Essentials of Mindful Self-Compassion
6-week live online course
Fridays, 11am-12:30pm, UK time
Weekly from January 22 - March 5, 2027 (no class on February 19th)
Do you…
…have an inner critic who constantly tells you that you could be doing better?
…find it easy to be kind and gracious to other people, but almost impossible to be with that way with yourself?
…wish that you could be less hard on yourself, to be open to more joy and ease?
Mindful Self-Compassion can help you learn to be a kind friend to yourself
Evidence and research-backed
Self-compassion is not just an opinion, fad, or trend.
The course has been designed and developed by leading MSC researchers and practitioners, Dr. Kristin Neff and Dr. Chris Germer.
Latest research shows that self-compassion is strongly associated with lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Self-compassion also helps with motivating yourself to begin or maintain healthy habits related to exercise and diet, wellbeing, and relationships.
Rather than forcing yourself through harshness, blaming, or shaming, self-compassion encourages this through considering how those good habits could help you live with more wellbeing and ease.
Overview of Essentials course
This 6-week Mindful Self-Compassion class is a training program to help you build the skills of self-compassion, so that you can:
build emotional strength and resilience
admit your shortcomings (which come simply from being human!)
motivate yourself with kindness
forgive yourself when needed
relate wholeheartedly to others and
be more authentically yourself
This course is an adapted, shorter version of the full Mindful Self-Compassion course (9 hours total time compared to 24 hours in the full course). Ideally, it is easier to fit this in, even if you have a busy life!
In this short course, we will not introduce and practice the longer guided meditations that are shared in the full MSC course. Still, many people have found this short course to be a wonderful introduction to relating to yourself differently.
After this course, if you find you want to know more, you could go on to take the full 8-week MSC course.
Who is it for?
The session will be useful to anyone who is curious to develop a kinder way of relating to yourself when you encounter challenges in your daily life.
What to expect
Each session will be a mix of teaching about aspects of Mindful Self-Compassion, practical exercises that you can apply in daily life, and discussions in the larger group and small breakouts.
Each week will have a theme, and the sessions will build on one another.
Week 1 - What is Self-Compassion
Week 2 - Practicing Self-Compassion
Week 3 - Discovering Your Self-Compassionate Voice
Week 4 - Self-Compassion and Resilience
Week 5 - Self-Compassion and Burnout
Week 6 - Embracing Your Life
There will be a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12 participants, and we will meet on Zoom. Please plan to join from a space where you can feel comfortable and able to be present and uninterrupted.
Sessions will not be recorded, but there will be a weekly summary and a reminder of the practices to try out in between sessions. You would probably not want to miss more than 1 session to get the full benefit of the course and for group cohesion.
Dates and Prices
All sessions will be on Fridays from 11:00am - 12:30pm UK time
January 22, 2027
January 29
February 5
February 12
skip February 19
February 26
March 5
£180 - full price
£120 - concession price
Words from previous participants
“Sometimes, just a soothing touch and kind words are enough to stop my spiralling thoughts, or at least provide a moment of comfort.”
“Meg helped me realise my priorities and convinced me that I can say no to tasks and jobs that do not fit within my priorities and goals. With Meg’s coaching, I went from working seven days a week with little sleep to getting a decent night’s sleep and weekends off for myself and fun with the family.”
Course teacher
Meg Lyons is a personal and leadership coach who helps people to have more self-trust, self-belief, and ease in work and life.
She first discovered Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion in 2017 and felt the powerful shifts of being able to call on a kinder voice from within. In 2025 and 2026, she trained as a Mindful Self-Compassion teacher with the Sussex Mindfulness and Compassion Centre and is excited to share the benefits of Mindful Self-Compassion with others.
FAQs
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If you have supportive friends and family, amazing - by all means, enlist them to support you as you work toward more balance in your life. Someone objective like a coach can often offer perspectives that people close to the situation might not see. Usually our friends, loved ones, and family members are not able to be as objective or provide the same type of supportive challenge that a coach can.
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One of the challenges that many overwhelmed women face is that they’re already trying to do too much on their own - and that’s part of the problem! I had to learn the hard way that being independent is a wonderful attribute, and as people, we benefit from giving AND receiving support. If you are interested in having an encouraging, supportive accountability partner in this process, I feel certain it will be easier and more sustainable for you to make progress.
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To begin, you’ll complete a pre-coaching questionnaire as reflection which will help inform where we start in our coaching. We’ll meet on Zoom for a 60-minute coaching call, once every 2 weeks, for 5 sessions. When we begin working together, you’ll determine your goals for what success would look like for you in our work together. While I have a fairly non-directive style and will ask you lots of questions, I have a huge range of tools and activities that can support your reflection and taking action. I’ll often choose an exercise or activity and explore how this relates to your balance. After the 5 sessions, I can continue to support you in further sessions to embed and sustain the changes you have made.
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Once you identify your particular hopes and goals for your balance, we will then work out together what you would like to practise or apply in the week between sessions. I won’t force you to do anything but together we may come up with small missions or experiments for you to try that week - things like booking an evening out to do something you’d like to do, scheduling an activity so that you have a cut-off time on when to stop working, or practising asking for help in a low-stakes situation.
It’s similar to the idea of going to a gym and wanting to build a muscle - we’ll start small and make progress over time, without doing too much, too soon!
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I’m based in the UK and coach on Zoom between 8:30am and 5:30pm Monday-Friday UK time. I’ve had clients in the UK, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the US. For your coaching calls, you want to make sure you’re in an undisturbed space where you can talk openly.
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Of course! I want you to feel great about your decision, so please schedule a call with me and we can talk through any questions you have. Or book a free, no-obligation Wheel of Life taster session and you can experience how it is to work with me and begin to get clarity on where your time and attention is going.
Still have questions?
If you have any questions and want to know more, please get in touch. You can either register your interest or email me to have a chat. I’d love to have you join us for this course and to learn more about being a kind friend to yourself.