The origin story:

If you’ve ever learned to ride a bike, you’ll remember the wobbly starts, the occasional scrapes, and the satisfaction when things finally begin to click. That’s a lot like learning the skills of mindfulness and self-compassion. When Aimee founded the CDP in 2016 because she knew firsthand that these skills, just like bike-riding, need practice and a support system in which to truly flourish.

Like many of us, Aimee had experienced the transformative power of self-compassion during her first Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) training, she wanted to go deeper. In the process of seeking a next step in her training (with no luck at that time) she found that there were many others who were also committed to bringing their self-compassion skills from head to heart. With support from MSC co-developers Chris Germer and Kristin Neff, other MSC leaders, and the dedication of her fellow teachers, Aimee used the question of “Where do we go from here?” to inspire a long-form learning experience that has evolved into the caring community that the CDP is today. (The CDP is an independent, woman-owned business separate from CMSC, though we have shared missions and interconnected communities.)

Over the years, the CDP has become our shared training ground—a place to wobble, learn, and celebrate our evolution together. Turns out that self-compassion takes root more easily when surrounded by friends who understand what you’re up to and who embrace you in your stumbles and your progress along the way. 

The importance of community in “self-“compassion cultivation

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.”

-James Baldwin, by way of Maria Popova

Over the years, we’ve seen that self-compassion is about so much more than the “self” in its name. It is deeply relational. Because what is harmed in relationship can begin to heal in relationship, we take the restorative power of community very seriously in the CDP.

Aside from the myriad individual life challenges held within the caring context of our gatherings, the CDP has also been a steady place for many to anchor during global crises. Of course we have a curriculum, but we draw on the curriculum of living, whether it’s war, pandemic fears, social unrest, climate catastrophe, or natural disasters. We gain the skills to hold space for each other’s experience, all while learning to hold ourselves as well. And those connections don’t stop when class ends. The CDP offers ongoing practice opportunities — many of them freely available — ultimately creating a community that grows stronger as we continually show up for ourselves and each other, just as we are.

Where we’re headed

In addition to our compassion-cultivation focus (through compassion-informed classes), we recently expanded our CDP model to embrace practitioners of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as well as those exploring their mortality through our Dying into Life course. We continue to listen to our community, meeting their curiosity and commitment to deepening with novel offerings and as best we can, keeping connections strong and the ripples of compassion moving outward for the benefit of the world at large. It’s our aspiration to expand and adapt the potent CDP curricula across languages and locales, so if you would like to explore such a partnership, we welcome you to be in touch to learn what may be possible.

The ripples

The work we do together goes beyond personal gain. By applying the principles of mindfulness and compassion in our daily lives, we create positive ripples for the collective. It’s a journey that helps us discover our shared humanity and our interconnectedness with all beings. Ultimately, it’s about having the courage and capacity to feel our lived experience, and from what we learn, build lives of meaning, care, justice and connection.

After ten years of guiding people through sustained, integrative self-compassion practice, the course formerly known as the Community for Deepening Practice is coming full circle. Rooted in the pioneering work of Kristin Neff and Chris Germer, the curriculum was thoughtfully expanded and evolved over 10 years by Aimee Eckhardt and her team of MSC teachers, who helped shape it into a spacious, experiential container for deep, lived practice.

By joining the Self-Compassion Institute, the newly named Self-Compassion Deep Dive now rests more fully within its original lineage while gaining the support and visibility of a global home devoted to expanding access to self-compassion. This transition preserves everything that makes the program what it is — its depth, its intimacy, its emphasis on embodiment — while opening the door for more people to experience sustained practice within community.

As the pathway into deeper self-compassion work, the Self-Compassion Deep Dive bridges foundational MSC training with the immersive, integrative approaches developed over the past decade. It offers participants a natural next step beyond the basics: a way to deepen, apply, and truly live self-compassion day by day, supported by the broader SCI community and infrastructure.

The same deep, transformative journey—now held in a larger home where it can flourish forward.