Happy June, friends!

I’m excited to welcome my friend, colleague and fellow CCT instructor, Margy Lim, to Bend!

Margy and I will be co-facilitating CCT in the fall and working together to grow the CCT community in Central Oregon. Here’s an introduction to you from Margy:

During my years of working as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist both in private practice and as a staff clinician at the Stanford University Faculty Staff Help Center, I observed that compassion for self is in short supply. In our competitive culture, many people are hard on themselves and suffer as a result.

When I was introduced to the study of Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) at Stanford, I learned a valuable set of science-based skills and ideas developed to alleviate suffering and have since taught them to clients and the general public. Self-compassion is, in the deepest sense, self-care and fosters resilience and a feeling of connectedness, often reducing feelings of anxiety and depression.

In teaching CCT, my aim is to teach the skills necessary to cultivate and maintain a sense of kindness toward self and others and to enhance the sense of wellbeing in our homes, communities and places of work in order to prepare us for life’s inevitable challenges.

Recently retired from clinical work at Stanford, my husband and I relocated to Bend to be with our daughter’s family and to welcome their first baby. My interests include the study of new developments in neuroscience, particularly where it supports the teaching of compassion cultivation; the study of classical piano; hiking and maintaining my working knowledge of French.

I certiainly look forward to working with Margy! I hope you can join us for our co-facilitated CCT class this fall at OSU-Cascades on Mondays from 4 to 6pm September 17th through November 5th.  Click here for more info and to register.

Wishing you love, joy and fun!

-Aly

Compassion is an awareness of others’ suffering coupled with a willingness to take action to relieve the suffering.

Actively practicing compassion can boost your courage to be present and resourceful in the face of life’s challenges.

Compassion can calm your nervous system and strengthen your capacity for meaningful relationships, connections and intimacy with others. It can enhance your well-being and happiness by reducing stress, anxiety, loneliness and empathy fatigue.

Compassion can also connect you with your values and purpose to increase your clarity and focus.

Compassion is perhaps the most powerful and effective tool you can use to care for yourself and others. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama famously said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

And yes, compassion can be cultivated and enhanced! There are specific exercises you can do to build your compassion muscle. Like a great workout, it feels amazing.

“…contemporary research in neuroplasticity, by scientists like Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, finds that even short-term compassion meditation training (30 minutes a day for eight weeks) alters the brain activity in regions associated with positive emotional skills like empathy. That is true for both men and women.”

More here