Tuesday June 20, 2023 9:00am – 1:00pm MDT

Additional registration fee applies.

This workshop will explore compassion meditation and contemplative science through insights and techniques drawn from psychology, neuroscience, and contemplative practice. Participants will be invited to experience contemplative exercises that can strengthen and sustain compassion to support resilience and address burnout. Reflective exercises explore mindsets, attitudes, and somatic strategies for building altruistic motivation and sustained compassion as a way of caring for clients and sustaining the energy, outlook, and wellbeing of the psychedelic therapist. With practice, informed compassion can become a spontaneous response that supports practitioners and their clients in moments of distress and dysregulation.

Compassion practices support spiritual health and promote generative response to suffering, thus preventing and addressing burnout. Participants will discover ways to cultivate a non-reactive, stable presence that is able to hold space for non-ordinary states of consciousness, traumatic processing, and the challenging psychedelic experiences of their clients.

Format: The session will include the following elements:

• Practice: Participants will be guided through a series of intentional and progressive meditation practices that stabilize the mind, orient the body to sources of support, and cultivate a deepening of compassion and altruistic motivation.
• Lecture: The neuroscience of compassion will be explored and brought into conversation with psychedelic medicine and therapeutic practice. A panel of contemplative psychedelic therapy practitioners will present case studies and discuss their experience of sitting with clients in challenging and distressing moments.
• Small Group Discussion: Participants will be invited to share their experiences and challenges in a small group setting with facilitation from skilled contemplative practitioners, in order to identify practices and strategies to support their work in the field of psychedelic assisted therapies