• Shift Happens: Learning to Bounce Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, Even Disaster
• Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Woodacre, CA
• Sunday, January 17, 2016; 9:30am-5pm

Dealing effectively with the challenges and crises of life is the core of our resilience and well-being.  Developing flexible and adaptive strategies for coping with everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is the heart of any transformative process. Modern neuroscience illuminates how the brain encodes its strategies for coping in the first place and has shown mindfulness and compassion practices to be two of the most powerful agents of brain change, thus behavior change, known to science. A wise use of Buddhist contemplative practices and tools from modern relational psychology can help practitioners let go of unwholesome coping strategies and cultivate new, more wholesome ones, leading to more clarity, response flexibility and resilience, and less greed, hatred, delusion and suffering. In this daylong, participants will learn to reverse the impact of stress and trauma, come out of anxiety, depression, addictions, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, and rewire the inner critic. Participants learn to deepen their self-compassion and empathy, connect to inner resources and to the relationships that are healthy and nourishing, and through, mindful awareness and reflection, discern options and make wise choices that lead to thriving and well-being.

• Advanced Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Winter 2016
• Thursday evenings, 6pm-9pm, January 7 – March 3, 2016 (no meeting February 25) plus half-day silent retreat Saturday, February 13, 2016
• or Sunday evenings, 6pm-9pm January 10-March 6, 2016 (no meeting February 21) plus half-day silent retreat Saturday, February 13, 2016.

(For people who have previously completed a Mindful Self-Compassion course with Linda Graham or another MSC teacher, or have practiced loving kindness and/or mindfulness meditation for three years or more.) All the core meditations and practices of the regular 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion course, augmented by the latest findings and techniques from modern neuroscience, positive psychology, post-traumatic growth, attachment theory, and interpersonal neurobiology. Practices will be supplemented by articles, videos, poetry/quotes, and online resources. For more information, contact Linda Graham

• Shift Happens: Brain Based Coping Strategies for Trauma, Stress and Broken Relationships
• PESI, Mount Laurel, NJ, Monday, February 22, 2016
• PESI, King of Prussia, PA, Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Clients seek our help in coping with the difficulties, even disasters, in their lives. Sometimes clients’ coping strategies are defensive, maladaptive, seemingly “stuck” and intractable, blocking their learning and derailing their resilience. New research in post-traumatic growth is teaching clinicians how to help clients fully recover from the traumas and tragedies that up-end their lives and shatter their faith in life being worth living. Join bestselling author and expert, Linda Graham, as she teaches you the modern neuroscience and behavioral science that will help clients rewire dysfunctional patterns and create new more adaptive coping strategies in ways that are safe, efficient, and effective. You can help clients successfully change their brains, thus change their behaviors, thus change their lives. Shift happens. In this experiential workshop, you’ll learn techniques to help clients:

• recover from trauma
• Heal toxic shame and retire the inner critic
• Reduce stress and regain equilibrium,
• Recover from anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, guilt
• Cultivate positive emotions and prime the brain for learning and growth
• Come to more clarity and discernment in decision making
• Strengthen executive functioning and foster resilience
• Recover a sense of competency and courage to take growth-enhancing risks in life

You will help clients strengthen the functioning of the brain to not only get through hard times but to thrive in their midst!

• Bouncing Back: Rewiring the Brain for Resilience and Well-Being
• Sivananda Ashram, Bahamas
• February 24-27, 2016

Mindfulness and compassion practices are among the most powerful agents of brain change known to modern science. A wise use of contemplative practices and tools from modern relational psychology can help practitioners let go of unwholesome coping strategies and cultivate wholesome ones, leading to more clarity, response flexibility and resilience; and less greed, hatred, delusion and suffering. These workshops teach participants many practices that skillfully harness the innate neuroplasticity of the brain to reduce the impacts of stress, trauma, and our all-too- human conditioning on how we cope with the inevitable disappointments and disasters of life; and to deepen the habits of generosity, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, equanimity, tranquility, and inner peace that lead to freedom and liberation. The teachings, practices and experiential exercises will deepen practitioners’ experiences of and faith in self-directed neuroplasticity as a genuine support of wise understanding and wise effort.

• Shift Happens: Helping Clients Bounce Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, Even Disaster
• The Psychotherapy Institute, Berkeley, CA
• March 5, 2016, 9am-1pm

Dealing effectively with life challenges is the core of our resilience and well-being. Helping our patients develop adaptive strategies for coping with both disappointments and disasters is the heart of the therapeutic process. This experiential workshop offers tools informed by modern neuroscience to help patients harness their neuroplasticity to reverse the impact of stress and trauma, come out of anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, and rewire the inner critic. We can help them connect to inner resources and to the relationships that are healthy and nourishing, and through mindful awareness and reflection, discern options and make wise choices.

