Classes in Mindfulness and Self-Compassion
Learn research-backed tools for embodied mindfulness, relating to yourself with kindness, healing your inner critical voice, increasing your resilience and ability to live in alignment with your values and pursue your most meaningful life.
Sign up for our 9 week online Mindful Self-Compassion course, and read more about it below.
Fall classes start Sept. 12!
A practice that will transform you:
Practicing self compassion on a daily basis has calmed my inner critic, and has helped me feel more love, protection and warmth toward myself, but also towards others. I have gotten better at noticing what lights me up, versus what drains me, and then making choices that have led me to a life that feels more aligned.
Whereas I used to sometimes really struggle with self-judgment, now I just remember that my inner critical voice was just a coping strategy I once developed to protect myself, but that it’s no longer needed. I have learned to replace it with an encouraging inner coach who reminds me that it’s only human to make mistakes, to suffer hardship, or to feel sad or scared sometimes.
Now when I am struggling, I can put a hand on my heart and say to myself, “Aw, Beth, I’m sorry you’re sad. That’s hard. What do you need right now?” And then I go take a bath or take a walk, or just lie on the floor like a starfish! And when I return to the tasks of my life, I feel stronger and more able to face difficulty.
Self compassion practice has made everything in my life easier.
-Beth
What will you learn in the 9 week course?
Mindful Self Compassion is a resource-building program, in which you gain skills and tools to better respond to your own suffering. The 9 week course is all about becoming more aware - or mindful - of when you are suffering, so that you can then choose to treat yourself with kindness.
The goal isn’t to be kind to yourself in order to stop your suffering, but simply because you are suffering. You are a person who deserves care and compassion, just like everyone else.
Research shows that it takes 8 weeks to build a new habit. Each week you will gain practice working with many simple tools to change how you relate to yourself. You will leave the course feeling more resilient, and more kind to yourself.
Sliding scale partial scholarships for BIPOC individuals and those experiencing financial hardship.
Fall 2025 classes run virtually on zoom, Fridays 9am-12pm EST, starting Friday, September 12.
The curriculum
Week 1: Introduction to Mindful Self-Compassion
In this session we will get to know each other and become oriented to the program. We will learn what self-compassion is, and what it isn’t. We will explore the relationship between self-compassion and well-being, scientifically, by examining the research, and experientially, by learning our first practices.
Week 2: Practicing Mindfulness
We learn what mindfulness is, and gain several new body-based practices and meditations for practicing mindfulness and self-compassion in our daily lives. We explore how we cause ourselves unnecessary suffering, and learn about the concept of “backdraft.”
Week 3: Practicing Kindness
We continue to practice the meditations and self-compassion practices we have already learned, while trying out some new practices to treat ourselves with kindness. We learn compassionate movement, and learn ways to speak to ourselves with the words we need to hear.
Week 4: Discovering Your Compassionate Voice
We learn to motivate ourselves with self-compassion instead of being hard on ourselves. We learn about the research behind why self-criticism doesn’t work as well as we think it does, as a motivational tool. We gain new skills in being our own caring inner coach.
Week 5: Living Deeply
We practice giving and receiving compassion, listening with compassion, discovering our core values, and finding the hidden value in suffering. This class helps us reframe our suffering and relate to it with more spaciousness.
Week 6: Retreat
We have a silent meditation retreat, where we get to skip the listening to a teacher instruct, and we just get to sink deeply into the experience of mindful self-compassion. This class is all meditations and practices to really embody self-compassion.
Week 7: Meeting Difficult Emotions
In this class we learn about how to accept our difficult emotions, and different approaches to being with them in a self-compassionate way. We also use all the skills we have gained so far to look at how we relate to shame in our lives, an emotion everyone experiences from time to time.
Week 8: Exploring Challenging Relationships
We explore the pain of disconnection and skills for coping with anger and unmet needs in our relationships. We contemplate forgiveness, and when it is beneficial to explore, based on what is most kind to ourselves. We also discuss caregiving fatigue (also known as empathy fatigue), and we learn practices to help when that comes up.
Week 9: Embracing Your Life
This class is all about cultivating happiness and gratitude in our lives. We find gratitude for small things, and appreciate our own good qualities. We learn tips for maintaining our self-compassion practice after the course ends, and we express appreciation for our own willingness to learn these new skills.
Start your journey
Sign up for the Fall 2025 9-week course! Starts Friday, Sept 12, 9am-12pm EST
Benefits
There has been a lot of research into Mindful Self Compassion (over 7,000 published research studies), and the benefits of this practice are many.
