Reclaiming Who We Are with Self-Compassion
With Caverly Morgan and Kristin Neff, PhD
Saturday - Sunday, March 21 - 22, 2026
10:00am – 4:30pm PT
On-Land Spirit Rock, CA, or Online via Zoom
Self-compassion helps us let go of identification with the belief that we’re not good enough. With its warm support, we learn to untangle from our negative thoughts and emotions and embrace our inherent wholeness.
Our unconscious conditioning—influenced by our family, genetics, and culture—often tells us we’re inadequate and need to be different in order to be happy. Compassion helps us remember who we truly are versus who we’ve been conditioned to be. It transforms our contracted and limited view of ourselves, opening to a larger, more connected, and powerful sense of loving presence.
Research shows that self-compassion is strongly linked to psychological and physical health, but our conditioning works against being kind to ourselves. In this program, researcher Kristin Neff teams up with meditation teacher Caverly Morgan to explore self-compassion from a scientific and contemplative lens, so that we can respond to difficult moments with greater warmth and perspective.
Testimonials
This was the most impactful and powerful program I have participated in at Spirit Rock! The co-teaching leaders were amazing. Their synergy made the program deep, relevant. The balance between the research and the spirit based tenants was powerful and reinforcing. The balance between personal and global was exceptional. The balance of teachings, meditations, exercises, writing, break outs was great. The teachers are exceptional in their knowledge but also really personable and funny!
—2025 Participant
Continuing Education (CE) credit available:
This program offers 10 Continuing Education (CE) credits/contact hours for $100, applicable for psychologists and California-licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, nurses, and chiropractors, and may be applicable for other licenses. Please review Spirit Rock’s Continuing Education information page for provider details, and to determine if your association or board will accept credits offered by Spirit Rock.
About the Teachers:
Caverly Morgan
Named one of 2025’s powerful women of the mindfulness movement, Caverly Morgan is a spiritual teacher, nonprofit founder, speaker, and writer whose practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together as well as A Kids Book About Mindfulness.
Caverly is the founder of Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. She is also the founder of Realizing Freedom Together, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making practices that lead to liberation for all, accessible to all. Caverly leads meditation retreats, workshops, and online classes internationally. Learn more at caverlymorgan.org.
Kristin Neff, PhD
Kristin Neff, PhD received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, studying moral development. She did two years of postdoctoral study at the University of Denver studying self-concept development. She is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. During Dr. Neff’s last year of graduate school, she became interested in Buddhism and started practicing self-compassion. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on the construct, which had not yet been examined empirically. She developed a theory and created a scale to measure self-compassion more than 20 years ago. Dr. Neff has written numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic and has been recognized as one of the most influential scholars in the field of psychology. Well over 5000 studies have been conducted on self-compassion since her seminal articles were first published in 2003.
In addition to her academic work, she is author of the books Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, and 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. She is co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, which offers self-compassion training in a variety of forms. Drs. Neff and Germer co-authored The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals, and in Sept 2024 their latest book will be published, Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout: How to Heal and Recharge When You’re Wrung Out by Stress.
For more information on self-compassion, including a self-compassion test, guided practices, and the Self-Compassion Community, go to www.self-compassion.org.