Kristen Neff PhD
Dr. Neff is an Insight Meditation practitioner and an associate professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review, among others, and her TEDx talk has been viewed over 1.7 million times. She’s also the co-developer of an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of people worldwide, and the co-author of The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook as well as Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals. She is also co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion.

Keynote: Self-compassion involves treating ourselves kindly like we would a close friend we cared about. Rather than continually judging and evaluating ourselves, self-compassion involves generating kindness toward ourselves as imperfect humans and learning to be present with the inevitable struggles of life with greater ease. This talk will present theory and research on self-compassion, which a burgeoning empirical literature has shown to be powerfully associated with psychological wellbeing. It will also discuss the crucial role that self-compassion plays for caregivers in order to reduce burnout. A practice will be taught that can help individuals maintain balance in difficult situations involving caring for others.

Mindfulness breakout: The ability to be mindful of our difficult emotions is necessary to be self-compassionate. In this breakout session, we will explore how mindfulness relates to self-compassion, and how they can be used together to work with difficult emotions in a skillful manner.