Hello dear Brazilians! It was delightful to spend time with you at Recanto Bossa Nova for our Mindful Self-Compassion adventure. I miss you all!
Below is material to help support your practice of self-compassion, related to each of the topics we explored.
Thursday Afternoon: Discovering Mindful Self-Compassion
- How Do I Treat a Friend? (exercise on Kristin Neff’s website)
- What is Self-Compassion? (definition on HeartWorks website)
- Soothing Touch (text of practice instructions on Center for Mindful Self-Compassion’s website)
- Self-Compassion Break (text of practice instructions on Kristin Neff’s website)
- Self-Compassion Break (video demonstration by Kristy)
Friday Morning: Practicing Mindfulness + Practicing Loving-Kindness
- Affectionate Breathing (audio meditation by Kristy)
- Mindfulness (HeartWorks blog posts category)
- Resistance (HeartWorks blog posts category)
- Backdraft (Kristy’s blog post)
Friday Afternoon: Practicing Loving-Kindness + Discovering Your Compassionate Voice
- Lovingkindness with Self-Compassion Meditation (audio meditation by Kristy)
- Loving-Kindness for a Loved One (video recording of Kristy Arbon teaching an MSC)
- Finding Lovingkindness Phrases (audio instructions by Christopher Germer)
- Inner Critic (HeartWorks blog posts category)
- Motivating Ourselves with Compassion (text of exercise instructions on Center for Mindful Self-Compassion website)
- “The Journey” by Mary Oliver (YouTube video)
Saturday Morning: Living Deeply + Meeting Difficult Emotions
- Giving and Receiving Compassion (audio meditation by Kristy)
- Core Values (HeartWorks blog posts category)
- Meeting the Fear of Pursuing Core Values (Kristy’s blog post)
Saturday Afternoon: Meeting Difficult Emotions + Exploring Challenging Relationships
- Compassionate Friend (audio meditation by Kristy)
- Soften, Soothe, Allow (audio meditation by Kristy)
- Shame (HeartWorks blog posts category)
- Anger (HeartWorks blog posts category)
- Forgiveness (text from Mindful Self-Compassion program)
- Compassion With Equanimity phrases: Everyone is on his or her own life journey. I am not the cause of this person’s suffering, nor is it entirely within my power to make it go away, even if I wish I could. Moments like this are difficult to bear, yet I may still try to help if I can.
- Boundaries (HeartWorks blog posts category)
Sunday Morning: Embracing Your Life
- Tips for practice:
The MSC Program
The usual MSC program has 8×3-hour sessions, however we had 6×4-hour sessions that combined some of the session topics. Here is the usual MSC program so that you can see how we explored each of these topics over our 6 sessions:
- Session 1 Discovering Mindful Self-Compassion
- Session 2 Practicing Mindfulness
- Session 3 Practicing Loving-Kindness
- Session 4 Discovering Your Compassionate Voice
- Session 5 Living Deeply
- Session 6 Meeting Difficult Emotions
- Session 7 Exploring Challenging Relationships
- Session 8 Embracing Your Life
When this program is offered over 8 weeks, a half-day retreat is also included. We did not do the half day retreat because we were already on retreat 😉 If you would like to do the MSC retreat on your own, you can find an audio file of it here: MSC 3-Hour Retreat.
Poetry
Here is a downloadable resource of poetry and videos that are used in the MSC program – we did not use all of these, but they are a nice resource to support your self-compassion practice.
Recommended Reading
Here’s a page on the HeartWorks website of recommended reading under topics relevant to self-compassion practice.
MSC Teacher Training
You can find information about MSC Teacher Training here and about the Teacher Training in Argentina here (please note this Teacher Training is taught in Spanish and English).
The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook
This workbook will be released on August 15. You can find out more about it on Kristin Neff’s website here. It will be in English. If you would like me to send you a copy, at the cost of the book and the postage, please email me – kristy@heartworks.training. If a number of you would like to purchase the workbook, you might like to let me know how many to send through and I can send through one parcel with a number of workbooks in it.
The workbook has much of the same material that we explored in our MSC, so it will be a great resource for you as you continue on with your practice. It will be especially useful for those of you who are thinking of going on to do MSC Teacher Training.