• Shift Happens: Brain Based Coping Strategies for Trauma, Stress and Broken Relationships
• PESI, Tinley Park, IL, Monday, March 14, 2016; PESI, Lisle, IL, Tuesday, March 15, 2016
• PESI, Northbrook, IL, Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Clients seek our help in coping with the difficulties, even disasters, in their lives. Sometimes clients’ coping strategies are defensive, maladaptive, seemingly “stuck” and intractable, blocking their learning and derailing their resilience. New research in post-traumatic growth is teaching clinicians how to help clients fully recover from the traumas and tragedies that up-end their lives and shatter their faith in life being worth living. Join bestselling author and expert, Linda Graham, as she teaches you the modern neuroscience and behavioral science that will help clients rewire dysfunctional patterns and create new more adaptive coping strategies in ways that are safe, efficient, and effective. You can help clients successfully change their brains, thus change their behaviors, thus change their lives. Shift happens. In this experiential workshop, you’ll learn techniques to help clients:

• Recover from trauma
• Heal toxic shame and retire the inner critic
• Reduce stress and regain equilibrium,
• Recover from anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, guilt
• Cultivate positive emotions and prime the brain for learning and growth
• Come to more clarity and discernment in decision making
• Strengthen executive functioning and foster resilience
• Recover a sense of competency and courage to take growth-enhancing risks in life

You will help clients strengthen the functioning of the brain to not only get through hard times but to thrive in their midst!

• Brain Care as Self-Care: Discovering the Neuroscience of Well-Being
• Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, Washington, D.C.
• Thursday, March 17, 2016, 9:30am-4pm

By tapping into the innate neuroplasticity of the brain to reduce stress, regain equilibrium, and restore perspective and resilience, we can avoid compassion fatigue and burnout and recover the rejuvenating creativity and flow of our work. In this experiential workshop, you’ll learn empirically validated techniques to calm the nervous system, come to clarity and discernment in decision-making, heal toxic shame, retire the inner critic, revive a sense of competency and connection with others, and cultivate the courage to take growth-enhancing risks in your life. You’ll leave with a toolkit that includes:

• Doable micro-practices involving exercise, sleep, nutrition, learning, play, and social interactions that foster brain health
• Ways to access positive emotions—gratitude, kindness, joy—to counter-balance the brain’s negativity bias and broaden and build resources for resilient coping
• How to turn regrettable moments into teachable moments that transform mistakes and losses into opportunities for enhancing learning and resilience

• Rewiring the Brain to Enhance Attachment: How to Make Love More Possible
• Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, Washington, D.C.
• Friday, March 18, 2016, 11am-5pm

When work with a client bogs down, it’s often because of early attachment wounds that lead to maladaptive coping strategies and impaired emotional regulation. They also derail the full development of the prefrontal cortex, the neural basis of emotional and relational intelligence. Helping clients strengthen their neural functioning and recover an “earned” inner base of resilience is one of the greatest rewards—and challenges—of therapy. Modern neuroscience illuminates which specific tools and techniques clinicians can use to help clients with different attachment styles, including:

• Somatic-based tools such as power posing, affectionate breathing, and rewiring through breathing and movement to recover physiological equilibrium and emotional stability
• Tools of memory deconsolidation-reconsolidation to reduce the impact of trauma memories and revise clients’ sense of self-worth
• Practices of mindful self-compassion to shift out of the brain’s ruminative negative judgements and enhance self-acceptance

• Shift Happens: The Neuroscience of Resilience and Well-Being
• U.S. Journal Training Las Vegas, NV
• Friday, April 1, 2016 10:30am-11:30am

Resilience is the innate capacity to respond flexibly to the hiccups and hurricanes of life. Discoveries in modern brain science helps us integrate tools from relational psychology and mindfulness practice to efficiently harness the neuroplasticity of the brain to rewire old patterns of coping and bounce back better from difficulties, disappointments and disasters.

• Bouncing Back: Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth
• U.S. Journal Training Las Vegas, NV
• Friday, April 1 2016, 1:45pm-3:15pm

More than half the people who experience traumas and catastrophes fully recover from them.  This workshop guides clinicians through 8 steps of post-traumatic growth, helping clients discover new meaning and purpose in their lives, more fulfilling relationships and sense of community, more life satisfaction and contentment, often not just in spite of their difficulties but because of them.

