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

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.