MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE

FOR HUMAN COGNITIVE AND BRAIN SCIENCES LEIPZIG

How to Train Compassion

July 20th to July 24th, 2011 Berlin, Germany

Content

Schedule .........................................................................................................................6 Abstracts ......................................................................................................................11 Short Biographies ..................................................................................................20 Map overview with Locations.......................................................................32 Berlin Sights and Restaurant Suggestions...........................................35

Workshop Venue: Studio Olafur Eliasson Christinenstrae 18/19 Haus 2 10119 Berlin Germany http://www.olafureliasson.net

Contact during workshop: Matthias Bolz: Sandra Zurborg: +49 (0)163 8350683 +49 (0)1577 6056912

Host Institution: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Stephanstrae 1 a D-04103 Leipzig, Germany info@cbs.mpg.de www.cbs.mpg.de Editing: Matthias Bolz Layout: Multimedia & Graphics Berlin, July 2011

Schedule

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

7:30 pm 8:00 10:00 pm Departure Shuttle from the Hotel Welcome Reception and Introductory Remarks at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Jgerstrae 22/23

Schedule

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

7:30 8:30 am 8:30 9:00 am 9:00 9:30 am 9:30 10:00 am 10:00 11:00 am Breakfast at Studio Eliasson Introductory Remarks Tania Singer & Olafur Eliasson Morning Meditation with Matthieu Ricard Refreshment Break Cultivating Compassion from a Buddhist Perspective Matthieu Ricard, Barry Kerzin, & Diego Hangartner Curriculum for Physicians and Nurses in Compassion and Ethics Joan Halifax Refreshment Break Morning Discussion Chairs: J. Grant & B. Bernhardt Panel: M. Ricard, B. Kerzin, D. Hangartner, & J. Halifax Lunch Compassion-Focused Therapy Paul Gilbert Mindful Self-Compassion Training Kristin Neff & Christopher K. Germer Refreshment Break Afternoon Discussion Chairs: N. Steinbeis & J. Smallwood Panel: P. Gilbert, K. Neff, C. K. Germer, & J. Latzel Afternoon Meditation with Matthieu Ricard Personal Time Reception with Olafur Eliasson & Dinner

11:00 12:00 pm

12:00 12:15 pm 12:15 1:15 pm

1:15 2:30 pm 2:30 3:30 pm 3:30 4:30 pm 4:30 5:00 pm 5:00 6:00 pm

6:00 6:30 pm 6:30 8:00 pm 8:00 pm

Schedule

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

8:00 9:00 am 9:00 9:30 am 9:30 10:00 am 10:00 11:00 am 11:00 12:00 pm 12:00 12:15 pm 12:15 1:15 pm Breakfast at Studio Eliasson Morning Meditation with Diego Hangartner Refreshment Break The Cultivating Emotional Balance Project Margaret Kemeny Cognitive-Based Compassion Training Brooke Dodson-Lavelle & Brendan Ozawa-de Silva Refreshment Break Morning Discussion Chairs: V. Engert & N. Mendes Panel: M. Kemeny, B. Dodson-Lavelle, B. Ozawa-de Silva, & E. Simon-Thomas Lunch Compassion Cultivation Training Program Erika L. Rosenberg Short-Term Compassion Training & Challenges to Design a Control Condition Antoine Lutz Refreshment Break Compassion vs. Empathic Distress & Memory Training as an Active Control Tania Singer & Olga Klimecki Afternoon Discussion Chairs: H. Engen & T.Singer Panel: E. L. Rosenberg, A. Lutz, C. Saron, O. Klimecki Afternoon Meditation with Barry Kerzin Personal Time

1:15 2:30 pm 2:30 3:30 pm 3:30 4:30 pm

4:30 4:45 pm 4:45 5:15 pm

5:15 6:15 pm

6:15 6:45 pm afterwards

Schedule

Saturday, July 23rd, 2011

8:00 9:00 am 9:00 9:30 am 9:30 10:00 am 10:00 11:00 am Breakfast at Studio Eliasson Morning Meditation with Joan Halifax Refreshment Break Mindfulness-Based Intervention as Integral to a Program of Compassion Training Ulrike Kesper-Grossman & Paul Grossman How to Train Compassion with the Modell of Non-Violent Communication Regula Langemann & Suna Yamaner Refreshment Break Morning Discussion Chairs: C. McCall & O. Klimecki Panel: U. Kesper-Grossman, P. Grossman, R. Langemann, & S. Yamaner Lunch Integration, Final Discussion, & Future Directions Moderated by Tania Singer Refreshment Break Afternoon Meditation with Joan Halifax Personal Time

11:00 12:00 pm

12:00 12:15 pm 12:15 1:15 pm

1:15 2:30 pm 2:30 4:00 pm 4:00 4:15 pm 4:15 4:45 pm 4:45 8:00 pm

Sunday, July 24th, 2011

Departure Day
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Olafur Eliasson, Colour spectrum kaleidoscope, 2003 2003 Olafur Eliasson

