"How to Practice Compassion for Self and Others" is a 1-day (8 hour) workshop that focuses on improving one’s relationship with self and others, and is based on principles from Mindfulness, Positive Psychology and Cognitive Therapy (as well as Buddhism and Neuroscience). The focus is on how to live a life where our actions are aligned with our core values, get straight to the heart of a matter, identify the issues, discriminate between real threats vs. the “stories” we tell ourselves, take responsibility for our choices, not go into “victim mentality”, communicate needs effectively, bring love, mindfulness and compassion to all situations, and live wholeheartedly, without apology.

The interactive and playful workshop starts out with a lecture on insights on wellbeing from both a western and eastern perspective, followed by eight sections covering different aspects of relationship with self and others. Each section starts with the instructor giving a short lecture on the topic, followed by group discussion and exercises. The exercises include private reflection/writing, round table discussion, didactic one-on-one communication with the instructor, and pairing up to practice.

8-section Content

SELF-COMPASSION: Relationship with Self

• Exploration of the Self, and How to Live a Life with Heart
• Accepting All of Your Personality Traits
• Building Emotional Resilience by Challenging Your Thoughts and Changing Behaviors
• Building Emotional Resilience by Accepting All of Your Emotions

COMPASSION FOR OTHERS: Relationship with Others

• Compassion for Others alongside Healthy Boundaries
• Putting Compassion for Others into Practice
• Approaching Conflict with Others from a “Needs” Perspective
• Taking Responsibility for Conflict with Others

Note: Participants should bring their paper & writing utensils or iPads for private exercises

Instructor Profile

Born in New York City, Karen Dobkins received her BS in Biochemistry/Philosophy at Binghamton University in 1985, and her PhD in the Neurosciences Department at UCSD in 1992. She has been a professor of Psychology at UCSD since 1995. Although she studied brain development in children for many years, in 2019, she switched her research focus and is now the director of the Human Experience and Awareness Lab (HeaLab), which investigates why humans flourish vs. flounder (through studies of connection to nature, mindfulness, romantic relationship satisfaction, self-talk, derogation of others). Complementing her research, in 2019, she created a 1 unit P/NP course in Psychology entitled “Learning Sustainable Well-Being (LSW): Compassion for Self and Others” and her lab recently published a Frontiers paper arguing the need for the course and presents data showing its efficacy in improving well-being. In Fall 2024, she became co-director of the first-ever Learning Sustainable Well-Being program at UCSD, in which other faculty are trained to teach the compassion course in their home department. Outside the world of research, she is a co-founder of “Spacious-Minds”, based in the Netherlands, which builds conscious daycares through interior design and well-being courses. She is a practitioner of Yoga, a swimmer and hiker, and a mother of four and loves to give inspirational talks, including her Tedx talk “The Space between Kansas and Oz”.