Living Courageously – A 5 day online MSC retreat Sept 2024

with Dr Caroline Hoffman and Dr Colette Power

This retreat is on USA/Canada friendly times 6am – 4pm Pacific Time/ 9am to 7pm East Coast Time

“We must generate courage equal to the size of the difficulties we face.” The Dalai Lama

This retreat will help us to cultivate the courage to be present whatever our experience or circumstances. It will start by exploring what supports and nourishes presence and equanimity. 

We will draw upon foundational practices of mindfulness, kindness and tender compassion. We will also be exploring how fierce compassion can support us to protect and motivate ourselves and help us set wise boundaries. 

By skilfully responding to the ever-changing landscape of our experience, we can learn to embrace whatever is fearful enabling us to build capacity and live more fully, heartfully and courageously.

All of this will support the deepening of our mindful self-compassion practice and help us to live more fully, heartfully and courageously.

About Mindful Self-Compassion

Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) is based on research by Kristin Neff, integrated with the clinical perspective of Christopher Germer. MSC teaches core principles and practices that enable participants to respond to difficult moments in their lives with kindness, care and understanding.

The three key components of self-compassion are self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and balanced, mindful awareness. Kindness opens our hearts to suffering, so we can give ourselves what we need. Common humanity opens us to our essential inter-relatedness so that we know we aren’t alone. Mindfulness opens us to the present moment, so we can accept our experience with greater ease. Together they comprise a state of warm, connected, presence.

Self-compassion can be learned by anyone, whatever our personal histories. It’s a courageous attitude that stands up to harm, including the harm that we unwittingly inflict on ourselves through self-criticism, self-isolation, or self-absorption. Self-compassion provides emotional strength and resilience, allowing us to admit our shortcomings, motivate ourselves with kindness, forgive ourselves when needed, relate wholeheartedly to others and be more authentically ourselves.

Rapidly expanding research demonstrates that self-compassion is strongly associated with emotional well-being, less anxiety, depression and stress, maintenance of healthy habits such as diet and exercise, and satisfying personal relationships. And it’s easier than you might think.

What to expect

Retreat Leaders:

Led by certified UK MSC teachers Dr Caroline Hoffman, Ph.D drcarolinehoffman.com and Dr Colette Power Ph.D  www.colettpower.com and with a combined teaching experience of over 30 years.

The two teachers will lightly guide the mindfulness, loving-kindness and self-compassion practices, and will remain mostly in silence so you can deeply explore and learn as much as possible from your own experience of these. The retreat includes guided practices, theme-based talks, and participant meetings with your teachers. There will also be movement practices to balance the long sitting.

The first morning will be an orientation session. For the rest of the four and a half days, the practices in the mornings and afternoons will include sitting or lying and movement practices that you will have learned and practised on your mindful self-compassion course as well as some new practices.  For this time on retreat, we will be practising meditations to enhance and deepen our mindfulness, loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. All of these practices can help us cultivate courage.

Who the retreat is for:

It would be beneficial, though not essential, to have also taken a mindfulness-based course and that you have a practice of mindfulness meditation and/or loving-kindness/self-compassion meditation.

The retreat meets the requirement to have participated in a five-day, silent, teacher-led retreat before taking the MSC Teacher Training course.

Requirements to attend:

Please ensure you are able to attend the entire event. If this is not possible, please contact us to discuss before submitting an application.

Timings Daily from 10am to 8.30pm British Summer TIme (BST), except the last day that finishes at 4pm BST.

Our rates:

The retreat fee is £475.00 British pounds or $590US dollars

The Application Process:
Our application and payment process involves the following steps:

We receive your application form and assess it to ensure that this retreat is suitable for you.
Upon offering you a place, we will then ask you to pay the deposit or for the full amount.
Your place is confirmed once we receive your deposit or full payment.
The balance is due one month before the retreat starts.
We will email you the joining instructions in advance of the course.

Payment and Cancellation Policy.
You may cancel your place one month before the start of the retreat. Cancellation incurs an administrative charge of £20 GBP or $25US).

Feedback from previous retreat run by Caroline and Colette:

• A wonderful retreat with highly skilled teachers, beautifully led by Caroline and Colette.
• Would I do it again?  Yes, in a heartbeat.
• The sessions on joy were just wonderful.  I ‘landed’ feeling refreshed and renewed.
• Caroline and Colette created a nurturing space in which we could explore a deeply compassionate approach to what it means to be alive.
• The retreat was beautifully run with wonderful talks and practices.  The topics flowed well and it was good to experience such embodied teaching. 
• Both Colette and Caroline were amazing.  Their storytelling just made the session.  It’s clear they’d thought very hard about the delivery online and they just made it work so well.
• Caroline and Colette created a very warm, friendly and loving learning environment, and I felt held and embraced by that – an awareness that I can bring to myself in my life.

There are a limited number of bursary-assisted places available on this event for those who could not otherwise attend due to financial hardship. For details please email caroline@drcarolinehoffman.com.