Abstracts

July 21st, 2011, 10:00 11:00 am

Cultivating Compassion from a Buddhist Perspective

Matthieu Ricard, Barry Kerzin, & Diego Hangartner Mind & Life Institute, Boulder, CO, USA Buddhist philosophy has been advocating that compassion is critical for human flourishing and that it can be trained through particular practices. We will explore different methodologies and their underlying philosophical foundations on the basis of which compassion can be developed. These methods vary depending on personal inclinations, and in consequence can, and have, to be generated differently. All of these methods, however, lead to generating compassion, which again is understood to be the source for relieving suffering. One approach involves cultivating a feeling of closeness towards everyone based on recognizing the kindness shown to us from everyone. From this feeling of closeness, we can more easily open our hearts to love and compassion for all others, including close ones, strangers, and those who make us uncomfortable. In another approach (from Mahayana Buddhism) we will cultivate the importance of others through the practice of tong.len (taking suffering and giving happiness) meditation. Wisdom eliminates the deepest level of suffering as an essential practice of compassion. Thus, we will also explore the practice of wisdom. Furthermore, clarifications of the meaning of altruistic love, compassion, and empathy will be presented according to the Buddhist perspective. In particular, we will attempt to distinguish between the emotional and cognitive aspects of compassion. The first one arises chiefly from bringing to mind the variety of suffering that afflicts sentient beings. The second one is related to investigating the various levels of suffering and their causes, down to ignorance -defined here as a misapprehension of reality-,which is considered to be the source of all other mental afflictions (hatred, attachment, lack of discernment, arrogance, envy, etc.). We will also present the reasoning and wisdom that allow expanding our limited, biased compassion, to all sentient beings. We will consider how these views could lead to various angles of research. In particular, we will reflect on the way how stand-alone empathy, disconnected from altruistic love and compassion, can lead to burn-out.

July 21st, 2011, 11:00 12:00 pm

Curriculum for Physicians and Nurses in Compassion and Ethics

Joan Halifax Upaya Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM, USA The presentation will cover a summary of the curriculum of Upaya Institutes professional training program for clinicians working in the end-of-life care field. This program is based in a contemplative approach to caring for the dying and has a strong emphasis in compassion training. Upaya Institutes Professional Training Program in Contemplative End-of-Life
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Abstracts

Care teaches mindful and compassionate approaches to end-of-life care, clinician self-care (self-compassion), the development of moral character (compassion-based ethics), and contemplative interventions appropriate for clinicians and dying people. The training encompasses ethical, spiritual, psychological, and social aspects of care of the dying. In addition to teaching reflective practices and compassion-based ethics and communication strategies, it explores basic social neuroscience research that endeavors to give the contemplative approach an evidence-based perspective. The curriculum builds on contemplative practices that regulate attention and emotion, cultivate compassion, aid in the development of a meta-cognitive perspective, promote calm and resilience, reduce stress, and foster emotional balance. The contemplative content undergirds so-called spiritual dimensions, i.e. sense of meaning. It makes wise sense of meaning possible, by clarifying emotional states, developing pro-social states of mind, and fostering compassion and wisdom.

July 21st, 2011, 2:30 3:30 am

Compassion-Focused Therapy
Paul Gilbert Mental Health Research Unit, University of Derby, UK There is a long history of using compassion to increase well-being but many of the traditional approaches assume that people are relatively psychologically stable. Not much exists in the way of research on individual differences and how they indicate and require different types of intervention. Over the last 20 years or so, we have been working with people who come from difficult or abusive backgrounds, where there was little compassion in their early life and who are often prone to shame and highly self-critical. These individuals find the process of working with compassion painful and are often resistant to such feelings. This is typical because feelings of receiving kindness or being kind to oneself reactivates attachment systems and with it unresolved traumas and difficulties. Hence, using a compassion focus that aims to build internal compassionate capacities for people who have quite serious mental health problems can be tricky. This has meant we have had to tailor and design a variety of compassion focused interventions specifically as a form of psychotherapy. My talk will briefly touch on the link between the roles and nature of the affiliative systems, the undermining qualities of shame and self-criticism and what we teach our patients. Currently, compassion focused therapy is being explored with a range of different clinical problems including psychosis, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders. We are still learning how best to work with these different kinds of groups, where the blockades are and what will help them move forward. My talk will give an overview of these areas and also give the audience a brief opportunity to explore one or two of the imagery practices. As asked, we will not be providing any data on efficacy.
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Abstracts

July 21st, 2011, 3:30 4:30 pm

Mindful Self-Compassion Training

Kristin Neff1 & Christopher K. Germer2
1

University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA; 2Harvard Medical School, Arlington, MA, USA

The mindful self-compassion (MSC) training program is an 8-week course modeled on MBSR with a focus on teaching self-compassion skills. The main practice of the MSC program is loving-kindness (metta) meditation, and other mindfulness meditations are taught with an emphasis on the compassionate attitude of mindfulness. Weekly sessions include meditation training, group exercises, informal practices, and topics such as anchoring emotions in the body, recognizing our common humanity, transforming challenging relationships, nourishing our core values, and savoring our lives. The goal is to develop the habit of self-kindness and self-soothing - rather than self-criticism - when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate.