Research shows that people who are self-compassionate:
Feel more happy and satisfied with their lives
Have a more stable sense of self-worth
Show more grit, resilience and determination to work through hardship and meet their goals
Expect themselves to be imperfect, but are able to achieve hard things
Maintain a more healthy work-life balance and experience less burnout
Are more forgiving and compassionate of others
Find it easier to take care of their physical health
Get better sleep, eat more nutritious food
Have improved immune function
Feel more effective at their jobs
Experience more intimacy in their relationships
Find it easier to be conscientious and take personal responsibility
Your teachers:
Atabey Sánchez-Haiman,
B.A. (Biology/Neuroscience), MBSR, MSC-TT, MBCT-DM
Atabey Sanchez-Haiman (she/her) is a scientist, artist, and mindfulness practitioner who feels these three disciplines are closely interconnected due to their shared nature of exploration and curiosity, and the value brought to all three by being attuned to the present moment.
Atabey has a degree in Biology from Brown University and is certified to teach MBSR, MSC, Introducing Mindfulness, Deeper Mindfulness, and Habit Change.
She facilitates biweekly mindfulness sessions and deep listening sessions for Frazzled, a UK non-profit that provides free support groups for individuals facing mental health challenges or feeling overwhelmed by the stresses of modern life.
She develops and teaches workshops on the intersection of art and mindfulness, to bring more creativity, fun and art exploration to mindfulness spaces. She enjoys exploring and bringing awareness to the artist found within all of us.
Atabey designs and teaches workshops to art administrators, mindfulness teachers and small business owners on Optics and Ethics, highlighting the crucial aspect of ethics which is integral to the mindfulness path. Bringing awareness to the way culture favors greed and how business owners, influencers, philanthropists and mindfulness practitioners can navigate the greedy waters of capitalism without getting taken away by the currents and instead, remaining steady and anchored on an ethical path of mindfulness instead.
She has collaborated with mindfulness researchers on conveying what mindfulness is visually and her website www.explorethismoment.com, is an invitation to view mindfulness through visual art and exploring whether the felt sense of mindful awareness can be accessed in this way.
Your teachers:
Beth Tacular,
M.A., MSC-TT, LMBT, MLD-C
Beth Tacular (they/them or she/her) is an artist, bodyworker, parent, and self-compassion teacher with a decades-long meditation, yoga and movement practice. They love helping people feel better in their bodies and minds, and they love sharing body-based practices for coming into deeper, loving presence with oneself, one’s life and those around us.
Beth first delved into self-compassion while preparing for a solo art exhibition, in order to heal her inner critic, which was getting in the way of creating art joyfully. In the process of learning these skills, she realized how the effects of mindful self-compassion rippled out into how she approached parenting and caring for other people as a massage therapist, as well as coping with the stresses of living in this current time in the world.
Beth loves making detailed drawings on paper, tooling around in the garden, dancing whenever possible, practicing yoga and going on long walks in the neighborhood or by the Eno river, doing social justice organizing, and spending time with their son, partner Hilary, and other loved ones in their hometown of Durham, North Carolina.
FAQs
When is the class?
Classes start early to mid-September.
We will offer one class Fridays, 9am-12pm EST.
The classes will run for nine weeks. It is important that you attend each class.
If this time doesn’t work for you, sign our email list, at the top of the page, to find out about future classes!
Where is it?
The class will be taught online on zoom, with a lot of interactive meditations, exercises and discussions.
How long is the class?
Similar to a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, the class will happen at the same time each week for 9 weeks, with one additional retreat day. Each of the classes will last about 2.5 to 3 hours. Most classes will be 2.5 hours, but the first class, and the retreat, will be 3 hours.
How much does it cost?
The course will cost $499 in total. There will be limited partial scholarship spots available for BIPOC or people with limited financial resources.
To see whether you qualify for a scholarship, please visit our sliding scale page, and then fill out the application form at the bottom of the page. (Please note that scholarships are reserved for BIPOC folks, or for people with financial need – separate from being financially over-extended or over-committed).
We will respond to you within a business day and let you know the rate you qualify for.
Who should take the class?
Anyone who could benefit from more self compassion in their life. Artists struggling with self criticism, workers or caretakers experiencing burnout, people dealing with body image issues, are some examples of who might really get a lot out of this course.
This course is suitable for everyone, including the general public, mental health and healthcare professionals, meditation and mindfulness instructors, yoga teachers, wellness coaches, and educators at all levels.
It helps if you have some resourcing around you, like a friend or a therapist, and some self-care practices, because the course can sometimes bring up some challenging emotions. For that reason, it is probably not a great idea to take the class during a time when you are completely emotionally overwhelmed in your life.
Feel free to send this link to anyone you think might be interested!
Where did you get your teacher training?
Atabey and Beth completed a two year training with the Center for Mindful Self Compassion, started by Kristin Neff and Chris Germer.
Reserve your spot!
Learn skills for treating yourself with more compassion in your daily life.
Join the Fall 2025 cohort:
Starts Sept. 12, 2025, and runs for nine consecutive Fridays: 9/12, 9/19, 9/26, 10/3, 10/10, 10/17, 10/24, 10/31, 11/7.
Find out about future classes
If you can’t make the class this fall, but you would like to hear about future classes and other Mindful Self-Compassion offerings, please sign up for the email list!