Basic Training 2024 - 2026
Curriculum 2 year certification
About The Basic Training
Highlights
Karuna Training uses time-tested skillful means to unlock our innate health.
Karuna Training teaches us how to work skillfully with ourselves and others. The program combines deep study of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist principles with contemplative practices— skills development, embodiment training, ongoing group interaction and community support.
Karuna Basic Training is the beginning of the journey of discovering one's own brilliant sanity. Then, through the innate potency of the heart, we learn how to offer and exchange ourselves for others, transforming everyday life challenges into opportunities for openness and wisdom
The Karuna Basic Training is a 20-month comprehensive training in Contemplative Psychology. The training consists of in-person retreats, weekend seminars held online, and ongoing small group meetings held online. See a more detailed description below.
CEUs: Karuna Training (license #137058) is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for mental health professionals.
124 CEUs are available in the 2022 Basic Training
Karuna Basic Training is the beginning of the journey of discovering one's own brilliant sanity. Then, through the innate potency of the heart, we learn how to offer and exchange ourselves for others, transforming everyday life challenges into opportunities for openness and wisdom
The Karuna Basic Training is a 20-month comprehensive training in Contemplative Psychology. The training consists of in-person retreats, weekend seminars held online, and ongoing small group meetings held online. See a more detailed description below.
CEUs: Karuna Training (license #137058) is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for mental health professionals.
124 CEUs are available in the 2022 Basic Training
Elements of Karuna Basic Training
Mindfulness Awareness
In Karuna Training we become familiar with our own mind, and discover that mindfulness and compassion are natural and healthy components of the human mind and heart. Through training in meditation and contemplation, we learn to recognize and nurture these innate qualities. This is the basis for working with others in a wakeful and compassionate manner. It is also the basis for the healing and transformative processes that are part of the contemplative psychology journey.
Embodiment Training
Learning to anchor one's awareness first in the body is key to working with emotional energy. Embodiment training is learning to drop out of the head and into the body—this cultivates embodied mindfulness. Karuna Training concretely increases body awareness.
Community Process
Karuna Training takes place in community. In fact, the journey of our own personal transformation is dependent upon our cohort and the personal transformation of all its members. We call this Mutual Recovery—meaning the path works on us through our interactions in our relationships with others.
Therefore, no new members will join the program after the second meeting of the Basic Training. Through fostering this type of trust and intimacy, we begin to realize there is no relationship in our lives that's not worthy of love, respect, and openness. And, we see that the quality of our relationships are a mirror of our own minds, and how these relationships support us to discover the diamonds within us.
Therefore, no new members will join the program after the second meeting of the Basic Training. Through fostering this type of trust and intimacy, we begin to realize there is no relationship in our lives that's not worthy of love, respect, and openness. And, we see that the quality of our relationships are a mirror of our own minds, and how these relationships support us to discover the diamonds within us.
Compassionate exchange
Compassionate exchange is a mindful encounter that allows for mutual healing. Exchange is the natural and choiceless present-moment capacity to feel another person's feelings. Working with exchange is enhanced through both contemplative training and navigating the treacherous terrain of difficult emotions. Along the way, through befriending ourselves, we become skillful in offering ourselves to others—utilizing the aspiration to grow our bodhicitta, our awakened heart.
Compassionate Exchange is the act of opening fully and completely to another as a vehicle of basic sanity and compassion. It can occur in a micro-moment or be incorporated into skilled sessions of deep listening and reflection.
Compassionate Exchange is the act of opening fully and completely to another as a vehicle of basic sanity and compassion. It can occur in a micro-moment or be incorporated into skilled sessions of deep listening and reflection.
The Five Buddha Families
In Karuna Training we use a Buddhist tool called the Mandala of the Five Buddha Families. Mandala is a Sanskrit word that means circle, and is a way of viewing elements in the world as interdependent and in continual relationship to each other. The Five Buddha Families are a remarkable tool for understanding and working with our own emotional energies and that of the people we interact with. Each of the five families relates to a color and to an element (earth, water, fire, air, and space). And, like the facets of a precious crystal, together they compose a whole.