July 21st, 2011, 8:00 pm

Reception with Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson Studio Olafur Eliasson & Berlin University of the Arts, Germany At the evening session on Thursday 21st of July, Olafur Eliasson will initiate the workshop participants to the practices of his studio and touch on how to think and work with emotions and compassion in art. The artists work is characterized by his incessant exploration of our modes of perceiving. One of his main ideas is to prompt us, the viewers or users of his works, to examine the conditions of our perceptions through our individual experiences, thus, enabling us to re-evaluate our notions of what it means to be and act in the world; to consider the consequences of our feelings and actions, in art and in society at large. Described as experimental setups by himself, Eliassons works spans from photography to installation, to sculpture and, more recently, film. Established in the mid-1990s, his Berlin studio today counts about 45 craftsmen, architects, geometrics, art historians, and other cultural workers. Here, he deploys light, color, and natural phenomena such as fog and waves to test how movement, the senses, and the interaction of body and brain influence our perception of our environment. Often the constructions of his artworks are kept visible in order not to lull visitors into accepting the situations as natural. With the constructions laid bare, we are made aware of the tools with which he thinks and works tools that appear effective, but do not amount to truths about the world.

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Abstracts

July 22nd, 2011, 10:00 11:00 am

The Cultivating Emotional Balance Project: Training Program and Outcomes

Margaret Kemeny Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA This presentation will focus on a training program that was developed by Paul Ekman, Alan Wallace, and others as part of a research project called the Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) project. The training program involved the integration of secularized meditation practices with various techniques drawn from psychological science designed to promote the understanding and regulation of emotional life. Promotion of empathy and compassion and reduction in negative social behavior were key goals of the training. The project involved two studies, a pilot study of the CEB training program and a clinical trial to determine the impact of the training on psychological and biological outcomes in a sample of female school teachers (participants were randomly assigned to the training or a waiting list control condition). The 42 hour 8-week training program took place in a group format with two trainers, and included didactic presentations, practices related to meditation and to emotional awareness/understanding, and home practices. Participants learned a variety of meditation techniques, including concentration and mindfulness practices, as well as kindness and compassion practices. In addition, the training program included an emotion curriculum that involved training in: understanding emotions, recognizing ones own emotions and emotional patterns, and recognizing emotion in others. Assessments took place before, after and 5 months following the end of the training. Results indicated that the CEB training decreased negative moods and negative cognitive responses and increased positive states of mind including positive emotions, mindfulness, empathy, and reflection. Also, participants increased their automatic compassionate responding during a task, in which they viewed images of people who were suffering. The CEB group ruminated less after being exposed to a stressful task and showed a quicker reduction in the physiological stress response and a stronger restorative response after the end of stress task. Participants also engaged in less negative social behavior in a marital interaction task. Most of the effects were retained at the follow-up period. Thus, the CEB training reduced emotional responses that are destructive to the self (like depression and stress arousal), as well as those that are destructive to others (such as hostile/contemptuous social behavior), while at the same time promoting emotional responses that increase the well-being of the self and others, such as compassion. Drs. Wallace and Ekman are in the process of training CEB trainers to disseminate the training program.

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Abstracts

July 22nd, 2011, 11:00 12:00 pm

Cognitive-Based Compassion Training (CBCT): Teaching Approaches and Preliminary Findings

Brooke Dodson-Lavelle Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA This talk will offer an overview to the Cognitive-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) program developed by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi at Emory University, with particular attention to the program rationale and structure, and the ways in which it has been adapted to meet the needs of diverse populations. The CBCT program proceeds through eight key steps: (1) developing attention and stability of mind; (2) cultivating insight into the nature of mental experience; (3) cultivating self-compassion; (4) developing equanimity; (5) developing appreciation and gratitude for others; (6) developing affection and empathy; (7) realizing aspirational compassion; and (8) realizing active compassion for others. I will discuss the rationale for this sequence and present pedagogical strategies employed for each step. I will also review the typical program structure and describe the ways in which our adult protocol has been adapted for adolescents in the Atlanta foster care system and for children (ages 5-9) in a private school in Atlanta. I will share anecdotes and preliminary findings from our ongoing research projects and discuss future directions of our work.

