Foundations of Stable Care and Compassion

This weekend intensive–designed for teachers, health care professionals, social workers, parents, activists, and all others interested in caring professions–offers an introduction to Sustainable Compassion Training (SCT).

This weekend intensive–designed for teachers, health care professionals, social workers, parents, activists, and all others interested in caring professions–offers an introduction to Sustainable Compassion Training (SCT). In our helping roles, we are called to constantly extend care to others, yet specific methods for cultivating this type of sustainable care are generally not taught in professional schools. SCT is a method designed to help all people who care for others within their family, work and community life realize a power of unconditional care from within that is deeply healing and sustaining, that makes them more fully present to themselves and others, and that empowers a strong, active compassion for persons that is not subject to empathy fatigue and burnout. 

SCT highlights our need to experience ourselves as objects of care and compassion in order to extend care and compassion widely to others; our need to be seen in our unconditional worth and human potential in order to see the same in others; and our need to become present to our own feelings with kindness in order to become reliably present to others with kindness.  For those purposes, SCT meditations cultivate three interrelated modes of care as a basis for compassionate action. These three modes are:  (1) receiving care, (2) extending care to others, and (3) deep self-care. In this workshop, we will present the science of care and compassion, practice methods for receiving care, extending care, and enhancing self-care, and explore ways of strengthening our compassion practices in daily life.

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• Understand the science and need for compassion and care
• Understand the connection between receiving care, self care, and extending care
• Identify obstacles to receiving, extending, and self care
• Understand the importance of receiving and self care for avoiding burnout and empathy fatigue
• Practice skills for enhancing care for self and others

Teachers:

John Makransky, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, co-founder of the Foundation for Active Compassion and of the Courage of Care Coalition, and author of the popular meditation manual Awakening through Love. For the past fifteen years, he has taught ways to cultivate sustainable care and compassion, adapted from Buddhism in newly accessible ways, to teachers, healthcare givers, social workers, psychotherapists, and those who work with prisoners, the hungry, and the dying.

Brooke D. Lavelle, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder and President of the Courage of Care Coalition. She is also Senior Education Consultant to Mind & Life’s Ethics, Education, and Human Development Initiative and a co-developer of the Call to Care program for teachers and students. Brooke has developed and led compassion- and mindfulness-based programs in various education and health care settings.