As important as our relationships are, they are not always easy!
Compassion for Couples is a first-of-its-kind program designed to help us meet ourselves and our partner with greater awareness and compassion. Utilizing the skills of mindfulness and compassion, this program teaches couples how to build a strong and healthy foundation for your relationship, and provides couples the skills to help navigate the difficulties that arise within us and between us.
You will discover how to:
- Be more present with each other
- Identify shared values
- Build a base of warmth, security and connection
- Communicate with kindness and compassion
- Comfort yourself and your partner
- Skillfully relate to your partner in times of difficulty
Even if you or your partner have practiced mindfulness or compassion, it’s often challenging to practice them in the context of your relationship.
Compassion for Couples: Building the Skills of Loving Connection, a 6-week online journey led by licensed marriage and family therapist and international compassion teacher, Michelle Becker, will help you do just that. It begins Monday, January 18th.
When We Mindfully and Compassionately Incline Toward Whatever Is Arising Within Us, We Can Be Truly Present and Alive For Ourselves and Others
– Chris Germer, PhD
When you decide to join Michelle Becker, M.A., LMFT, for Compassion for Couples, you and your partner will enroll individually but participate together in live online instruction, self-paced modules and at-home practices.
You’ll come away from the workshop with a stronger base of warmth and connection and a greater understanding of yourselves, each other, your shared values and your relational patterns.
Here’s What Graduates of Compassion for Couples Say About How It Changed the Way They Relate to Each Other
“I loved the warm and safe environment created in this workshop and left feeling so much closer to my partner and inspired to work out our future together in a more harmonious and caring way.”
“This workshop is a must for any couple. It brought me and my partner much closer together and helped us discuss and process issues that we have been struggling with. Thank you for an unforgettable experience.”
“This workshop allows you to gradually go from difficulties to compassion, discomfort to connection! Excellent material, highly relevant for those who want to create deeper ties!”
“Our relationship feels more friendly, stable and mutually supportive. There is a real sense of connection. A quality of just like me. For instance, I can step back and realize my partner’s had a long day, and maybe he’s not at his best right now. Just like me, he wants to be seen for all the hard work he’s doing. There’s just more grace between us.”
Compassion for Couples will be offered beginning
Monday, January 18th, 2020
5 to 7:30 p.m. PST / 7 to 9:30 p.m. CT / 8 to 10:30 p.m. ET
*Each partner enrolls individually.
Partners must participate together.
Compassion for Couples
A Week-by-Week Workshop Overview
Here’s a closer look at everything you’ll cover in just 6 weeks:
Welcome Session
- Course overview
- A message from Michelle
- Preparing for the first LIVE session
- Introducing yourself
Week 1: Discovering Compassion for Couples
- Relational Patterns
- Threat, Drive and Care Systems
- Loving-Kindness and Self-Compassion
- Practice: Soothing Touch
- Practice: Soothing Your Partner
- Check Your Knowledge and Wrap-up Discussion
Week 2: Relational Awareness
- Fears of Compassion
- Practice: Mindfulness in Daily Life
- Practice: Sense and Savor Walk
- Practice: Partner Walk
- Practice: STOP
- Meditation: Affectionate Breathing for Couples
- Meditation: Giving and Receiving for Couples
- Check Your Knowledge and Wrap-up Discussion
Week 3: Practicing Loving-Kindness
- Core Relational Values
- Practice: Loving-Kindness Stones
- Practice: Compassion in Daily Life
- Practice: Self-compassion in Daily Life
- Meditation: Loving-Kindness
- Meditation: Loving-Kindness for Couples
- Check Knowledge and Wrap-up Discussion
Week 4: Compassionate Communication for Couples (Part 1)
- The Importance of Repair
- Misgivings of Forgiveness
- Meditation: Loving-kindness for Couples
- Check Your Knowledge and Wrap-up Discussion
Week 5: Compassionate Communication for Couples (Part 2)
- Cultivating Happiness
- Savoring, Gratitude and Appreciation
- Check Your Knowledge and Wrap-up Discussion
Week 6: Thank You
- Resources
- Wrap-up Discussion
Course Materials and Resources
When you register, we’ll send you everything you need to take full advantage
of the course, including access to:
- 6 LIVE 2.5-hour online teaching sessions with Michelle Becker where you and your cohort will receive expert guidance.
- 6 self-paced, interactive online modules, including a mix of learning activities and conceptual topics.
- Guided, downloadable meditations for developing a stronger relationship with your partner.
