The CIT course is on hold because of revision. Check this box periodically for more information. Availability of the course will also be announced in our Event Calendar.
This offering is no longer available. Thank you for your interest.
Special Compassionate Integrity Training (CIT) Course for Teams
The Charter for Compassion and Life University are taking the Compassionate Integrity Training (CIT) course and making it available to teams. We’ve changed the structure of the course to a combination of self-directed learning, four on-line sessions, accountability partner structure and an assigned mentor to help through understanding some of the concepts found in the training. If transformation is going to occur within a community initiative, within a school, hospital or religious or any organization it is going to happen because as Margaret Mead has instructed us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
CIT is a resiliency-informed program that cultivates human values as skills, so we can thrive as individuals, and a society, within a healthy environment. By learning skills to calm our bodies and mind, becoming more emotionally aware, learning to practice compassion for ourselves and others, as well as engaging with compassion in complex systems, we can build towards compassionate integrity: the ability to live one’s life in accordance with one’s values with a recognition of common humanity, our basic orientation to kindness and reciprocity.
Starting date is October 11, other meeting dates will be November 1, 29 and December 13. Each meeting will take place at 7am PT. Please note that time changes on November 7. Each meeting will be 90 minutes and the last session will include graduation.
Team of 2 = $243 (cost per person $123)
Team of 3 = $312 (cost per person $106)
Team of 4 = $362 (cost per person $90)
Team of 5 = $397 (cost per person $79)
Team of 6-9 = $456 (cost per person $64)
Team of 10 or more = $500 (cost per person $50)
Course Outline
CIT utilizes a “three-in-three” educational model that integrates three domains of knowledge and three levels of understanding. The three domains begin with a focus on the self (Self-cultivation), then move to others (Relating to Others), and finally to a systems-perspective, meaning the larger networks in which we exist. Additionally, each module in CIT is intended to allow participants to progress through three levels of understanding: received knowledge, critical insight, and embodied understanding. In CIT, it is important that knowledge not remain at an intellectual level; to be effective, it must lead to realizations and lasting changes in behavior. Knowledge becomes transformative when it moves from head to heart to hand. Therefore, each session has both content and practice learning objectives.
Weekly Topics
Series I – Self Cultivation
Skill 1: Calming Body and Mind
Content:
Participants will learn:
- about the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the difference between its fight or flight response and its rest and digest response.
- about the three zones their body can be in (high, low and resilient) related to the nervous system.
Practice:
Participants will learn how to return to the resilient zone when they move outside of it and how to expand their resilient zone through practice.
Skill 2: Ethical Mindfulness
Content:
Participants will learn:
- the importance of attentional stability
- to become heedful of their capacity to do harm to self and others through their speech and actions
- to be mindful of the reasons why harmful speech and action cause harm to themselves and others
Practice:
Participants will increase awareness of the present moment in order to become more cognizant of their speech and actions in order to reduce their propensity to do harm to self and other.
Skill 3: Emotional Awareness
Content:
Participants will:
- investigate whether the nature of thoughts and feelings is permanent or transitory
- learn to differentiate between what they consider potentially harmful mental states and potentially beneficial mental states for themselves
Practice:
Participants will cultivate balance toward their mental states and create more space between thoughts and speech/action
Skill 4: Self-Compassion
Content:
Participants will:
- explore the underlying motivation beneath all of our thoughts and actions
- explore how suffering and happiness do not depend solely on external situations
- learn how seeking external sources of happiness, rather than internal ones, often fails to bring lasting satisfaction
- explore how unrealistic expectations can lead to suffering and excessive self-criticism
Practice:
Participants will explore how harmful mental states can be changed and gradually transform their harmful mental states.
Series II – Relating to Others
Skill 5: Impartiality and Common Humanity
Content:
Participants will:
- explore explicit and implicit bias and methods for weakening them
- explore what we all have in common as human beings
Practice:
Participants will learn to reduce partiality and bias and increase a sense of common humanity.
Skill 6: Forgiveness and Gratitude
Content:
Participants will:
- learn the benefits of and strategies for cultivating forgiveness
- learn to distinguish forgiveness from condoning, excusing, forgetting or reconciling
- learn the benefits of gratitude by exploring interdependence
- learn that it is possible to be grateful for the harm that someone does not cause them
Practice:
Participants will get better at noticing the ways others benefit them and recalling past benefit, cultivate the ability to recognize the benefits others provide for them, develop a greater appreciation for forgiveness, and gain a better ability to see the positive in people, objects, and experiences that were previously taken for granted
Skill 7: Empathic Concern
Content:
Participants will learn:
- empathy operates on two levels: feeling and thinking
- the difference between empathic distress and empathic concern
- the definition, and recognition, of sympathetic joy
- the benefits of having consideration for others
Practice:
Participants will increase their ability to experience emotional resonance with others’ joy and suffering, strengthen perspective-taking, and cultivate affection for others.
Skill 8: Compassion
Content:
Participants will learn:
- compassion is not weakness
- the three necessary components of compassion
- suffering and needs occur on multiple levels, not just obvious ones
Practice:
Participants will increase their ability to extend compassion and increase their awareness in the universality of needs and suffering
Series III – Engaging in Systems
Skill 9: Appreciating Interdependence
Content:
Participants will learn:
- about the radical interdependence of the world
- the importance of context in systems thinking
- the way identity is constructed fluidly by chance
- to recognize structural inequality, structural violence, and cultural violence
- interdependence requires us to see solutions as sustainable and support collective success
- to approach problems through the lens of critical inquiry
Practice:
Participants will practice evaluating ethical dilemmas through the larger context of interdependence and analyze how objects, situations, and actions come to be
Skill 10: Engaging with Discernment
Content:
Participants will learn:
- compassion must be complemented with insight and understanding for decisions to lead to the most positive outcomes
- to use common sense, personal experience, and scientific evidence as a foundation for discernment
- to check their personal motivation when facing a dilemma
- how much we gain by listening to others to gain a bigger picture and new ideas
Practice:
Participants will practice examining an issue from multiple perspectives, considering the viewpoints, debating the pros and cons, and accessing the creative and imaginative problem-solving capabilities for engaged action within their community
The course includes:
- Online interaction with facilitators and colleagues for two hours each week throughout the course.
- A toolbox of skills focusing on self-cultivation, relating to others, and engaging with systems.
- Access to course content, activities, and writing exercises, as well as access to a variety of contemplative practices.