• Brain Care is Self Care
• U.S. Journal Training Las Vegas, NV
• Friday, April 1, 2016, 3:30pm-5:00pm

In this experiential workshop, you will learn empirically validated techniques to reduce stress, take self-compassion breaks, come to Clarity and discernment in decision making, heal toxic shame, retire the inner critic, and revive a sense of competency and connection with others. Participants will leave with a self-help toolkit to create new neural flexibility in your brain and a fresh sense of well-being and flourishing.

• Brain Care as Self-Care: Discovering the Neuroscience of Well-Being
• Mindful Awareness Research Center, UCLA, Los Angeles
• April 9, 2016, 10am-4pm

By tapping into the innate neuroplasticity of the brain to reduce stress, regain equilibrium, and restore perspective and resilience, we can avoid compassion fatigue and burnout. We harness the power of the 6 C’s of coping – calm, compassion, clarity, connections to resources, competence, and courage – and recover the rejuvenating creativity and flow of our lives. In this experiential workshop, you’ll learn empirically validated techniques to calm the nervous system, come to clarity and discernment in decision-making, heal toxic shame, retire the inner critic, revive a sense of competency and connection with others, and cultivate the courage to take growth-enhancing risks in your life.

• Neuroscience Summit
• Sounds True
• May 10-19, 2016

Sounds True is offering one of the most significant online neuroscience events ever held: 20 leading neuropsychologists and psychotherapists will present free webinars addressing how groundbreaking discoveries from modern brain science can help us all live more resilient and skillful lives. The webinars are free for 24 hours on the day of broadcast. I’m presenting May 15, 2016, 9am PT. Here’s the full line-up of presenters:

1. “Neural Integration at the Heart of Well-Being” with Daniel J. Siegel, MD
2. “How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain” with Andrew Newberg, MD
3. “Why Therapy Works” with Louis Cozolino, PhD
4. “How You Tell Your Story Tells Your Story: Language Patterns Express Your
5. Earliest Experiences of Being, Bonding, and Developing Brain States” with Diane Poole Heller, PhD
6. “Tender Attachments: Nourishing Our Children’s Embodied Brains” with Bonnie Badenoch, PhD
7. “The Evolution and Practice of Compassion” with Dacher Keltner, PhD
8. “Neurosculpting: Unifying Mind, Body, and Spirit” with Lisa Wimberger, MEd
9. “Improving Memory and Brain Health” with Gary Small, MD
10. “Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Lasting Inner Strength and Peace” with Rick Hanson, PhD
11. “Cultivating the Mature Mind’s Brilliance: Insights from Neuroscience” with Dee Coulter, EdD
12. “Shift Happens: Learning to Bounce Back from Disappointment, Difficulties, Even Disasters” with Linda Graham, MFT
13. “The Science of Social Connection and Compassion” with Emma Seppälä, PhD
14. “Self-Compassion and Emotional Resilience” with Kristin Neff, PhD
15. “Changing the Default with Mindfulness” with Kelly McGonigal, PhD
16. “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life” with Daniel Amen, MD
17. “Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Alienation from Self” with Janina Fisher, PhD
18. “Brainspotting: The Brain-Body Relational Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change” with David Grand, PhD
19. “Mindfulness, the Brain, and Leadership” with Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD
20. “The Cultural Brain: How Shared Beliefs Influence Health and Longevity” with Mario Martinez, PsyD
21. “Attachment and Arousal Regulation in Couple Therapy” with Stan Tatkin, PsyD

• Brain Care is Self-Care: The Neuroscience of Well-Being
• Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Stockbridge, MA
• May 20–22, 2016

Learn how to rewire your brain to reduce stress, regain equilibrium, and restore resilience and perspective. Psychotherapist Linda Graham applies neuroscience to the process of personal healing and growth, and teaches you techniques to avoid burnout, come to clarity in decision making, heal toxic shame and retire your inner critic, recover creativity and flow in your life, and revive a sense of competency and connection with others. Through discussion and practice, you learn how to

• Create the shift that counterbalances the brain’s negativity bias and installs wholesome habits into implicit memory
• Strengthen the executive functioning of the prefrontal cortex to build resilience and coherence
• Use self-directed neuroplasticity to rewire old response patterns and restore your psychological equilibrium
• Harness mental play space to allow insights and aha moments to break through.

• Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Well-Being
• Cape Cod Institute, Cape Cod, MA
• June 27-July 1, 2016

Dealing effectively with challenges and crises in life is the core of resilience and well-being. Helping clients develop flexible and adaptive strategies for coping with everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is the heart of the therapeutic process. Helping clients harness the brain’s own mechanisms of change to rewire coping strategies that are defensive, dysfunctional, and blocking of growth, and to encode new more flexible patterns of response, is the focus of this workshop. Modern neuroscience is teaching us how to use the brain’s innate neuroplasticity to rewire coping behaviors, even when they are seemingly “stuck” and intractable. Clinicians will learn through didactics, experiential exercises, and group discussions, which tools and techniques of brain change best help clients use their own self-directed neuroplasticity reverse the impact of stress and trauma, regulate surges of emotions to come out of anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, deepen the self-compassion and empathy that connect them to their inner resources, overcome resistance and strengthen the resonant relationships that foster the perseverance that develops resilience, and shift their perspectives through mindful awareness and reflection to discern options and make wise choices. Participants will learn to apply these tools and techniques, which underlie the therapeutic modalities they are already familiar with – Internal Family Systems, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, AEDP. DBT, EFT – to help clients strengthen the 6 C’s of Coping: Calm, Compassion, Clarity, Connections, Competence and Courage and recover the natural resilience that supports well-being and flourishing. Clinicians will also learn to apply these tools to their own brain care as self-care to avoid compassion fatigue and burnout.Create the “left shift” that counter-balances the brain’s negativity bias and installs new wholesome habits into implicit memory.

• Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Well-Being
• San Leandro Public Library, San Leandro, CA
• Thursday, July 7, 2016  6pm-8pm

Resilience is the innate capacity to respond flexibly to the hiccups and hurricanes of life. Discoveries in modern brain science help us integrate tools from relational psychology and mindfulness practice to efficiently harness the neuroplasticity of the brain to rewire old patterns of coping and bounce back better from difficulties, disappointments, and disasters.

In this program, you will learn empirically validated techniques to reduce stress, take self-compassion breaks, come to clarity and discernment in decision making, retire the inner critic, and revive a sense of competency and connection with others. You’ll learn to create new neural flexibility in your brain and a fresh sense of well-being and flourishing.

• Shift Happens: Learning to Bounce Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, Even Disaster
• Spirit Rock Meditation Center Woodacre, CA
• Saturday, July 9, 2016 9:30am-5pm

Dealing effectively with the challenges and crises of life is the core of our resilience and well-being. Developing flexible and adaptive strategies for coping with everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is the heart of any transformative process.

Modern neuroscience illuminates how the brain encodes its strategies for coping in the first place and has shown mindfulness and compassion practices to be two of the most powerful agents of brain change, thus behavior change, known to science. A wise use of Buddhist contemplative practices and tools from modern relational psychology can help practitioners let go of unwholesome coping strategies and cultivate new, more wholesome ones, leading to more clarity, response flexibility and resilience, and less greed, hatred, delusion and suffering.

In this daylong, participants will learn to reverse the impact of stress and trauma, come out of anxiety, depression, addictions, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, and rewire the inner critic. Participants learn to deepen their self-compassion and empathy, connect to inner resources and to the relationships that are healthy and nourishing, and through, mindful awareness and reflection, discern options and make wise choices that lead to thriving and well-being.

• Healing Attachment Trauma by Rewiring the Brain
• K Events Australia
• Sydney August 25-26, 2016 Brisbane August 29-30 Melbourne September 1-2

Much of the distress and dysfunction clients present with in therapy has deep roots in the wounds of early attachment. Clients weren’t loved enough, protected enough, validated in their own essential beingness. Attachment experiences not only strengthen (or derail) a client’s developing sense of self-worth, self-efficacy, and resilience. Early interpersonal interactions shape the development and maturation of the brain itself, strengthening or derailing the flexibility in the brain’s functioning that would allow clients to learn more complex, more adaptive coping strategies later. Research in attachment theory, behavioral science, relational psychology, and trauma therapy, has guided clinicians in developing interventions and modalities of treatment that help clients recover a healthy inner secure base. Clinicians become “re-parenting” figures, teaching clients new skills, deepening their emotional-relational intelligence, and helping them develop far more adaptive strategies for navigating their world. Modern neuroscience is now illuminating how to teach clients to harness their own brain’s mechanisms for healing – the brain’s innate neuroplasticity – to rewire deeply embedded trauma memories and create new automatic – more wholesome – patterns of thinking/feeling/behaving. In these two day workshops, clinicians will learn the latest applications of modern brain science to healing attachment trauma, experimenting with dozens of tools and techniques that safely, efficiently, effectively rewire the brain, helping clients reverse the impacts of stress and trauma, come out of anxiety, depression, loneliness, shame, into a genuine thriving and flourishing.

