Self-Compassion Basic Training

Welcome!

The Self-Compassion Deep Dive is a prime opportunity to revitalize your personal practice, refine your understanding of self-compassion concepts, make friends with practitioners from around the world, and most importantly, nourish your own well-being so that you may be a source of nourishment for others. We celebrate your wisdom, your humility, and your willingness to return to your practice, over and over again.

Know that you are stepping into an experience shaped by many hearts and hands. First and foremost, we acknowledge and thank Kristin Neff and Chris Germer for the MSC curriculum they created together. It is the strong foundation on which the Deep Dive is built.

We also honor the Community for Deepening Practice teachers, participants, and founder/guiding teacher, Aimee Eckhardt, who spent nearly a decade cultivating this long-form, spacious approach to MSC. Their devotion, experimentation, and lived experience helped bring the Deep Dive curriculum into its full expression. This program carries forward that lineage, rooted in warmth, rigor, and a steady trust in the power of community practice.

We also bow to the deeper stream from which so many MSC teachings arise: the wisdom traditions of Buddhist psychology, which have offered practices of compassion, inquiry, and presence for centuries. May we hold these foundational teachings with respect and gratitude. We also acknowledge the many clinicians, researchers, writers, teachers, musicians, poets, artists, and spiritual leaders whose work continue to inform and inspire this course.

Finally, we thank the many hundreds of practitioners, just like you, whose experiences have taught us how best to serve. Their participation continues to ripple outward into families, communities, workplaces, and classrooms. May our work as individuals and as a collective be of benefit to all.

Whether you’re an emerging or experienced practitioner, it is a sincere joy to welcome you to this community. We trust it will be an adventure.

Course Overview:

In the Deep Dive, we’ll progress sequentially through the Mindful Self-Compassion curriculum and beyond, deepening our understanding and embodiment of these themes through active discussions and experiential practices in a more-spacious timeframe.

Class structure:

Classes meet for two hours per weekly session. There are three rest weeks over the duration of the course: April 20, June 15, August 17, 2026.

Core elements of the course:

• Live online gatherings
• Course dashboard: This private online space contains all class materials, Zoom links to live sessions, and provides a way to be in touch with classmates and teachers between weekly gatherings.
• Weekly enrichment readings and resources (always optional)
• Creative invitations and journaling contemplations

Please arrange your schedule so that you have enough time to read any pre-class material.This ensures that you’re prepared for class discussions and can take full advantage of the synchronous time that we have together. When we’re together, let’s be fully together. 

Prior to beginning class, please ensure that you’re in a private, quiet space. It will help to minimize distractions if you commit to turning down any notifications or device ringers nearby and closing extraneous browser windows on your computer. If you need to relocate your computer during class, kindly turn off your video to minimize distraction to the rest of the group.

• There will be ample time for integration and marinating in the course material: Because we spend about a month on each MSC session, (versus 3 hours in a traditional 8-week class) there is more time and spaciousness in which understanding, insight, and embodiment can take root. 
• Rich practice and connection opportunities: The DD provides the potential for deep, trusting connection and accountability in a group that travels together for eight months. During our weekly live, online classes, we meet in both large and small breakout groups, increasing opportunities for deep sharing. Some participants also choose to create smaller partner practice dyads or triads for connection, encouragement, and accountability outside of class hours.
• Greater emphasis/encouragement for ongoing formal practice: Because formal practice strengthens foundations for self-compassion, participants are strongly encouraged to practice near-daily, both formally and informally. We put in place various structures to support people in this journey, whether beginners or established practitioners. 
• Opportunity to explore self-compassion through varied perspectives: Together, participants will explore the material through a variety of lenses to support deeper understanding and embodiment. You will receive elaborative didactic materials, periodic guest talks by senior MSC teachers and thought leaders.
• Chance to explore new topics: Because we have more time to spend together, we incorporate additional topics and approach them through a self-compassion lens. For example, we’ll devote classes to grief, impermanence, forgiveness for self and others, and self-compassion and the body.
• A steady personal practice focus: The focus of this course is on deepening personal self-compassion practice. This is not an academic course, supervision, consultation, or practicum experience.
• Engaged teachers who work alongside you: Teachers are here to support participants’ experience by holding warm, steady, inclusive space, orienting people toward their own resources, and modeling self-compassion in our interactions with each other and ourselves. Like participants, the teachers’ continued intention and practice is to self-compassion — to continue to evolve along with participants. Together, we will grow.

