8-Week Compassion Course

Live on Zoom: September 22 – November 10, 2026

Course Overview

Cultivate a Compassionate Heart (CCH) is an eight-week journey to strengthen the essential qualities of the heart—compassion, kindness, gratitude, and presence—toward yourself and others. This course will help you deepen your self awareness and your access to compassion, as well as enhance the skills of emotional intelligence, self-reflection, meditation, compassionate listening and much more: skills that are anchored in evidence-based practices.

Registration for Fall 2026 is Open Now!

Course Description

The course highlights the profound link between compassion and personal well-being. Research suggests that as we become more aware of ‘being’ with ourselves in a compassionate way, we gradually begin to recognize and experience a more fully integrated sense of connection with our deeper core values and intentions. To directly embody and experience the benefits of cultivating and anchoring attention in our body and heart, however, necessitates learning how to train and incline the mind towards a more compassionate, resilient, and authentic life. This requires a rebalancing of our over-developed habit of ‘doing’ with one of ‘being.’

Participants in this 8-week course work with contemplative practices and guided exercises in each session. By actively engaging in the practices to cultivate greater awareness and hone new skills for emotional self-regulation, we learn how to connect to ourselves first and drop from our head into our heart. As an entry point, CCH integrates the “Alphabet of the Heart,” a mnemonic created by CCARE Founder Dr. James Doty.

At the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Apply basic mindfulness skills and utilize mindfulness meditation to stay present and heartful to self and others
• Apply learned compassion skills as a response to everyday needs and demands in personal and professional settings
• Utilize compassion practice with oneself and others for emotional regulation in the face of distress
• Utilize cognitive re-framing with oneself and others from the compassionate stance of common humanity
• Describe the difference between compassion and empathetic distress, and how empathic distress leads to burnout
• Utilize evidence-based self-compassion meditation practices in the context of personal and professional relationships
• List three sources of resistance to the development of self-compassion
• Explain three ways to recognize resistance to compassion for and from others
• Describe physiological substrates of concentration and how this helps manage stress and anxiety
• Describe current research studies on the effects and effectiveness of compassion practices

Read answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions about this 8-week course.

Continuing Education Credits (CECs) for Health Professionals:

You may be eligible to earn 14 CE credits for successfully completing this course. Please read the information below and confirm with your state licensing board before enrolling if directed to. The processing fee for CE Credits is $175.

• CE credits for psychologists are provided by the Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA) which is co-sponsoring this program. The Spiritual Competency Academy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Spiritual Competency Academy maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

• The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts CE credits for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association.

• LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFTs, and other mental health professionals from states other than California need to check with their state licensing board as to whether or not they accept programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association.

• SCA is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN Provider CEP16887) for licensed nurses in California. RNs must retain their certificate of attendance for 4 years after the course concludes.

• For questions about your certificate or the content, logistics, or other support issues regarding this course, please contact CompassionEducation@stanford.edu. For questions about whether APA CE is valid for you, contact your licensing board directly. For general questions about APA CE or to report a grievance, contact SCA at ce@spiritualcompetencyacademy.com.

Once enrolled, it is the sole responsibility of the participant to arrive within 15 minutes of the start of each class, to participate with their video (camera) on, and to submit a separate course evaluation form after the final class. No partial CE credit is available if more than one class is missed.

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Coming this Fall! Compassion in Healthcare: 8-Week Course

Note to Healthcare Professionals:

We’re excited to share that Compassion Education at Stanford CCARE will offer Compassion in Healthcare (CHC) this Fall. CHC is an eight-week course designed around the unique experiences of healthcare workers.

This course creates a dedicated space for healthcare professionals to explore compassion with others who understand the realities of clinical and healthcare work. Together, participants will have the opportunity to reflect on caregiving, burnout, emotional exhaustion, moral stress, teamwork, and the challenge of staying connected to meaning while working in demanding systems.

Registration opens in mid-July. Join the interest list here to receive updates.

Both eight-week courses teach relevant compassion practices. If scheduling is your main consideration, we encourage you to register for the course that best fits your availability.

CE credits will be available for healthcare professionals in both courses.