July 22nd, 2011, 11:00 12:00 pm

Education for the New Millennium: Cognitive-Based Compassion Training for Children and Adolescents in Educational and Foster-Care Settings
Brendan Ozawa-de Silva Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA If compassion and empathy can be cultivated, how early should we begin the process? Inspired by the vision of the Dalai Lama, Emory researchers have translated the lojong-based cognitive-based compassion training (CBCT) program developed by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin into programs for young elementary school children as well as adolescents in Georgias foster care system. These programs train children in compassion using the same 8-stage protocol designed for adults, but adapted in developmentally appropriate ways and taught through the medium of stories, games, activities and exercises. This talk will present these efforts to develop a model for an education of heart and mind that can be taught in schools, share what has been learned over the past two years since the beginning of these programs, and address key questions raised by introducing secular ethics into the classroom.

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Abstracts

July 22nd, 2011, 2:30 3:30 pm

The Compassion Cultivation Training Program: An Overview and Visit to a Secular Approach to Ancient Practices
Erika L. Rosenberg Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA I will overview and discuss the Compassion Cultivation Training program (CCT), developed by Thupten Jinpa, myself, and others at CCARE at Stanford. I will briefly describe the development of the CCT program, the current version of the training manual, and the key elements of the course. Throughout the presentation, I will share our general pedagogical approach, describe the practices, and then guide the participants in the meeting through a few key exercises. The emphasis will be on illustrating the key elements of the training: stabilizing mind, loving-kindness and compassion for a loved one, loving-kindness and compassion for oneself, empathic connection, recognizing common humanity, increasing the circle of compassion, active compassion practice, and the integrated daily practice. I will close by discussing the various challenges of teaching this material and our approaches to managing those concerns.

July 22nd, 2011, 3:30 4:30 pm

Methodological Challenges to Design a bona fide Control Condition for Compassion-Based Interventions
Antoine Lutz Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA This presentation will provide an overview of a short-term compassion/loving-kindness training that was explored in our laboratory research. Meditation-based interventions including mindfulness or compassion training are increasingly popular modes of treatment for the reduction of physical and emotional distress. From earlier studies focused on pre-post improvements, the field has grown and now includes substantial evidence that meditationbased mental training improves mental and physical health compared to wait-list controls and treatment as usual, and is of comparable efficacy to other psychological treatments. Our training involves 30 minutes per day of guided practice for 2 weeks. Training consists of both visualization and silent repetition of phrases focused on cultivating compassion toward a loved one, oneself, a stranger, a difficult person, and all beings. The training specifically invites participants to experience the compassion emotionally and not to simply repeat the phrases cognitively. It also invites participants to pay particular attention to visceral sen-

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Abstracts

sations that might be associated with the training. An active comparison condition, derived from cognitive therapy, which is administered for the same duration of time in the same format, will also be described. In addition, methodological desiderata for a bona fide comparison condition will be delineated. However, the inadequacy of some control interventions prevents a full understanding of meditation relative efficacy and prevents also valid tests of meditation as the active ingredient responsible for positive outcomes. The creation of such a control is thus an important methodological tool for future research. To illustrate this methodological question we will present how we specified and validated a bona fide control condition, the Health Enhancement Program (HEP), to investigate the relative efficacy of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and to test mindfulness as an active ingredient. We will then discuss the possibilities and challenges to design a similar psychological placebo for compassion-based interventions.

July 22nd, 2011, 4:45 5:15 pm

Differentiating Compassion from Empathic Distress and Introducing Memory Training as an Active Control Group
Tania Singer & Olga Klimecki Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany First, we will discuss our experience with conducting training studies in which we differentiate between two different forms of empathy, namely, empathic concern or compassion on the one hand and empathic distress on the other hand. Preliminary results suggest that these forms of empathy differ fundamentally in terms of their behavioral outcomes as well as their neural and affective underpinnings. Empathy in general denotes the sharing of others emotions and can be transformed into compassion, which is associated with other-related emotions of love, self-other distinction and an increase in prosocial motivation. In contrast, empathy may also give rise to empathic distress, a state accompanied by self-centered experiences of negative affect and stress that eventually result in withdrawal and may even lead to burnout. In the second part of our talk, we will speak about the importance of including an active control group in compassion training designs and suggest that cognitive memory training based on mental imagery is a well-matched control for meditation-based compassion training.

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Abstracts

July 23rd, 2011, 10:00 11:00 am

Mindfulness-Based Intervention as Integral to a Program of Compassion Training

Ulrike Kesper-Grossman1 & Paul Grossman2
1

MBSR Institut, Freiburg, Germany; 2Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Division of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Basel, Switzerland

Theravada Buddhist understandings of mindfulness (samma-sati) explicitly or implicitly emphasize the quality of open-hearted non-judging and acceptance of present-moment experience. Definitions of mindful awareness become purely cognitive and denatured when the latter factors go unrecognized. Thus, cultivation of a nonjudgmental stance is a central feature of mindfulness training. The Theravada notion of mindfulness is also implicitly embodied in the original concept and delivery of MBSR, as stated in several relevant documents. Nevertheless, the complexity of non-judging and its slowly unfolding nature has only occasionally been seriously considered in the healthcare literature on mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). We describe the basic features of the major MBIs derived from mindfulnessbased stress reduction and provide a rationale for how MBI integration may be useful or, perhaps, even essential for the development of an effective program of compassion training. We assume that the four qualities of the Brahmavihara are the very foundation of nonjudging and acceptance. Without cultivation of mindfulness, we will not become aware of the obstacles to non-judging and compassion (perhaps confusing them with their near-enemies). Without cultivation of non-judging and compassion, we will be unable to hone our cognitive skills of paying attention in the specific ways that characterize mindfulness (e.g. always getting distracted by the first unpleasant sensation).

