Did you know that our brains are designed to be calmed in the face of kindness?

While many of us find it easy to offer care outwardly to others, we often struggle with offering it towards ourselves. Perhaps it feels silly, selfish, or we believe that without a harsh inner voice we wouldn’t get anything done. But all the research shows that practicing self-compassion (meeting ourselves in the way we would a dear friend of loved one) helps us to:

Feel calmer (lowering our stress response)

Improve mood (lowering anxiety & depression)

Feel more resourced and resilient (particularly within life’s challenges)

Practicing self-compassion offers us tools to cultivate a more supportive, friendly relationship to ourselves, one that can help to soothe, settle, and support ourselves during difficult times, enabling us to feel both calmer, more resourced, and resilient. Doing so provides a counterbalance to the less than helpful ‘inner critic’ that many of us default into, the negative inner-narrative that stimulates our stress response.

About this course

This 4 week course will help you understand what self-compassion is, while learning simple but effective ways of bringing it into your everyday life.

Each session includes a range of theory, short practices (short meditations, life skills and soothing gentle movement practices) and time for questions, discussions and reflections.

Each week you will be given a set of handouts and recordings of practices taken so that you can build them into your life between sessions.

Considerations before booking

Please note while self-compassion can support our mental and physical wellbeing, this course is an educational course rather than a therapy programme. If you are experiencing significant mental or physical health challenges at present, please do let me know prior to the course so that we can discuss if this course is the right option for you at this stage.

Please note that all sessions take place live online via Zoom. Due to the interactive nature of the course participants are required to have their cameras on during all sessions (although you are welcome to turn them off during the practices if you prefer).

To get the most from this course it is advisable to attend at least 3 out of the 4 sessions.

What have past participants said?

"Anna is a generous, dedicated teacher of self-compassion and I loved her 4 week evening course, Cultivating Self-Compassion. She creates a truly harmonious, loving, learning environment. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and came away with some very insightful and practical self-compassion tools that I am starting to use regularly. Thank you!"

“Anna is a wonderful teacher with a deeply calming presence, that both enriches the mind and lightens the heart. Her knowledge of self-compassion and mindfulness is a gift that offers the possibility of relating to ourselves and each other in a more beautiful and life-affirming way."

“Anna really embodies what she teaches, which makes this course so powerful and genuine; she shares her own extensive learning and what she herself has found helpful in establishing self-compassion, is so warm and empathic, and actively encouraged us to take care of ourselves during each session as well as outside of the classroom. I would absolutely recommend Anna and this course."

[This course was] “Like being wrapped in a warm blanket of acceptance and discovering that over the course you'd learnt how to take that blanket out into life with you.”