I currently offer the program online, taught over eight weeks. I am also available to facilitate 60 or 90-minute sessions on Compassion Cultivation Training.
Weekly, two-hour sessions.
There are four-courses available, please select the day that works for you.
For fees see below:
A 60-90 minute facilitated workshop.
Discounts, payment, and scholarships information:
Click on this video to watch how to register and use coupons for my CCT courses. Note: The steps to register for a course will be the same, even when the course dates will change.
The Compassion Cultivation Training program (CCT™) is a six-step program designed to develop the qualities of compassion, empathy, and kindness for oneself and others.
The training integrates traditional contemplative practices with contemporary psychology and scientific research on compassion.
The program was developed by a team of contemplative scholars, clinical psychologists, and researchers at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford medical school.
CCT™ involves training our minds, developing specific skills relating to ourselves and others, and intentionally choosing compassionate thoughts and actions.
Please note that it is very important that people suffering from unprocessed trauma, also seek professional help to process their trauma. I highly recommend reading or listening to The Myth of Normal, written by Dr. Gabor Maté with his son Daniel Maté for a magnificent in-depth review of how cultural flaws have led humanity and our living planet on a suicidal course of planetary destruction and how collectively we can transform to save ourselves and our world. David Treleaven’s excellent work is very helpful in understanding how to heal from trauma while beginning a mindfulness practice safely.
Students will have their own unique experiences. However, research demonstrates CCT™ may lead to the following:
CCT™ is offered on Zoom and includes:
A certificate will be provided to everyone who completes the course.
These courses are appropriate for continuous education credits.
Your Instructor, Dr. Frances Scully
Click the button below to complete registration.
Check your inbox for a welcome email with details about joining the course.
Download the student workbook and say hello in our private Mighty Network group.
Get ready for your first session!
Week 1: Settling the Mind
Week 2: Loving-Kindness and Compassion for a Loved One
Week 3: Self-Compassion
Week 4: Loving-Kindness for Oneself
Week 5: Embracing Shared Common Humanity and Developing Appreciation of Others
Week 6: Cultivating Compassion for Others
Week 7: Active Compassion Practice
Week 8: Integrated Compassion Cultivation Practice
Compassion is a core human attitude, capacity, and skill. Compassion requires us to cultivate our ability to recognize and be with suffering, coupled with a desire to relieve this suffering. An equivalent capacity is found in some non-human beings.
Compassion and kindness are complementary but different. Both include a set of attitudes, qualities, and skills. Some neuroscientists report that humans are born with a potentially infinite capacity to cultivate compassion. As with every skill, our abilities grow with regular practice and support. Suffering is a universal human experience. At some time in our lives, we will all experience suffering.
Neuroplasticity demonstrates that although this can take time and effort, it is possible to change our attitudes, behaviors consciously, and thought processes. Academics and scientists also share that when individuals and communities focus on creating healthy prosocial attitudes, behaviors, and relationships, we create societies where individuals, families, groups, and entire communities flourish.
Sadly, many of us were taught to disconnect from our hearts and bodies, despite the reality that this is physiologically impossible. Over time, disconnecting our brains, seats, and bodies damages our health and well-being, communities, nations, and interconnected planetary systems.
Compassion is a core human ability that can be learned and taught. Compassionate empathy allows us to recognize, choose to respond to, and relieve our suffering and that of others. We are members of a 7.8 billion, unimaginably immense, extended human family. Hence there are more than 7.8 billion ways to cultivate and practice compassion.
Compassion is embodied. A compassionate response requires activation and signaling between our hearts, minds, and bodies.
The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and the Compassion Cultivation Training© Meditation Course
In the 21st century, some major institutions recognize our cultural need to study the science, philosophy, and wisdom traditions that promote Compassion. One such Academic Centre is the Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, founded and Directed by Dr. Jim Doty at Stanford Medical School. Dr. Doty is a gifted neurosurgeon who has been inspired to study the neuroscience of Compassion. Inspired by HH, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Doty invited Dr. Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., who came to Stanford to develop an eight-week, six-step compassion-focused meditation course. Dr. Thupten Jinpa achieved the very difficult to obtain Tibetan Buddhist certification as a Geshe as a very young monk. Later he chose to study and receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Cambridge University in Great Britain. Jinpa also chose to experience the joy of family. He is married and lives with his beautiful family in Montréal. He is also the main English translator for H. H., the Dalai Lama. This richly layered course has been further developed, extensively researched, and studied by dedicated and experienced faculty at the Center for Compassion and Altruism and partners around the globe. Its sister organization, the Compassion Institute, founded by Jinpa, is working to bring the gift of this life-altering course to all who seek such a practice. Faculty have also developed a new 8-hour intensive version of this course, and the talented staff at Compassion IT is developing techniques for busy people.
Dr. Thupten Jinpa wrote an extremely helpful autobiography, A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives which can be read in preparation for enrolling in the CCT course.