The Master Series brings together experts, originators, innovators, and groundbreakers who change the dialogue around their areas of expertise.
Each program focuses on one Big Idea to unearth the nuances of theoretical frameworks, explore concepts, and reframe our thinking about the world we all live in and the experiences we have in it.
The Master Series welcomes Dan Siegel, Kristin Neff, and Johann Hari in this purposeful examination of authentic connection as an essential component of wellbeing. Join us to learn more about the science and sense of deep connection to others, how connection to the self can unshackle self compassion, and how fostering a connected culture creates an environment for healthy individual growth.
Receive instant, lifetime access to the full 3-day event recordings. Includes video recordings for the main presentations and warmups, plus audio recordings for the main presentations. Presenters slides and transcripts are also included.
Please email us at: [email protected]
For more information on how to access the event, please click here
Connection is a core component of our wellbeing. From birth to the very last moments of our lives, we reach out seeking meaningful contact, thriving when that need is sufficiently met – and withering where it is not. Early attachment influences our ability to feel worthy and loved, with long-lasting impacts on our capacity to form healthy interpersonal relationships and recover from hardship in adolescence and adulthood.
Connection is an integral part of our relationships with ourselves, our families and friends, and our communities at large and research shows that we are hardwired for reciprocal, deep bonds that nurture trust and recognize and honor our inherent value. While disruptions to connection have lasting impacts, restoration is possible.
The Master Series welcomes Dan Siegel, Kristin Neff, and Johann Hari in this purposeful examination of authentic connection as an essential component of wellbeing. Join us to learn more about the science and sense of deep connection to others, how connection to the self can unshackle self compassion, and how fostering a connected culture creates an environment for healthy individual growth.
Kristin Neff received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
During Kristin’s last year of graduate school she became interested in Buddhism and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. Kristin is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct almost 20 years ago.
In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, and in June 2021 released her new book Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive.
In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. They co-authored The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook as well as Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals. She is also co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion.
Dr. Daniel J. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, executive director of the Mindsight Institute and a founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is involved in mindfulness and developed the field of Interpersonal Neurobiology, an interdisciplinary approach that uses over a dozen branches of science to create a framework for understanding our subjective and interpersonal lives.
He received his medical degree at Harvard Medical School, completed post-graduate medical education at the University of California, Los Angeles, training in pediatrics and child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry.
Johann Eduard Hari is a British-Swiss writer and journalist. Hari graduated from King’s College, Cambridge in 2001 with a double first in social and political sciences.
He has written for publications including The Independent and The Huffington Post, and has written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the British monarchy.
In January 2015, Hari published Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. He proposes the idea that most addictions are functional responses to experiences and a lack of healthy supportive relationships, rather than a simple biological need for a particular substance.
In January 2018, Hari’s book Lost Connections, which deals with depression and anxiety, was published, with Hari citing his childhood issues, career crisis, and experiences with antidepressants and psychotherapy as fuelling his curiosity in the subject.
Linda is a trauma therapist and educator who specializes in brain and body based modalities for addressing complex developmental trauma. She is highly sought after for her trainings in trauma-informed care, compassion fatigue resilience, and vicarious trauma recovery skills for human services professionals. As an adjunct faculty member in the Social Work Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Linda’s decolonized approach to education and engaging teaching style makes her well-loved with students. She assists internationally renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, with his private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma. She has a Master of Social Work with an emphasis on the neurobiology of attachment and trauma.
Linda has studied Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, Havening Touch, Flash Technique, and structural dissociation of the personality, and offers the Safe and Sound Protocol, yoga, and meditation within her practice. Linda works on the traditional lands of the Tanana Athabascan people (Fairbanks, Alaska) with those recovering from addiction, trauma, and mental illness. She is passionate about breaking the cycle of historical and intergenerational trauma at the individual and community levels.
Through self compassion, we can restore a sense of deep connection and worthiness. Self-compassion involves treating ourselves kindly, like we would a good friend we cared about. Rather than continually judging and evaluating ourselves, self-compassion involves generating kindness toward ourselves as imperfect humans, and learning to be present with the inevitable struggles of life with greater ease. It motivates us to make needed changes in our lives not because we’re worthless or inadequate, but because we care about ourselves and want to lessen our suffering.
