Loving the World Without Losing Yourself

Loving the World Without Losing Yourself is an online spiritual workshop on self-compassion, led by meditation teacher Julia Frodahl over six weeks on Zoom. It blends Buddhist teaching, Western psychology, and neuroscience, and it is for people who find it easier to be kind to others than to themselves, who give until they are depleted, or who want to meet a divided world with more steadiness and less bitterness. More than 3000 people have trained in these compassion skills through Julia's programs.

What to Expect

The group meets live on Zoom once a week for six weeks, on Sunday mornings from 9 to 10:30 Pacific. Each call brings a substantial new teaching, ordered step by step so that each week builds on the last. Calls are recorded, so a missed session can be heard later, and you can return to any of them.

Between calls you work with journaling prompts, guided meditations, and real-world exercises, so the material is lived and not only understood. The teaching draws on poetry and story as well as ideas, and it is meant to be practical rather than abstract. The course takes inequality seriously and stays consistent with medical and scientific thinking.

The themes include the difference between holding yourself accountable and beating yourself up, how to be gentle without being weak, and why compassion can sometimes sound like a firm, loving "no." It also addresses compassion fatigue, reactivity and defensiveness, shutting down when anxious, and finding a healthier way to be with people you find difficult.

A private community portal lets classmates share what they are noticing, compare struggles, and think through hard interpersonal situations together. Past participants often describe the group as kind, safe, and supportive.

About Julia Frodahl

Julia Frodahl is a meditation teacher and inner-work guide who offers what she calls a garden of teachings for people drawn to deep inner work that restores self-love, presence, and belonging, for the individual and the collective. She describes the work as slow and honest, work that heals at the roots and changes how a person thinks, feels, and lives.

She did not arrive at this path as a planned career. She came looking for her own way out of pain and for an understanding of the world. Her childhood was marked by aggressive cancer treatment and an unsafe home, and she found belonging in nature and imagination. As a young adult she studied philosophy, spent time in Buddhist circles, taught herself to write music, and lived an artist's life. After a loss upended that life, she sat with her emptiness in the desert and studied psychology.

Before You Go

The course is open to all levels, whether you are just beginning to explore compassion practice or have practiced for years. No prerequisites are listed for the core program. It is taught in English.

Included are the six live teaching calls with recordings, journaling prompts, guided meditations, real-world exercises, and access to the community portal. Recordings and course materials stay available for six months from the start, and extensions are not possible.

Tuition is on a sliding scale, with a payment plan available at checkout and a scholarship application for those who cannot afford the lowest option. A full refund is offered on request during the first seven days of the course. Compassionate Kids, a separate six-week module for parents and teachers led by child-educator Jeanine VanSise, is not part of this program, though completing this course is a prerequisite for it.