• In the Deep Dive, we’ll progress sequentially through the MSC curriculum and beyond, deepening our understanding and embodiment of these themes through active discussions and experiential practices in a spacious timeframe.

  Please note that the outline below presents the typical order of topics that we’ll cover in the Deep Dive. The exact content offered may shift in relation to participant needs, guest speaker schedules, world events, and so on. * Topics marked with an asterisk are optional and may or may not be offered.

  Surveying the Territory: Where are We Headed, and How?

  • Our New Beginning
  • Creating Your Compass of the Heart

  Month 1: Rediscovering Self-Compassion

  • Self-Compassion in Your Life Today
  • Tender and Fierce Self-Compassion
  • Physiology of Self-Compassion and Self-Criticism (Gilbert’s Emotion Regulation Systems)
  • When Self-Compassion Hurts: Backdraft
  • Misgivings of Self-Compassion*

  Month 2: Exploring Mindfulness and Self-Regulation

  • Practicing Mindfulness
  • Interoception* (Mindfulness of internal sensations in the body)
  • How Resistance Can Increase our Suffering
  • Meditation as an Act of Love, Parts I and II

  Month 3: Loving-Kindness

  • Introduction to Loving-Kindness
  • Loving-Kindness for a Loved One
  • Developing Our Own Loving-kindness Phrases

  Month 4: Discovering Your Compassionate Voice

  • Self-Criticism and Compassionate Motivation
  • Perfectionism and People Pleasing*
  • CDP Mid-Course Review / Stages of Progress

  Month 5: Living Deeply

  • Positive Neuroplasticity: Letting in the Good (Rick Hanson)
  • Core Values – What Matters Most in this One Precious Life?
  • Silver Linings and Compassionate Listening

  Month 6: Meeting Difficult Emotions

  • Introduction to Difficult Emotions; Stages of Acceptance
  • Shame Parts I and II
  • Self-Compassion and the Body*

  Month 7: Self-Compassion in Relationships

  • Interconnection and Belonging
  • Pain of Disconnection: Anger
  • Pain of Connection: Caregiver Fatigue 
  • Losing and Grieving (Five Gates of Grief, Weller)*
  • Forgiveness Part I, II, and III

  Month 8: Embracing Your Life

  • The Beginning of this Ending: Being with Impermanence
  • Don’t Wait: Frank Ostaseski’s Five Invitations
  • Self-Appreciation
  • Closing Circle and Goodbye (in this form)

How to Approach the Deep Dive

• We begin wherever you are. Unlike many training experiences, there are no assessments, no tests, no expectations to perform, and no external pressure—only invitations. This course is designed to support your own growth and understanding. You are invited to arrive just as you are and to practice from that place. Because deepening unfolds in its own time and rarely in a straight line, this phase of the journey asks for patience, steadiness, and a willingness to stay with the process as it evolves.
• Self-direction and initiative: Teachers provide structure, encouragement, tools, and inspiration to go deeper. We will always invite you to take responsibility for your own learning. This means that you participate in the way that serves your unique needs, within the guidelines set by the community and the teachers. If you can think of something additional that would support you in your journey, let us know directly or via the discussion forum so that we may consider it.
• We welcome difference. This includes both seen and unseen differences, including varying languages, faith orientations, gender and sexual identities and orientations, differences in physical, cognitive, or mental capabilities, socio-economic differences, occupational differences, political values, and more.
• We welcome varied spiritual perspectives: Recognizing that there is great richness possible in exploring ideas of self-compassion through a variety of lenses and experiential frameworks, we welcome on-topic, respectful discussions inspired by all faith traditions. This is a non-sectarian course. 
• Setting down your teacher’s/therapist’s hat: While what you learn here will naturally inform your work with others, the focus of this course is your own practice. As best you can, try to set aside professional roles for now. 
• Beginner’s mind: If you find yourself thinking, “I already know this stuff,” we ask you to note that thought, recalling that as a more experienced practitioner, your relationship with the material will be ripe for evolution and deepening. The advanced practice is opening yourself to curiosity and new insights that may arise. 
• Formal meditation practice: Because formal meditation practice strengthens the foundations of self-compassion, we will encourage you to gently challenge yourself in the Deep Dive. We will not ask you to discard the practices that are currently working for you, but to edge forward, seeing what it would be like to add consistency to your formal practice. Taking care to note that the motivation for your formal practice remains self-compassionate.
• Sharing course materials: We ask that you not share any curricular materials unique to the DD (with clients or students outside of the course, for instance) without prior written consent.

