In Karuna Training, we become familiar with our own mind and how it works. Through training in meditation and mindfulness awareness, we discover that compassion is a natural and healthy component of the human mind and learn to recognize and nurture these innate qualities. This is the basis for working with others in a wakeful, compassionate manner. It is also the basis for the healing and transformative processes that are part of the Contemplative Psychology journey.

Embodiment Training and practices teach us how to drop out of the head and into the body—this increases body awareness and cultivates embodied mindfulness. Learning to anchor one's awareness in the body is key to working with thoughts and emotional energies. In Karuna Training, we learn to feel emotions directly in the body first and practice staying with the energy of emotions rather than our thoughts and discursive contents. In this way, we learn to transmute the pain and confusion of emotions into their innate wisdom.

Karuna Training takes place in a cohort 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. This fosters deep trust and intimacy within the cohort, and Karuna Alumni often join in retreats to fortify the learning. In community, we begin to realize all the relationships in our lives are worthy of love, respect, and openness. We see that the quality of our relationships is a reflection of our own minds. These relationships act as a mirror that supports us in discovering the diamonds within us.

Compassionate exchange is a mindful encounter that facilitates mutual healing. Exchange is the natural, present-moment capacity to feel another person's feelings. Working with exchange is enhanced through contemplative training and learning to navigate the terrain of our own difficult emotions. Along the way, we become skillful in offering ourselves to others in 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.