom, and connect 24/7 via a companion website that offers readings, research, videos, downloadable meditation recordings, a group discussion board and more!

How

Training is facilitated through:

• talks, meditations, and exercises lead by Kristy;
• practicing deep listening, dialogue and council circle in the group;
• guided group inquiry;
• opportunities for quiet centering and reflection;
• journaling.
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Each week will include:

• a live 2-hour online Gathering of the group of around 12 people (the Gathering will be recorded so that you can view it later);
• access to the extensive online course library of readings, videos, meditations, and research articles;
• guided discussion board conversations to work through each topic together;
• unlimited email support by your teacher.

What you will get:

• cutting edge theory, concepts and research about the mechanisms of stress and relief in the body;
• a comprehensive toolkit of practices and exercises to set you firmly on the path to being self-compassionate;
• embracement in a stable, ongoing community of like-minded self-compassion practitioners;
• ongoing practice support by Kristy Arbon for as long as you need it.

How you’ll benefit most:

• attend the live 2-hour gatherings or view the recording of the Gathering in your own time;
• whenever you can, read pre-Gathering material to prepare;
• read posts and contribute to the lively discussion board;
• bring a sincere desire to live in alignment with your purpose, and to understand and tend to your stress.

Practices included:

Please see the Somatic Self-Compassion Practices on this page for a taste of Somatic Self-Compassion practices.

Trauma-Informed

This training implements the trauma-informed approach outlined by the US National Center for Trauma-Informed Care in that it is designed with four guiding principles in mind. It aims to help us:

1. Realize the widespread impact of trauma;
2. Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in community members;
3. Understand potential roads for recovery;
4. Respond by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and
5. Seek to actively resist re-traumatization.

As such, realizing that feeling lost in the crowd can be triggering for those of us with trauma in our story, this program will be limited to 15 people so that everyone in the group has the opportunity to feel seen and heard.

Gift Economy

This course sees HeartWorks step more fully into the Gift Economy. Many thanks to the original Buddha and a lineage of Buddhist monastics who have modeled wise exchange and living in a Gift Economy for thousands of years. Thanks to one of my teachers, Andrew Olendzki, for teaching extensively on the subject of dana (generosity) within a Buddhist context. Thanks also to Charles Eisenstein for his modern take on teachings on the Gift Economy and for his guidance on how to talk about it in the context of running a heart-centered business (I have borrowed some of his wording below).

What the Gift Economy means is that I am offering this course to the community and you can decide for yourself what registration amount feels right, clear, and fair, reflecting your financial condition as well as your feeling of value and gratitude.

You may choose to pay what a normal online program of this quality and length costs, or you may choose a different amount. Paying zero is fine. This is not because I don’t think this course is valuable – this material and these practices have been instrumental in changing my relationship with myself for the better, and others have told me that they feel less stressed, better able to cope, less self-critical and less affected by shame after doing this course. Participants also tell me that they feel seen and heard. It is because I don’t know what the value of these things will be to you, especially given the wide diversity of financial means in the HeartWorks community, that I offer this as a gift.

Based on my experience of the HeartWorks community, I trust your generosity to support me in developing and sustaining in-depth study and practice journeys like this one. I know that you want to give. I trust your judgement about what represents a commitment on your part and respects your financial situation.

You can read more about my practice in the Gift Economy here.

If you don’t plan to register for this course, but you’d like to be a part of the Gift Economy, you can offer a donation here.

“To inhabit more fully the spirit of Gift is to transform life within us and around us. It is a journey of trust, an exploration of synchronicity, a recalibrating of boundaries, a step into community, a discovery of purpose, and an invitation to friendship with the world.” Charles Eisenstein

Still want to know more?

Please email kristy@heartworks.training if you have any questions.

Click here to register for this program Click here to register for Continuing Education credits