Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) 8-Week Course

The Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) 8-week course is a live online mindfulness programme for adults who want to learn a kinder way of relating to themselves when they feel bad. It is taught by Dr Christine Braehler, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who helped shape the MSC curriculum in its early years. Sessions run in German and English, and everything takes place online, so you can join from wherever you are.

MSC is a specific group training programme created by Dr Kristin Neff and Dr Christopher Germer. It is built around the idea that self-compassion can be trained: a wise and kind way of meeting yourself that can comfort, soothe, encourage and protect. The programme is not a meditation retreat, group psychotherapy or clinical skills training. It is a structured course for mentally stable adults from the general population.

What to Expect

The course consists of eight live online sessions of about three hours each, plus a four-hour retreat within the eight-week arc. Together they aim to build emotional resources for handling stressful feelings in everyday life more easily.

Each session combines several elements:

- guided meditations and exercises
- educational inputs on how self-compassion works
- self-reflection
- structured sharing in small groups
- teacher-led inquiry in the large group

Between sessions you are given home practices, so the work carries into daily life rather than staying in the session. The format is dense and asks for focused concentration, self-led work with emotions and honest self-reflection.

About Dr Christine Braehler

Dr Christine Braehler (DClinPsy, PhD) is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and internationally recognised teacher of self-compassion with more than 20 years of experience. She has taught compassion-focused approaches in the UK since 2008 and was one of the first psychologists to teach self-compassion internationally. She was among the first MSC teachers and teacher trainers alongside the founders, contributed to shaping the MSC curriculum and teacher training from 2011 to 2019, and served for several years as a Board Member of the Center for MSC. She also helped establish communities of MSC teachers, particularly in Europe.

Her work brings together evidence-based psychology, attachment science, self-compassion and Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), and she is an IFS Level 2 therapist. She uses these approaches to help individuals and couples build resilient, loving relationships.

Before You Go

The course is open to adults, and no prior experience is required. It is designed for people who can:

- explore their inner experience without being overwhelmed
- reflect on themselves
- feel comfortable in groups

Practising self-compassion can bring up emotions you have not yet had time to feel, such as normal grief after a loss, so it helps to have resources to tend to them. Because of the intensity and pace of the format, the course is usually unsuitable for people who are currently mentally ill or under a great deal of emotional strain. In individual therapy the pace can be adapted to one person, which a group course cannot do. If you are in therapy and find it hard to let in kindness, the self-paced online course Self-Compassion Made Easy can be a gentler way to warm up to the more focused practices.

Included are the eight live sessions, the four-hour retreat, the guided meditations and exercises, the educational inputs, the small-group sharing and the home practices. Individual psychotherapy or clinical treatment is not part of the course.