The Way is in Training: Martial Arts-informed Compassionate Mind Training to enhance CFT Therapists’ Compassionate Competencies

Abstract

Traditional Martial Arts practice(s) can be construed as forms of fully embodied Compassionate Mind Training (CMT). Integration of these body-mind systems can be a powerful means to cultivate and entrain important therapist competencies in compassionate engagement and action. Through such training and personal practice, compassion-focused therapists can develop and enhance their abilities to stimulate and access compassionate motivation at a deeply embodied level. Martial arts-informed CMT thus has the potential to afford therapists greater sensitivity, attunement, distress tolerance, courage and compassionate responsiveness, particularly in difficult therapeutic encounters such as alliance ruptures.