Thursday afternoons, January 5 – February 23, 12:00pm – 2:30pm*
Retreat: Sunday, February 12 (1:00pm - 5:00pm)
* Please note that the first class on Jan 5 will be 15 mins longer (12:00 - 2:45pm)
Registration is required; please register here.
Course Description
Mindful Self-Compassion or “MSC” is an empirically-supported 8-week training program developed by Drs. Chris Germer and Kristin Neff. It helps participants cultivate the mental and emotional habit of mindful self-compassion by learning the process of infusing our moment-to-moment experience with kindness, especially when we feel frustrated, hurt, inadequate, or overwhelmed. Mindful self-compassion is the first step in emotional healing—being able to be-friend oneself, turn inwardly and acknowledge our difficult thoughts and feelings with a spirit of openness, curiosity and love, rather than self-judgment, or self-criticism. Perhaps most importantly, cultivating self-compassion means that we honor and accept our humanness. Things will not always go the way we want them to. We often encounter frustrations and losses. We make mistakes and bump up against our limitations, or fall short of our ideals. This is the human condition, a reality shared by us all. The more we open our heart to this reality instead of constantly fighting against it, the more we will be able to feel compassion for ourselves and all our fellow humans.
Research has shown that self-compassion greatly enhances emotional well-being. It boosts resilience, happiness, reduces anxiety and depression, and can even help maintain healthy lifestyle habits such as diet and exercise. Being both mindful and compassionate leads to greater ease and well-being in our daily lives. MSC can be learned by anyone. It’s the practice of recognizing moments of difficulty, and repeatedly evoking good will toward ourselves. It extends cultivation of that same desire beyond ourselves to all living beings to live happily and free from suffering.
In the weekly program, participants will learn through activities such as meditation, experiential exercises, short presentations, group discussion and home practices. Learning is mostly experiential and includes current theory and research on self-compassion.
Class Dates
8-week course on Thursday afternoons for 2.5 hours
January 5 – February 23, 2017 | 12:00pm – 2:30pm*
Retreat: Sunday, February 12 (1:00pm - 5:00pm)
* lease note that the first class on Jan 5 will be 15 mins longer (12:00 - 2:45pm)Course Fees
$360.00 regular registration
$365.00: Registration with a certificate of completion to use for CEUs
$270.00 (25% off): UW Affiliate Registration, which requires department approval and budget number
Scholarships and income-based reduced fee options available. Please see the registration page for details, or email mindful@uw.edu
About the Instructors
Yaffa Maritz
Yaffa Maritz, LMHC is a co-founder of Listening Mothers and clinical director of both Listening Mothers and Reflective Parenting, two research based parenting programs. She is the founder and director of the Community of Mindful Parenting. Yaffa was born and trained in Israel as a clinical psychologist. She is also a licensed mental health counselor with advanced training in infant mental health. She is an advocate for the well-being of children and their families and served on several local and national boards that promote this agenda, including the Governor’s Commission for Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention. Yaffa believes that by supporting parents and creating nurturing communities for them, we can set the foundation for the positive growth of children’s social, emotional, and mental health.
Yaffa participated in the Stanford yearlong teachers training program called CCT (Compassion Cultivation Training) that was offered through Stanford's Center for Compassion, Altruism, Research and Education. She also completed the advanced training program in MSC (Mindful Self-Compassion) with Drs. Kristin Neff and Chris Germer.
Blair Carleton
Blair Carleton is a Recovery Coach trained by Washington State and the Connecticut Center for Addiction Recovery (CCAR). She received her MSC Teacher Certificate from UCSD’s Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. Blair studied Shame-Resilience with Brene Brown, and went on to teach the curriculum just as Dr. Brown’s first TED talk went viral. But it was after a weekend workshop at CCFW that she fell head over heels in love with Dr. Kristin Neff’s pioneering research on Self-Compassion. Blair studied with both founders of Mindful Self-Compassion, Dr. Neff and Dr. Chris Germer, a clinician at Harvard Medical School. She received her B.A. from Yale University.
Blair has taught MSC to all walks of life: every single time she teaches, she is filled with gratitude to watch people enhance their own lives before her very eyes. She credits her beloved practice of Mindfulness to her teachers: Dr. Keesha Ewers, Ajayan Borys, Sylvia Boorstein and Joel and Michelle Levey. She is tickled pink to be teaching with Yaffa Maritz, her friend, colleague, and the one who taught her 8-week MSC course at CCFW