This workshop will provide the foundational knowledge needed to begin responding in a kind, compassionate way whenever we are experiencing painful emotions. We all want to avoid pain, but letting it in—and responding compassionately to our own imperfections without harsh self-condemnation—are essential steps toward living happier, more fulfilling lives. Through discussion and experiential exercises, you will learn about self-compassion and also gain practical skills to bring it into your daily life. The workshop will help you stop being so hard on yourself and handle difficult emotions with greater ease. It is suitable for the general population as well as mental health professionals
In this presentation, participants will:
1. Identify the three key components of self-compassion
2. Describe key research that supports the benefits of self-compassion
3. Practice techniques to work with difficult emotions without being overwhelmed
4. Motivate yourself with kindness rather than criticism
“If you are continually judging and criticizing yourself while trying to be kind to others, you are drawing artificial boundaries and distinctions that only lead to feelings of separation and isolation.”
“Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows.”
In this presentation, we’ll examine the notion of “connection” and its correlation with mental health. When we feel disconnected from our inner life, we suffer; when we are disconnected relationally—from people and nature—we can become anxious, depressed, despondent. What is this powerful “connection” actually made of, what is it, and how can we take the science of connection and inform the practice of psychotherapy? In many ways, the experience of a separate, solo-self may underly the many challenges we face, from racism and social injustice to environmental destruction.
The field of mental health can play a pivotal role in how we help our human family move toward a new way of living on Earth by addressing the modern cultural excessive focus on individuality in the separate sense of self. These questions and their personal, professional, and public implications will focus our discussion on the nature of both interconnection—the links between parts of a system—and intraconnection—the wholeness of the system.
In this presentation, participants will:
When someone attempts to recover from a traumatic event or addiction or deal with anxiety or depression, we hear, or maybe even say ourselves, the oft repeated affirmation, “just be you” when in fact we should be saying don’t be just you – be us. These things cannot be resolved by an ever deeper internal well where we isolate and build walls as if we can solve them with pure introspection and contemplation. We must restore our relationship with something larger than ourselves to heal. In that endeavor, there is no substitute for deep, meaningful connection. Unfortunately, modern cultural and technological forces have made those kinds of connections more difficult to create, resulting in approximations of nuanced, textured interpersonal in-person relationships where authentic connection can be found.
A healthy community absolutely depends upon our ability to foster and nurture those kinds of connections, but barriers to those connections are more prevalent now in modern society than at any other time in history. Many of us labor under the perception of ourselves as living in the most connected time in history thanks to the proliferation of social media. However, the evidence of this profound, modern absence of intimacy abounds – disconnection is a major driver of addiction, depression, and loneliness. These actively multiplying conditions are features of many modern cultures that we have attempted to explain away, treating them as a personal failing rather than a symptom of a culture that has normalized derealization and disconnection. We will examine connection as critical to healthy individuals and communities and consider the things inhibiting our capacity to forge deep bonds.
In this presentation, participants will:
“What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief—for our own lives not being as they should? What if it is a form of grief for the connections we have lost, yet still need?”
The Master Series welcomes Dan Siegel, Kristin Neff, and Johann Hari in this purposeful examination of authentic connection as an essential component of wellbeing. Join us to learn more about the science and sense of deep connection to others, how connection to the self can unshackle self compassion, and how fostering a connected culture creates an environment for healthy individual growth.
Receive instant, lifetime access to the full 3-day event recordings. Includes video recordings for the main presentations and warmups, plus audio recordings for the main presentations. Presenters slides and transcripts are also included.
Please email us at: [email protected]
For more information on how to access the event, please click here
ADA Statement
If participants have special needs, reasonable accommodations will be made for persons who request them, consistent with ADA requirements.
Code of Ethics Statement
It is the responsibility of every attendee to abide by the standards set forth in the Code of Ethics for maintaining security and confidentiality of test materials and proprietary information presented as part of this continuing education program. Any materials used as part of this program may not be copied or otherwise distributed, and no proprietary information will be disclosed by attendees to any person not registered for this program.
Conflict of Interest Statement
There is no commercial support for this program nor are there any relationships between the CE Sponsor, presenting organization, presenter, program content, research, grants, or other funding that could reasonably be construed as conflicts of interest.
Utility/Validity Statement
The content of this presentation, when applied according to psychological practice guidelines, within the expertise of the expertise of the practitioner do not pose any risks.