July 23rd, 2011, 11:00 12:00 pm

How to Train Compassion with the Modell of Non-Violent Communication

Regula Langemann & Suna Yamaner Metapuls AG, Tann-Drnten, Switzerland Non-violent Communication (NVC) according to Marshall Rosenberg (Ph.D.) is a communication and conflict resolution model, which aims at creating empathic linking to oneself and between other human beings. NVC provides a map of how we express our feelings and needs verbally (through language) and gives core relevance to create and maintain empathic linking in a partnership way. Language not only reflects reality but also creates new realities. Language is applied to establish a link to understand or be understood and to enable an em-

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Abstracts

pathic coaching process. But language can also hinder a linking with a broad range of dominance inducing strategies such as judgments, prejudice, psychologizing, etc., which have to be transformed in more life-serving connections. Empathy, according to Rosenberg, is a process, which attempts to connect with the perspective of oneself or another person compassionately without necessarily agreeing. The perspective of a person can be compassionately accessed and verbally expressed by applying the four steps of Non-violent Communication including some conceptual core differentiations: (Step 1) Observation: Sense awareness like seeing, hearing, smelling, kinesthetic or body awareness versus interpretations, (Step 2) Feelings: Feelings caused by concrete sensual stimuli versus feelings caused by conceptual thinking like labeling, moral judging, static self-concepts or sense-making concepts, (Step 3) Needs: Universal human needs like belonging, autonomy, appreciation, love, resonance, empathy, etc. versus values and strategic actions, (Step 4) Strategic actions: Concrete strategies, present requests, decisions versus wishful thinking, demands and vague undened expectations. The workshop will include a short theoretical input, a demonstration of the model by role-plays and training opportunities for the participants.

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Short Biography

Brooke Dodson-Lavelle
is a Doctoral Student in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Her work focuses on the confluence of Buddhist contemplative theory and cognitive science. She currently serves as an instructor for several studies examining the efficacy of a secular, Cognitive-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) program for adults and school children, as well as adolescents in Atlantas foster care system. Brooke is also the Program Coordinator for both the Emory-Tibet Partnership and the Emory Tibetan Mind/Body Sciences Summer Study Abroad program in Dharamsala, India. Prior to attending Emory, she earned her B.A. in Religion and Psychology at Barnard College and her M.A. in Religion at Columbia University. While at Columbia, she also worked as a Research Coordinator for the Columbia Integrative Medicine Program, where she developed and led mindfulness-based meditation programs for a variety of clinical populations.

Olafur Eliasson
was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1967 to Icelandic parents and studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts between 1989 and 1995. He is a contemporary artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art, employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewers experience. In 1995, he established the Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. Olafur represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The Weather Project at Tate Modern, London. The Take your time: Olafur Eliasson project, a survey organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2007, travelled until 2010, with venues including The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and the PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City. His exhibition Innen Stadt Auen (Inner City Out) opened at the Martin Gropius Building in Berlin in 2010 with interventions across the city.
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Short Biography

Christopher K. Germer
is a clinical psychologist in private practice, specializing in mindfulness, acceptance, and compassion-based psychotherapy. He is a founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and has been a Clinical Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School for most of the past 27 years. He is the author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion and co-editor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy and the forthcoming Compassion and Wisdom in Psychotherapy. He lectures and leads workshops internationally on mindfulness and self-compassion.

Paul Gilbert
is the head of the Mental Health Research Unit as well as Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby. He has a degree in Economics, a Masters in Experimental Psychology, a PhD in Clinical Psychology, and a Diploma in Clinical Psychology awarded by the British Psychological Society in 1980. He was made a fellow of the British Psychological Society for contributions to psychological knowledge in 1993 and was President of the British Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Psychotherapy in 2003. Paul has also served on the Government Depression NICE Guideline committee and has published and edited 21 books, over 100 academic papers and 39 book chapters. He is currently a Series Editor for a Compassionate Approaches to Life Difficulties series. After years of exploring the processes underpinning shame and its role in a variety of psychopathologies, his current research is exploring the neurophysiology and therapeutic effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy.
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Short Biography

Paul Grossman
is the Director of Research at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Division of Internal Medicine, at the University Hospital Basel. He has published books on mindfulness in psychology and healthcare, and has been a principal investigator of several investigations of mindfulnessbased intervention for debilitating, long-lasting medical conditions (including multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and sequelae of bone marrow transplantation). He also studies various aspects of relations between psychology and respiratory and cardiovascular physiology. Paul is the Associate Editor of the journal Mindfulness, a Science and Contemplative Affiliate of the Mind & Life Institute, and teaches mindfulness and Buddhist psychology at the Psychological Institute of the University of Freiburg. He has practiced insight meditation for many years and completed the MBSR Internship at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Center for Mindfulness in 1998.