Maitri Space Awareness
Maitri Space Awareness is a practice that utilizes this mandala and deeply engages these energies as a transformational tool. It aids in coloring our understanding of our own intrinsic health by refining our relationship to the space around and within us. Maitri Space Awareness practice places with our perception of space, opens us to the Buddhist concept of nonduality, and brings us into the present moment.
Deep Practices
Karuna Training offers an abundance of tools for working with our hearts and minds. Our Body-Speech-Mind Groups are mindfulness-based practices which help us go deeper into our understanding of our personal relationships. And, our Process Groups help us to expand our capacity for mindful speech and deep listening. Our Four-Step Practice is a process for investigating, befriending, and transforming difficult emotions.
Karuna Training Phase 1
Personal Process
332 Total Training Hours For All Phases
Seminar 1:
Confidence in Intrinsic Health and Defining Ego in Contemplative Psychology
Participants are introduced to the view of Intrinsic Health and the mind-map of ego in Contemplative Psychology
Participants are introduced to the view of Intrinsic Health and the mind-map of ego in Contemplative Psychology
Seminar 2:
Befriending the Energy of Emotions
The Mandala of emotions is introduced as the Six Realms of psychological fixation.
The Mandala of emotions is introduced as the Six Realms of psychological fixation.
Seminar 3:
Four Foundations of Space Awareness
Four foundations of taming the mind and developing a fearless relationship to space unfolds.
Four foundations of taming the mind and developing a fearless relationship to space unfolds.
Seminar 4:
Maitri Space Awareness: Meeting with Elemental Magic
The first in-person retreat working with the Mandala of the Five Buddha Families and exploration of the outer manifestation, which is the five elements and the practice of ‘space awareness’.
The first in-person retreat working with the Mandala of the Five Buddha Families and exploration of the outer manifestation, which is the five elements and the practice of ‘space awareness’.
Phase 1 includes 12 hours of regional continuity groups
129 hours total training
See available basic training cycles129 hours total training
Karuna Training Phase 2
Compassionate Exchange
Seminar 5:
Compassionate Presence I
The birth of bodhicitta and foundation of compassionate exchange
The birth of bodhicitta and foundation of compassionate exchange
Seminar 6:
Compassionate Presence II
The four phases of working contemplatively with others in compassionate exchange
The four phases of working contemplatively with others in compassionate exchange
Seminar 7:
Shining the Jewel
The well-honed skill of offering honest, kind, and helpful feedback which serves to bring out the brilliant sanity of others
The well-honed skill of offering honest, kind, and helpful feedback which serves to bring out the brilliant sanity of others
Seminar 8:
Exploration of Emotional Energy in the Mandala of Now
The second in-person retreat that works with the Mandala of the Five Buddha Families from the perspective of emotional energies, and transmuting confusion into wisdom
The second in-person retreat that works with the Mandala of the Five Buddha Families from the perspective of emotional energies, and transmuting confusion into wisdom
Phase 2 includes 16 hours of regional continuity groups
126 hours total training
See available basic training cycles126 hours total training
Karuna Training Phase 3
Compassionate Exchange
Seminar 9:
A 25-hour project of Compassionate Exchanger
Participants engage in five hours of working with someone they recruit in successive sessions of compassionate exchange.
Participants engage in five hours of working with someone they recruit in successive sessions of compassionate exchange.
Seminar 10:
Mentoring Day
Support for the projects in whatever way is needed by mentors
Support for the projects in whatever way is needed by mentors
Seminar 11:
Exploration of Emotional Energy in the Mandala of Now
Participants present their projects to one another in creative forms and describe the impact of Karuna Training on their lives.
Participants present their projects to one another in creative forms and describe the impact of Karuna Training on their lives.
Phase 3 includes 16 hours of regional continuity groups
91 hours total training
See available basic training cycles91 hours total training
I feel like Karuna has really has opened the door for me to different ways of experiencing the world. And it’s constantly refining my sense perceptions. And there’s a mystery of life that Karuna touches into and allows me to be closer to myself and to other people and the phenomenal world
Margot Geist - Student