Build Embodied Resilience and Life-Long Self-Healing Skills with CBRT 

 
 

Watch the information session recording (passcode CBRTOCT2024!) to meet Fiona and learn more about CBRT.

Dive into a comprehensive self-healing training by immersing yourself in the neuropsychology of well-being; the practices of mindfulness and compassion meditation; and the ingenuity of posture and breath-work with Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT). This 9-week training gives you essential psychological, contemplative, and embodied tools for mental, emotional, and somatic resilience. You will leave the training with the wisdom, care, and experience to nourish life-long self-healing. No previous experience with meditation necessary. All are welcome!

What Are Some Life Challenges That CBRT Can Help Support Me Through and Bring Some Relief?

Work burn-out, relationship stress, perimenopause and menopause mood swings, grief, chronic illness, long covid, divorce, pregnancy loss, postpartum overwhelm, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and chronic fatigue to name just a few.

Why Should I Take Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT)?

The mindfulness, compassion, posture, and breath-work practices taught in this 9-week course are vital, wholesome, and restorative methods used to develop a calmer, more focused, less stress-reactive mind; an open and responsive heart; and a relaxed centered body. The timeless contemplative wisdom and compassion that these practices spring from offers us ways to face life’s stressors with more equanimity and joy, and grounds a felt sense of resilience and a sublimer quality of life. 

Benefits of CBRT

  • Develop a more present, balanced, open and discerning mind through mindfulness meditation.

  • Nurture self-care and acceptance, unlearn social biases, and deepen positive emotional connection with others through compassion meditation.

  • Build physical resilience, self-regulation, positive energy and the capacity for flow through posture and breath-work.

  • Shape a life of personal resilience, social engagement, and greater purpose through cultivating mindfulness, compassion, and embodiment over time.

About CBRT

Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) was developed in 1998 by Harvard-trained psychiatrist Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, Founder and Academic Director of Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, and it has been offered continuously since then at New York Hospital, and the University Hospitals of Columbia and Cornell. The program integrates timeless techniques of contemplative self-regulation from India and Tibet with contemporary breakthroughs in neuroscience and positive psychology.

What You’ll Receive as a Participant

  • Weekly 1.5 hour classes taught over Zoom

  • 2 guided meditations to provide rest and rejuvenation in each class

  • In-depth material review

  • Lively group discussions and smaller breakout groups

  • 17 pre-recorded lectures 

  • 22 downloadable guided meditations 

  • 130+ page student manual 

  • Dedicated student website with additional supplementary scientific articles

Curriculum at a Glance

The training begins with four mindfulness-based personal healing modules that break the cycle of stress and lead to a more balanced and rejuvenated state of well-being.

Module I
Embracing Suffering with Body Mindfulness

Practice Body Mindfulness to reconnect with our inner lives and begin releasing the survival habits of stress, trauma and reactivity.

Module II
Stopping Reactive Habits with Mindful Sensitivity

Practice Mindful Sensitivity to deepen the capacity for conscious self-regulation and cultivate balanced awareness.

Module III
Breaking Free of Stress with Mindful Awareness

Practice Mindful Awareness to cut through the mesh of reactive habits and stress instincts that normally block the full openness and clarity of our mind.

Module IV
Mindful Insight: The Lifelong Path of Self-Healing

Practice Mindful Insight to cut the roots of reactivity and grow proactive new ways of being in the world.

 
 

The training continues with four compassion-based relational healing modules that build resilience, prevent burnout and increase our capacity to care for ourselves and others.

Module V
Disarming Social Stress and Bias with Equal Empathy

Practice Equal Empathy to unlearn implicit social survival biases while deepening and expanding our sense of connection to others.

Module VI
Healing Reactive Emotions and Beliefs with Self-Compassion

Practice Self-Compassion to develop a wise, caring mind that orients to our common humanity.

Module VII
Cultivating Prosocial Emotions with Wise Give and Take

Practice Wise Give and Take to explore our boundless human potential for care and strengthen our social muscles of love, joy and equanimity.

Module VIII
Embodying a Resilient Self and Life with Caring Imagery

Practice role model visualizations to stretch our sense of self into a fully empowered, resilient and compassionate self.

Read the CBRT Research Studies

  1. Loizzo, J. J., Peterson, J. C., Charlson, M. E., Wolf, E. J., Altemus, M., Briggs, W. M., Vahdat, L. T., & Caputo, T. A. (2010). The effect of a contemplative self-healing program on quality of life in women with breast and gynecologic cancers. Alternative therapies in health and medicine, 16(3), 30–37.

  2. Charlson, M. E., Loizzo, J., Moadel, A., Neale, M., Newman, C., Olivo, E., Wolf, E., & Peterson, J. C. (2014). Contemplative self healing in women breast cancer survivors: a pilot study in underserved minority women shows improvement in quality of life and reduced stress. BMC complementary and alternative medicine, 14, 349. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-14-349

  3. Loizzo, J., Charlson, M., & Peterson, J. (2009). A Program in Contemplative Self-Healing. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1172(1), 123–147.

  4. Offidani, E., Peterson, J. C., Loizzo, J., Moore, A., & Charlson, M. E. (2017). Stress and Response to Treatment: Insights From a Pilot Study Using a 4-week Contemplative Self-Healing Meditation Intervention for Posttraumatic Stress in Breast Cancer. Journal of evidence-based complementary & alternative medicine, 22(4), 715–720.

  5. Perez Sosa, Michael, Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) For Frontline Healthcare Workers In Contact With COVID-19 Patients (2023). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1105

About Your CBRT Certified Teacher

Fiona Brandon, MPS, MA, MFT, is the Director of the Nalanda Institute’s Compassion Based Resilience Training (CBRT) and core faculty of the Embodied Psychotherapy Program. As a licensed psychotherapist and clinical consultant, she integrates Buddhist psychology, depth psychology, expressive arts therapy, dream imagery, and sensorimotor psychotherapy in her work with adults and couples. Fiona is a co-editor of the second edition of the CBRT student manual, and a co-editor of the anthology Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation (2nd ed.) published by Routledge in 2023. She also contributed the chapter, Mindfulness: Self-healing Mechanism and Psychotherapeutic Ally to the forthcoming book Integrating Motivational Interviewing and Mindfulness: A Practitioner Guide to be published in 2024 by Oxford University Press. As a graduate of the Masters program in Counseling Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Fiona’s research focused on the meditative practice of Authentic Movement and the use of symbols and dream imagery in psychotherapy. 

Meetings: TBD

When: TBD

Where: On Zoom

Dates: TBD

Tuition: $250