Leader: Pippa O'Connor
Costs: £280 [£225 if on low income; £155 if living off benefits]
If you are eligible for a concession, click the correct booking button and then “Concession code”. Use code “concession-225” (low income) or “concession-155” (if living off benefits). For our concessions policy please click here.
Prices include materials and practice afternoon.

(MCBT) Mindful Compassion Behaviour Training Includes elements of the MBCT Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Training for depression, anxiety and worry. However, the CMBT training also includes an added component of compassion training to integrate change, wisdom, joy, equanimity and compassion for transformation in our life. Suitable for newcomers and for anyone who wishes to enhance their skills.

Pippa says: “Without compassion we cannot be aware, nor can we transform our intimate, personal and impersonal relationships. The need is greater than ever before to be able to be present with our compassionate self. Learning to stabilise the wild mind & body so that we can manage these challenging, frantic and difficult times. MCBT is for anyone wanting to let go of difficulty, a critical mind and strong emotions”. 

The course uses evidence-based techniques to train and transform reactive moods, thoughts and feelings such as judgement, fear, depression, stress, anxiety, sadness, anger and loneliness. Instead of fighting difficult emotions and thinking critically of self and other, MCBT, helps us learn to accept and reduce reactivity, to find new helpful and skilful ways to be with ourselves, others and life’s difficulties by cultivating knowledge, wisdom and kindly awareness. 

Neuroscience tells us, it is not helpful to try, to push away strong emotions, nor to 'allow' them to arise, without some sort of foundation practice and training, as provided on this course.

As well as mindfulness training, this course is informed by the compassion work of Professor Paul Gilbert, Psychologist Kristen Neff and Chris Germer. It includes mindful compassion skills training for self-soothing and emotional tolerance, and to mitigate self-criticism, perfection-driven behaviour, unrelenting standards, grief, anxiety, angst and isolation. 

To make the transformation and change with compassion training, one must work on building a resource for self-awareness, self-empathy and mindful self-care to build resilience. 

We need to resource ourselves with warmth imbued with kindness, tenderness, insight and support, to navigate through what is often a tyrannical mindset. This journey takes courage, kindness, stability, patience training and an ability to recognise what is happening while it is happening. 

Pippa says: “The first step is to 'wake up' to how we are with ourselves, then to observe and tolerate the difficulties. These will pass in time. However, while we are experiencing a critical mind and strong emotions, we can feel they will never change. This is why we train in self-soothing and kindness, not to get rid of the difficulties but to be with them, side by side, and in time their effects will lessen and we will have a much kinder and transformative relationship with self, others and life itself.”

We ask you please to read the general information section under Mindfulness Courses to check whether this course is likely to be right for you. You can access this by clicking on Mindfulness Courses in the Courses dropdown menu at the very top of this page.

IMPORTANT

If one has an emergency and requests to change, from Live sessions to Zoom / online, we do allow this but then one must return to your live place in the mindfulness class as there is a waiting list for live spaces at the North London Buddhist Centre and your place could off gone to someone else.

Pippa O'Connor

(BSc; MSc; PGCE & Dip) Senior Lecturer in (MBCT) Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy – Clinical Applications for 14 years at the Priory Hospital, Southgate. Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness facilitator at Tavistock & Portman Hospital & London Clinic Hospital, Harley Street. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Relationship Therapist, Addiction and Trauma/ DIP Trauma/ EMDR. Teaching mindfulness-based courses for 20 years at the North London Buddhist Centre.