Joan Halifax
is a Zen Buddhist roshi, anthropologist, human rights activist, and the author of books on Buddhism and spirituality. She is a leader in the field of socially engaged Buddhism, and a pioneer in the end-of-life care field. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, which she founded in 1990. Joan received Dharma transmission from both Bernard Glassman and Thich Nhat Hanh, and previously studied under the Korean master Seung Sahn. She was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard Universitys Peabody Museum, received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, held the Rockefeller Chair at CIIS and the Harold C. Wit Chair at Harvard Divinity School, and is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. She is also on the board of directors of the Mind & Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.
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Short Biography

Diego Hangartner
is the Director of International Operations at the Mind & Life Institute. He completed his studies in pharmacology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, specializing in psychotherapeutic and psychoactive substances. Having worked with drug addiction, he became interested in understanding the workings of mind and consciousness. After encountering Buddhism, he then spent 11 years in Dharamsala, India, where he first learned Tibetan and then studied for 7 years at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics. During those years, he did several retreats and worked as a translator and interpreter. After returning to Europe in 2003, he taught widely, worked as the General Secretary and project manager of His Holiness the Dalai Lamas visits in Switzerland 2005 and in Hamburg 2007. Presently, he is the General Secretary of Mind & Life International, based in Zurich and is the Mind and Life Chief Operating Officer and Director of Program, Research and International.

Johannes Latzel
works as a homeopathic medical doctor in Freiburg, Germany since 1992. He studied Philosophy in Munich and Medical Science in Freiburg. Since 1998 he teaches seminars on Homeopathy. Johannes also works as a MBSR teacher (mindfulness-based stress reduction, according to Jon KabatZinn) and offers classes together with his wife Susanne Latzel on stress reduction training and thankfulness.

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Short Biography

Margaret Kemeny
is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco and the Director of the Health Psychology Program. Her training is in health psychology and clinical immunology and her research is in the field of psychoneuroimmunology. Her research program focuses on the effects of psychological factors on the neuroendocrine system, the immune system and health/disease. Margaret is particularly interested in how specific cognitions and emotions are linked to the immune system and health and how psychological interventions could have emotional, immunological, and health benefits. She has been involved in research on a number of psychological interventions, including studies of meditation, to determine if changes in cognition and emotion can affect physiological systems tied to health. She was the Principal Investigator of the Cultivating Emotional Balance project that evaluated effects of a meditation/emotion regulation curriculum on psychological and biological processes, including compassion.

Barry Kerzin
is a Buddhist monk, teacher, and medical doctor. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley, he went on to receive a Medical Doctor degree from the University of Southern California. He is a former Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. He has lived in Dharamsala, India, for 22 years and provides medical care to many high lamas as well as poor people in India, all on a charitable basis. His Holiness the Dalai Lama ordained him as a bikkshu, or gelong, a fully ordained Buddhist monk. He has completed many short and long meditation retreats over the last 27 years. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Princeton University in New Jersey, Barry spends about 7 to 8 months annually teaching Buddhist science and modern science, death and dying, teaching Shantideva, leading meditation retreats, and leading sacred pilgrimages, in India, Japan, Mongolia, North America, Europe, and Russia.
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Short Biography

Ulrike Kesper-Grossman
holds a M.A. in education, and is a trained Rogerian Psychotherapist and Yoga teacher, certified by the German/ European Yoga Association. In 1994, she completed a MBSR internship at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and also taught MBSR there for several years. Since then, she has been teaching MBSR courses for a wide range of people and conducted seminars for healthcare professionals. Ulrike has participated as teacher and clinical adviser in several clinical research projects on mindfulness interventions for patients suffering from chronic illness (e.g., multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and cancer survivors) at the Freiburg Institute for Mindfulness Research and the University Hospital Basel, where she also has a supervisory function in the MBSR program of the Department for Psychosomatic Medicine. The major focus of her work for the last five years has been to develop and direct a 1.5-year professional training program for MBSR teachers, designed primarily for healthcare professionals at the MBSR Institute in Freiburg, Germany.

Olga Klimecki
is a Doctoral Student with Prof. Tania Singer at the Department for Social Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. She studied psychology at the University of Mainz for three years and then completed her Master of Neuroscience at University College London in 2007 before starting her PhD thesis with Tania Singer at the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research at the University of Zurich.