- Step-by-step at-home practices to cultivate mindfulness and compassion for yourself and others.
Here’s What Leading Mindfulness and Compassion Teachers Say About Michelle Becker and the Compassion for Couples Workshop
“In my view, most of the suffering people have – at least in industrialized countries – is relational. This is the first program of its kind that focuses entirely on relationships and specifically intimate relationships. For many people this is the most complicated and difficult arena of relationships. It’s easy to be in a relationship with someone at a little bit of a distance. The closer you get, the more murky and complicated it becomes. The more important it becomes to be compassionate.”
Chris Germer, PhD
Co-founder of the Mindful Self-Compassion program, clinical psychologist and lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, author of The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program and The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion
“Michelle is a master teacher whose sensitivity and depth of knowledge ensures a great learning experience for anyone who trains with her. She has the gift of helping others to see more clearly.”
Lorraine M. Hobbs, M.A.
Founder/Director, Family & Educational Programs
University of California San Diego Center for Mindfulness
Certified Teacher | Trainer | MBSR Mentor
Co-author of Making Friends with Yourself: A Mindful Self-Compassion Program for Teens & Young Adults
“As I reflect on Michelle Becker’s Compassion for Couples program, I keep coming back to a simple phrase to describe it: ‘powerfully elegant.’ This unique program beautifully distills the essence of compassion and offers it in a format that people can effectively integrate into their daily lives in a very practical way to deepen and enhance their relationships in a profound way. The program is an expression of the developer: warm, encouraging, wise and deeply respectful of the possibilities in each of us to make our relationships amazing.”
Steven Hickman, Psy.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Associate Clinical Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Family Medicine & Public Health, Founding Director of the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness, MBSR and MSC teacher and teacher trainer
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, each partner should enroll individually, but you will participate in the workshop together.
The only prerequisite is that you and your partner are in a committed relationship. This workshop is not ideally suited for people who are dating or where one partner is planning to separate. While some background knowledge in mindfulness and compassion is helpful, it is not required.
Live meetings with Michelle Becker and your cohort occur once a week, for six weeks. Each meeting will be two and a half hours. Weekly meetings will occur on Mondays from 5 to 7:30 p.m. PST / 7 to 9:30 p.m. CT / 8 to 10:30 p.m. ET.
Each session builds on the previous one so that you feel relaxed and confident in each new skill before moving on to the next. Please make every effort to ensure that your schedule allows for you to attend every session so that you may experience the full benefit of the workshop.
You will have access to the interactive online modules for the duration of the 6-week program plus one month. You will have full access to download the meditations.
About Michelle Becker, M.A., LMFT
Michelle Becker is a licensed marriage and family therapist and compassion teacher who knows that human beings thrive in healthy, well connected relationships. Yet, that’s not always our experience. She also recognized that most of us are underdeveloped in skills that are fundamental to those relationships – compassion and wisdom. She founded Wise Compassion with the bold intention of changing the way we relate to each other.
Through workshops, keynotes, podcasts, live events and online education, Michelle shares the knowledge and tools required for people to relate to each other better.
A teacher of teachers, she is co-developer of the Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher Training, a mentor of MSC teachers and teacher trainers, a senior teacher of the Compassion Cultivation Training program and a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator.
She is passionate about connecting people with experts, current research and useful practices. Michelle is the developer of the Compassion for Couples™ program.
Michelle is also the founder and leader of the Well Connected online learning community — a group of individuals dedicated to developing their compassion skills and practicing (extra)ordinary acts that create resilient relationships. Members receive free access to Michelle’s Well Connected Relationships monthly podcast and Compassion-Builder emails full of actionable advice anyone can use to develop compassion skills and change the way you relate to yourself and others.
About Wise Compassion
At Wise Compassion, we offer compassion training to people who want to change the way they relate to others – and ultimately experience more resilience, trust, healthy connection and satisfaction in their relationships.
We focus on compassion because of its unique power to alleviate the human suffering – our own and others’ – that so often occurs inside our relationships. Building compassion skills is also something everyone can do, once you discover how.
We focus on wisdom because it helps us see clearly in our relationships and discern what would be truly compassionate, not just nice or compliant. Mindfulness offers us the foundation of wisdom. Just as a bird needs two wings to fly, we must cultivate compassion with wisdom for our relationships to truly thrive.
When you can tap into that wisdom and compassion with ease, it changes the way you relate to others. And your relationships get better! For more information, visit wisecompassion.com.
Copyright © 2024 · Michelle Becker, LMFT | 858.748.6037 | info@wisecompassion.com