What is Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living?

28th January, 2026

Course leader Ollie Frame introduces our 8-week online course Mindfulness-based Compassionate Living course, explaining what you'll experience if you participate.

Ollie is one of our course and retreat leaders who has specifically trained to teach Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL). He is particularly enthusiastic about self-compassion, Metta meditation and other heart-based approaches within the world of mindfulness.  

The Sharpham Trust has been teaching mindfulness and offering mindfulness and meditation retreats for more than 40 years. 

Read a transcript of this video, organised into sections, below

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What are examples of compassion and self-compassion practices?

"The course is designed as a follow-up to mindfulness programmes and it introduces a whole range of heart-based practices.

Compassion practices, metta or loving-kindness practices, and various shorter practices too, some only a few minutes long, like the self-compassion break.

And for many people it's so transformational to put the emphasis on on warmth, on compassion, on acceptance and kindness in their practice, when they do that in their practice.

And yeah, for many it's a real turning point in their lives and also on their meditation journey.

I think this is especially true of us folk in The West, where we're in the habit of being really quite pushy and critical and harsh with ourselves.

And in fact, we tend to treat ourselves so badly in a way that we wouldn't treat a friend, for example.

So this applies in our everyday life, but also in our meditation practice, where we can be constantly striving to get it right and constantly judging ourselves.

So the course is really like an exploration of this relationship that we have with ourselves, as well as the relationship that we have with other people, of course.