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Short Biography

Regula Langemann
is the Co-Owner of Metapuls AG Fr Unternehmenskultur und Frauenfrderung (For Corporate Culture and Womens Equal Opportunity) since 1993. Since then, she has worked as a trainer and coach for communication, conflict resolution, and supervision. She also works as a Psychodrama Assistant and Lecturer for Non-violent Communication at the Institute for Humanistic Art Therapy in Zurich, at a large continuing education institute, and at Cura Viva (Institute for Management and Leadership). Furthermore, Regula worked in a community center in Zurich and had had a practice for body work for 8 years in San Francisco. She is a certified trainer for Nonviolent Communication with the Center for Non-violent Communication, USA since 1998 and worked and organized seminars in collaboration.

Antoine Lutz
is a Senior Scientist at the Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of P. and M. Curie in Paris under the supervision of Francisco Varela in 2002 and has been a Post-doctoral Research Fellow under the supervision of Richard Davidson at the University of WisconsinMadison. Antoines principal research focus has been on the neuro-dynamical correlates of consciousness and on the relationship between neuroplasticity and meditation training. His research has been largely supported by grants from the National Institute of Health. He is associated to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds in Madison.

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Short Biography

Kristin Neff
studied communications as an undergraduate at the University of California at Los Angeles. She did her graduate work at University of California at Berkeley, studying moral development. Her dissertation research was conducted in Mysore, India, where she examined childrens moral reasoning. She then spent two years of post doctoral study with Dr. Susan Harter at Denver University, studying issues of authenticity and self-concept development. Her current position at the University of Texas at Austin started in 1999. During Kristins last year of graduate school in 1997 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 selfcompassion a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. In addition to her pioneering research into self-compassion, she has developed an 8-week program to teach self-compassion skills. The program, co-created with her colleague Chris Germer at Harvard University, is called Mindful Self-Compassion.

Brendan Ozawa-de Silva

serves as Associate Director for Buddhist Studies and Practice at Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta and a research fellow at the Emory-Tibet Partnership at Emory University. After receiving his PhD of Philosophy from Oxford University in 2003 he taught as Visiting Professor of Spirituality and World Religions at Emory University until 2005. Now pursuing a second doctorate at Emory in the area of Buddhism and cognitive science, he focuses his research on Buddhist and scientific understandings of compassion and how it is cultivated, and works to develop pedagogical curricula that facilitate the cultivation of emotional and social intelligence in educational settings.

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Short Biography

Matthieu Ricard
has lived in the Himalayan region for the last 40 years. Born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France, he is the son of the late philosopher Jean-Franois Revel and the abstract painter, Yahne Le Toumelin. He earned a PhD degree in Cell Genetics at the Institute Pasteur in Paris under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob. Since 1972, he has lived in India, Bhutan and Nepal. He is a Buddhist monk and has served as the French interpreter for His Holiness the Dalai Lama since 1989. Matthieu is a member of the Mind & Life Institute, an organization dedicated to collaborative research between scientists and Buddhist scholars and meditators on the effect of mind training and meditation on the brain. He is engaged in research on this at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, Princeton University, and UC Berkeley. He donates all proceeds from his books and much of his time to 40 humanitarian projects (clinics, schools, orphanages, elderly peoples homes, bridges, vocational training) in Nepal, India and Tibet. He received the French National Order of Merit for his humanitarian work.

Erika L. Rosenberg
is an emotions researcher, educator, and world-renowned expert in facial expression measurement. She is also longtime practitioner and teacher of meditation. Erika serves on the Faculty of Nyingma Institute of Tibetan Studies in Berkeley, where she teaches meditation courses and workshops for working with emotions in daily life and the development of mindfulness and compassion. Erika worked on the development of a secular Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) program with Geshe Thupten Jinpa at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, where she is a senior teacher. She has taught CCT at Google, to several community samples, and presented it to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As a consulting scientist with the Center for Mind and Brain, at UC Davis, Erika is a senior investigator on the Shamatha Project, a controlled intervention trial on sustained meditation training. Currently, she consults with and trains a number of academic and nonacademic clients.
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Short Biography

Clifford Saron
is an Associate Research Scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain and M.I.N.D. Institute at UC Davis. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshira University in New York City in 1999 studying the electrophysiology of interhemispheric visuomotor integration. Cliff has had a long-standing interest in behavioral and brain effects of meditation practice. He has been a frequent Faculty Member at the Mind & Life Summer Research Institute and is currently a Member of the Mind & Life Institutes Program and Research Council. In the early 1990s, he was centrally involved, along with Francisco Varela, Alan Wallace, and Richard Davidson among others in a field research project investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training under the auspices of the Private Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Mind & Life Institute. Currently, in collaboration with a large consortium of scientists and researchers at UC Davis and elsewhere, he is Principal Investigator of the Shamatha Project, conceived with and taught by Alan Wallace.

