The Mindfulness and Compassion Interpersonal Communication Training (MCCT) will take place in person over 8 weeks with one appointment per week, each from 17:30-20:00.
We spend most of our lives in social relationships, so it is not surprising that both pain and relational joy are among the greatest sources of personal suffering and well-being.
The Mindfulness and Compassion Interpersonal Communication Training (MCCT) program is an innovative 8-week pilot program that teaches skillful ways to effectively bring the principles of mindfulness and compassion into the realm of communication and social relationships. Simply said, it aims to cultivate interpersonal presence, connection, and caring. It was recently created by Dr. Simon Guendelman in Germany.
Recent research has suggested a link between mindfulness and compassion and communication skills. Studies have shown that subjects with higher dispositional mindfulness and self-compassion have better communication skills, such as decreased communicative apprehension, increased active listening, verbal coding and growth beliefs.
Participation requires good to very good English language skills, since the workshop is in English.
Psychological psychotherapists as well as people who work in the healing or social field, anyone aiming to learn how to bring mindfulness and compassion tools to the communication domain
Mindfulness and Compassion Communication Training (MCCT) is an 8-week training program designed to cultivate the skills of interpersonal presence, connection, and caring*. The program aims to help participants manage relational pain (i.e., personal discomfort arising from social situations) and respond appropriately to others without neglecting one's own needs (self-compassion). The program places special emphasis on understanding individual contributions to dysfunctional social interactions, while learning to cultivate the basic skills of presence (interpersonal mindfulness), connection (empathy and common humanity) and caring (compassion and emotion regulation).
The class meets weekly for 2.5 hours, with an estimated daily practice during the program of about 30 minutes.
Research has shown that mindfulness and (self-)compassion are strongly associated with emotional well-being, reduced anxiety, depression and stress, maintenance of healthy habits such as diet and exercise, and satisfaction in personal relationships. By cultivating skills of presence, connection and caring, we evoke good intentions towards ourselves and others, increase our capacity to relate to our own and others' suffering with compassionate action, the MCCT program seeks to go a step further, we gently shift our attention inward (bringing mindfulness to our relational patterns) and yet outward, bringing skillful means and communication skills to difficult and challenging relationships, cultivating resilience and relational well-being.
* The MCCT program is inspired by the most recent advances in social and contemplative psychology and neuroscience, and by developments in Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC - K. Neff & C. Germer) and Mindful Communication (Green Zone Mindful Communication - S. Gillis-Chapman). The MCCT program is supported by these authors.