Mindful Self-Compassion

Eight Week Course

Yaffa Maritz, LMHC, Blair Carleton

About this Event

This course is full.

IMPORTANT This course has been impacted by the current public health threat of COVID-19. If you are registered for this course, please look for an email from mardes30@uw.edu addressing the changes to the schedule and format. The course schedule has changed to an online format beginning March 19.

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 the cultivation of that same desire beyond ourselves to all living beings to live happily and free from suffering.

In this 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
Thursdays, March 19 – May 7, 2020, from 6:00 – 8:30 pm
Retreat: April 18, 2020 Time TBD.

Course Fees

$370.00: Regular registration
$375.00: Registration with clock hours or a certificate of completion to use for CEUs

Required Workbook

Participants are required to purchase a workbook, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook available online or at your favorite book store. Prices range from about $10-$19 depending on the store. 

Discounted Fees

  • Income-based reduced fee of $275, available to individuals with an annual household income from all sources of $60,000 or less. For more details, please email ccfwb@uw.edu 

  • UW Affiliate Discount: 25% off for UW faculty and staff – must register with UW email address.

Continuing Education Units (CEUs)

Register for a Certificate of Completion and get CEUs. Our CEUs are available for licensed psychologists, marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors,  and social workers in Washington State. We cannot guarantee that these CEUs will be accepted in other states.

Courses and Workshops
Thursday, March 19, 2020
6:00pm-8:30pm

Location

Center for Child & Family Well-Being
3903 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, WA

Open to

Public

Cost

$275 - $375

About the Presenters

Photo of Yaffa Maritz

Yaffa Maritz, LMHC

Yaffa is the founder and director of the Community of Mindful Parenting, a co-founder of Listening Mothers, and the clinical director of both Listening Mothers and Reflective Parenting, two research-based parenting programs. 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

Blair 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.  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.

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