Emiliana Simon-Thomas
is the Associate Director and Senior Scientist for the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University. Emiliana earned her PhD in Cognition, Brain and Behavior at UC Berkeley studying the interplay between affect and cognition with Dr Robert Knight as her mentor. Her post-doctoral research examined the affective and cognitive properties, the display behaviors and the autonomic and central neural signals associated with pro-social states like compassion within Dr Dacher Keltners Social Interaction Laboratory. She recently joined CCARE to accelerate and expand research directives towards establishing a basic scientific understanding of compassion, validating the potential to cultivate compassion and demonstrating the potential benefits of compassion to health, well-being and psychosocial function.

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Short Biography

Tania Singer
received her PhD in Psychology from Free University in Berlin in 2000 which was awarded the prestigious Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society. Then, she became a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin until 2002, later at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience in London and at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London, in 2006. She accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich in 2006 and then as Inaugural Chair of Social Neuroscience and Neuroeconomics as well as Co-Director of the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research. Since 2010, she is the Director of the Department for Social Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. In 2011, she was awarded Honorary Professorship at the University of Leipzig and at Humboldt University in Berlin and is also a Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Zurich. She has published multiple papers in high-impact journals such as Science and Nature, and is currently an Advisory Board Member of the Society for Neuroeconomics and a Fellow at the Mind & Life Institute.

Suna Yamaner
is the Founder and Co-Owner of Metapuls AG Fr Unternehmenskultur und Frauenfrderung (For Corporate Culture and Womens Equal Opportunity). Since 1992, she is a trainer for communication, conflict resolution, supervision and coaching in business, administration, non-profit organizations (NGOs), schools and universities both in Switzerland and abroad. Suna is also a lecturer for gender and transcultural communication at the University of St. Gallen, the Academy of Art and Design, Zurich, and the Lucerne School of Social Work, Switzerland. She is a certified trainer for Nonviolent Communication with the Center for Non-violent Communication, USA since 1998 and worked and organized seminars in collaboration. Previously, she has worked for 15 years as the head of an international organization for Dow Jones, founding and running offices in Zurich, Paris, Vienna, and London.

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Red arrows show points Schedule of access to the Campus North at:

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Reinh Haus 5, on the Campus North of Humbolt University Philippstrae 13 10115 Berlin http://www.hu-berlin.de

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Ziegelstrae

rae FLOWER'S Boardinghouse Mitte Mulackstrae 1 10119 Berlin Fon: +49 (0) 30 280 45 306 E-mail: info@FlowersBerlin.com http://www.flowersberlin.de

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SCHOENHOUSE APARTMENTS Schnhauser Allee 185 10119 Berlin Fon: +49 (0)30 47 37 39 7 - 0 E-mail: info@schoenhouse.de http://www.schoenhouse.de

Dircksenstrae

Studio Olafur Eliasson Christinenstrae 18/19 Haus 2 10119 Berlin http://www.olafureliasson.net

Contact during workshop: Matthias Bolz +49 (0)163 8350683; Sandra Zurborg +49 (0)1577 6056912

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Attractions t c on Attractions Berlin

Berlin Attractions:
Restaurants (see program map pages 3233)
A Monsieur Vuong (Asian) Alte Schnhauser Str. 46 B Good Morning Vietnam (Asian) Alte Schnhauser Str. 60 C YamYam (Korean) Alte Schnhauser Str. 6 D Cantamaggio (Italian) Alte Schnhauser Str. 4 E Blaues Band (Cafe) Alte Schnhauser Str. 78 F bixels (International) Mulackstr. 38 G Green Tea Caf (Tea & Coffee) Mulackstr. 33 H Louisiana Kid (American) Alte Schnhauser Str. 2 I I Due Forni (Italian) Schnhauser Allee 12 J Muret la Barba (Italian) Rosenthaler Str. 61

Sights (see separate map for destinations)

Museumsinsel (various Museums on a small Island of the River Spree) Bodestr. 13 Berliner Fernsehturm (Birdseye View of Berlin-Restaurant) and Alexanderplatz (Central Square) Panoramastr. 1 Area between Linienstr., Auguststr., & Tucholskystr. (Galeries and High End Shopping Boutiques) Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin (Centrum Judaicum- Synagoge) Oranienburger Str. 2830 Hackescher Markt S-Train Station (lively Area with various Restaurants & Boutique Shopping) Berliner Dom (Main Protestant Church in Berlin) Am Lustgarten Unter den Linden (Tourist Attraction) Street extends from Pariser Platz at the Brandenburg Gate and remains up to the Schlossbrcke Bridge Many sights along the way (Humboldt University, Brandenburg Gate, Deutsche Staatsoper, Neue Wache) Kollwitzplatz (typical Berlin Square with many Restaurants and Shopping) Kollwitzstr. 59 Volksbhne (Theater-Salon) Linienstr. 227

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