• Practice-focused comments: We will have many opportunities for discussion in class. The type of dialogue we have is unique in that it focuses on present-moment, direct experience (How are you actually feeling in this moment? What is happening within you? Where in your body do you feel something?) rather than sharing lengthy stories of past or possible future situations. This may take some practice, but over time, it will become natural. 
• W.A.I.T. (Why am I talking?): Before raising your hand to speak, please check in with your motives. Is this in alignment with your wishes for your time in the course? 
• Judicious use of Zoom’s chat feature: Please proceed intentionally when using Zoom’s chat feature during class, maintaining the same guidelines as when you’re speaking verbally: focusing on present-moment experience and refraining from conceptual discussions, which instead can be initiated on the Mighty Network.
• Breakout room etiquette:
  • Introduce yourself when you get into the breakout room.
  • Please maintain confidentiality — don’t discuss outside your group who said what.
  • Please practice listening and speaking compassionately.
  • Please speak from your own experience.
  • Please share the time equally so everyone gets a chance to speak.
  • Only share what feels comfortable sharing.
  • Do not interrupt or offer advice.
  • Feel free not to join a breakout room, and leave if you need to.
  • If you only want to listen, please let the others know that as well; you may always “pass.”
• Privacy: Please share mindfully, both verbally and in written form. We deeply value the importance of privacy and go to great lengths to ensure it. However, as with any online content, it is impossible to guarantee privacy. If you share others’ information with people outside of the group, that is a profound breach of trust, and you will be asked to leave, with no refund of your course fee.
• Introverts and extroverts: In class, we encourage each person to explore the edge of their own preferences. All participants stand in choice at all times, and while you will never be required to speak, we encourage you to come forward if you tend to sit quietly; and if you tend to come forward quickly or impulsively, can you pause and make space for others to come forward?
• Participation on the course dashboard: This is first and foremost a participant space designed for enrichment between live classes. This is also where all class materials are stored for centralized access. While teachers may frequently offer new questions on the discussion board, so, too, can participants. Here, participants can share their discoveries with each other, resources, or any conceptual questions that might be on their minds. The teachers will be monitoring the discussion in the course dashboard, but their role is notto lead extensive conversations or respond to every post.
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• Bring to class: Each class, we encourage you to make yourself as comfortable as possible (within standards of social decency and respect for your coursemates and teachers). :) You’ll need a journal and pen for each class, plus you may wish to bring special comfort items, like a drink or tea, a soft sweater or shawl, or a lit candle to remind yourself of this precious time devoted to your highest good and the good of others with whom you come into contact in daily life as your practice continues take root.
• Monitor your emotional capacity during each class. Some of the material we explore in class could bring up difficult emotions.Please use the chart below to ensure, as best you can, that you remain in either “safe” or “challenge” zones. If you find yourself nearing “overwhelm,” rest back. 
• Wisely monitor your time commitment in the course overall: Please keep your involvement in the Deep Dive sustainable. We aim to marinate in the material slowly, over the long term. We welcome you wherever you are; can you do the same for yourself? We name striving and gently hold the pain that drives it. This course is designed to fit into a variety of schedules. Participation can range from only coming to the live class once a week, while others may prefer to participate in more available/optional offerings. You may find that you may wish to participate less or more, depending on what is happening in other areas in your life. We welcome and celebrate this customization as you continue to return to the quintessential question of self-compassion: What do I need right now?
• Breaks and pacing: We’ll always offer at least one 5-minute break in the middle of the session, but if you need more, please take care of yourself as needed, just as in a physical class. 
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