• Mindful Self-Compassion
• Spirit Rock Meditation Center Woodacre, CA
• Tuesday evenings, 7:30pm-9pm September 13 – November 1, 2016 Half-day retreat October 22, 2016

Mindful Self-Compassion, as developed by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, is a powerful 8-week training in empirically-supported tools and techniques that enable participants to respond to difficult moments in their lives with kindness, care, understanding, and wise action. Practices in loving kindness and compassion allow us to keep our hearts open in moments of struggle and suffering. Practices in mindfulness allow us to see our experiences and our reactions to our experiences, and ourselves as the experiencer, more clearly, discern options and make wise choices. Understanding our common humanity brings us out of isolation into connection and resources again. MSC, through discussions, meditations, and many experiential exercises, teaches practices of loving connected presence that allows us not just to feel better but to cope wisely when we are feeling bad. This course helps participants deal effectively with life’s challenges and crises while creating community and deepening practice. Participants are asked to attend all sessions of the course.

• Shift Happens: Using Mindfulness and Compassion to Cope with Disappointment, Difficulty, Even Disaster
• Mindfulness and Compassion in Therapy and Society Arbor Seminare, Freiburg, Germany
• September 23-25, 2016

Dealing effectively with the challenges and crises of life is the core of our resilience and well-being.  Developing flexible and adaptive strategies for coping with everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is the heart of any transformative process, and essential to recovering from trauma. Modern neuroscience is discovering how the brain encodes its strategies for coping and healing in the first place and illuminates how we can learn to use our own self-directed neuroplasticity to rewire strategies that no longer work so well, even strengthen the structures of the brain that develop rather than derail our resilience. In this presentation, participants will learn to reverse the impact of stress and trauma, come out of anxiety, depression, addictions, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, and rewire the inner critic. Participants learn to deepen their self-compassion and empathy, connect to inner resources and to relationships that are healthy and nourishing, and through mindful awareness and reflection discern options and make wise choices to bringing healing and well-being to themselves and the larger world.

• Shift Happens: Mindfulness and Compassion Are Powerful Agents of Brain Change and Spiritual Transformation
• Mindfulness and Compassion in Therapy and Society Arbor Seminare, Freiburg, Germany
• September 23-25, 2016

• The Neuroscience of Resilience and Well-Being
• San Diego Psychologists Association, San Diego, CA
• October 1, 2016

Resilience is the innate capacity to respond flexibly to the hiccups and hurricanes of life.  Discoveries in modern brain science help us integrate tools from relational psychology and mindfulness practice to efficiently harness the neuroplasticity of the brain to rewire old patterns of coping, bounce back better from difficulties, disappointments, and disasters, even move into thriving and flourishing.

• Bouncing Back:  Resilience and Post-traumatic Growth
• San Diego Psychologists Association, San Diego, CA
• October 1, 2016

More than half the people who experience traumas and catastrophes fully recover from them.  This workshop guides clinicians through empirically-validated steps of post-traumatic growth, helping clients discover new meaning and purpose in their lives, more fulfilling relationships and sense of community, more life satisfaction and contentment, often not just in spite of their difficulties but because of them. Mindfulness and compassion practices are among the most powerful agents of brain change known to modern science. We can learn to wisely use Buddhist contemplative practices and tools from modern relational psychology to harness the innate neuroplasticity of the brain to reduce the impacts of stress and trauma, deepen our self-compassion and self-awareness, learn new and creative ways to navigate the twists and turns of life with more calm, courage, and flexibility, and deepen the wise effort that leads to inner peace, equanimity, and well-being.

• Bouncing Back: Rewiring the Brain for Resilience and Well-Being
• Leading Edge Seminars, Toronto, Canada
• October 27-29, 2016

Dealing effectively with challenges and crises in life is the core of resilience and well-being. Helping clients develop flexible and adaptive strategies for coping with everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is the heart of the therapeutic process. Helping clients harness the brain’s own mechanisms of change to rewire coping strategies that are defensive, dysfunctional, and blocking of growth, and to encode new more flexible patterns of response, is the focus of this workshop. Modern neuroscience is teaching us how to use the brain’s innate neuroplasticity to rewire coping behaviors, even when they are seemingly “stuck” and intractable. Clinicians will learn which tools and techniques of brain change best help clients use their own self-directed neuroplasticity reverse the impact of stress and trauma, regulate surges of emotions to come out of anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, deepen the self-compassion and empathy that connect them to their inner resources, overcome resistance and strengthen the resonant relationships that foster resilience, and shift their perspectives through mindful awareness and reflection to discern options and make wise choices.

• Cultivating Inner Resilience: Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty even Disaster
• New York Open Center, New York
• Sunday, October 30 2016

Every human being has to face failures and crises. How we deal with suchchallenges is central to determining our level of happiness and well-being, so mastering flexible, adaptive strategies to cope with both disasters and everyday disappointments is one of the most important skills we can develop. Recent neuroscientific research has shown that mindfulness and compassion practices can be highly effective agents of brain (and thus behavioral) change. Today we will learn how to make wise use of both ancient contemplative practices and tools from modern relational psychology to let go of unwholesome coping strategies and negative emotional responses (stress, anxiety, depression, addictions, loneliness, guilt, shame, etc.) and instead rewire our neural responses to awaken and strengthen our clarity, self-compassion and empathy, to discern the best options and make wise choices that will help us thrive.

• Shift Happens: Learning to Bounce Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, even Disaster
• Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Woodacre, CA
• November 6, 2016

Dealing effectively with the challenges and crises of life is the core of our resilience and well-being. Developing flexible and adaptive strategies for coping with everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is the heart of any transformative process. Modern neuroscience illuminates how the brain encodes its strategies for coping in the first place and has shown mindfulness and compassion practices to be two of the most powerful agents of brain change, thus behavior change, known to science. A wise use of Buddhist contemplative practices and tools from modern relational psychology can help practitioners let go of unwholesome coping strategies and cultivate new, more wholesome ones, leading to more clarity, response flexibility and resilience, and less greed, hatred, delusion and suffering. In this daylong, participants will learn to reverse the impact of stress and trauma, come out of anxiety, depression, addictions, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, and rewire the inner critic. Participants learn to deepen their self-compassion and empathy, connect to inner resources and to the relationships that are healthy and nourishing, and through, mindful awareness and reflection, discern options and make wise choices that lead to thriving and well-being.

• Shift Happens: Learning to Bounce Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, Even Disaster
• Insight LA, Santa Monica, CA
• Saturday, November 12, 2016, 10am-4pm

Dealing effectively with the challenges and crises of life is the core of our resilience and well-being.  Developing flexible and adaptive strategies for coping with everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is the heart of any transformative process. Modern neuroscience illuminates how the brain encodes its strategies for coping in the first place and has shown mindfulness and compassion practices to be two of the most powerful agents of brain change, thus behavior change, known to science.  A wise use of Buddhist contemplative practices and tools from modern relational psychology can help practitioners let go of unwholesome coping strategies and cultivate new, more wholesome ones, leading to more clarity, response flexibility and resilience, and less greed, hatred, delusion and suffering. In this daylong, participants will learn to reverse the impact of stress and trauma, come out of anxiety, depression, addictions, grief, loneliness, guilt and shame, and rewire the inner critic. Participants learn to deepen their self-compassion and empathy, connect to inner resources and to the relationships that are healthy and nourishing, and through, mindful awareness and reflection, discern options and make wise choices that lead to thriving and well-being.

• Shift Happens: Learning to Bounce Back from Disappointment and Difficulty
• Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA
• December 18-23, 2016

The ability to cope effectively with the challenges and crises of life is the core of our resilience and well-being. Developing flexible and adaptive strategies for dealing with everyday disappointments – even disasters – is the heart of any personal growth process. Modern neuroscience illuminates how the brain encodes its strategies for coping in the first place, and informs how we can learn to use our own self-directed neuroplasticity to rewire new strategies that allow us to navigate the twists and turns of our lives with more courage and flexibility. The rush and expectations of the holiday season can cause particular challenges and stressors. It is the perfect time to pause, change our habitual patterns, and learn new skills. In this experiential workshop, you’ll be taught to reverse the impact of stress and trauma, which can help decrease anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, guilt, and shame, and rewire the inner critic. You can learn to deepen self-compassion and empathy, and connect to inner resources and to healthy and nourishing relationships. Through mindful awareness and reflection, we all can discern options and make wise choices that lead to thriving and well-being for ourselves and the larger world as we enter a new year.