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Understand Yourself
to Free Yourself:
The Psychology
of Love & Freedom

Live Online Course

With Jonny White

March 1st, 2022 - March 27th, 2022

Take a deep dive into and beyond yourself, with Buddhist psychology.

Uniquely blending meditative practices with Buddhist psychology, our brand new course shows you how to deeply understand your particular story and conditioning. Instead of being shut down or overwhelmed by personal issues, you will learn to meet yourself, understand and unlock painful patterning and develop the resilience and capacity to open out to love and freedom.

With a fully integrative trauma and attachment theory based framework, the course is led by Jonny White, senior teacher and trainer at the Karuna institute, long term mindfulness-based psychotherapist and dharma practitioner. He will show you how to apply developmental theory to personal inquiry, deeply meeting and transforming suffering.

There will be live and pre-recorded teachings, contemplative practices and group exercises, using skillful self-inquiry to find love and freedom within and beyond yourself.

This course counts as 10 Hours of CPD for UK counsellors and psychotherapists, awarded by the Karuna Institute. Application details provided upon registration.

Course Format

A weekly themed module of this course will launch every Tuesday. With each module you’ll receive approximately 1 hour hour of pre-recorded video teachings and meditations, plus inquiry partner prompts from Jonny. Each week concludes with a LIVE, interactive Q&A session on Sundays with our teacher (see: schedule below).

Within our interactive course portal, you’ll be able to watch all of the video lessons from Jonny, to connect with your coursemates across the globe, and to discuss your practice experiences and insights throughout the week.

Live interactive sessions will be recorded, and video replays will be available indefinitely to course participants!

This course will invite you to:

  • Deepen your understanding of the “self” through Buddhist wisdom and Western psychology
  • Explore your own self-processes; expand your self-understanding and self-awareness
  • Learn meditation practices for opening to Love and Freedom

Module 1 — Introduction to the Self

Our opening module will cover…

  • The cultural and developmental nature of the self
  • This historical moment, and the relational nature of self-development
  • How embodied understanding can reveal our patterning, and the processes of self
  • How to allow Awareness to come into a ‘Relational Attunement’ with experience that is one of Wisdom and Compassion

Module 2 — Self, Trauma and Freedom

In our second module we will examine…

  • How ‘overwhelming’ developmental processes build ‘selves’ that suffer deeply
  • Trauma theory, and how self-processes can trap us in difficult perceptual and subjective suffering
  • How meditation practice can help us to stabilize and soothe our experience, individuate between self and other, and develop a deep capacity to be with our suffering
  • Our capacity to go beyond our individual experience, and move into the territory of Freedom

Module 3 — Self, Attachment and Love

In our third module we will explore…

  • Our developmental processes and mammalian attachment systems
  • Difficulties in forming relational attachments that are so crucial to our wellbeing
  • Inhibited and frozen self-experiences, and how meditation practice can intensify them
  • How Buddhist practices of going beyond self can open the heart to the wider territories of intimacy, Love and beyond

Module 4 — The Journey Home

During our final module we will delve into…

  • Our relationship to the territories of ‘path’ and ‘meaning’
  • Our tendency to alienate ourselves from our own bodies, communities and the planet
  • How practices of embodied relational presence can open us to connections beyond self and the experience of balance and harmony
  • Progression beyond self and ‘Being,’ into territories of radical Intimacy

Praise for Jonny’s Teachings

“Jonny was my tutor on my Masters psychotherapy training course at the Karuna Institute, and he was an inspiring and knowledgeable tutor from whom I learned a great deal. He had a very approachable style with all the students and delivered training material in a very accessible and engaging way.”

“I have had the privilege of teaching psychotherapy students alongside Jonny. Jonny has consistently impressed, offering an expansive overview of human experience. He has a talent for identifying essential and deeply formative territories whilst at the same time highlighting the powerful resourcing and orienting potential of the Buddhist Tradition.”

Live Online Course Details

Pre-Recorded Video Teachings

Approx. 1 hour of hi-def video lessons from Jonny each week will help you to deepen your understanding of the self and its processes.

Woman Watching Martin Aylward

Guided Meditations

Fit for any level of meditation experience, Jonny will guide you through a variety of liberating contemplative exercises, focused on the self and beyond.

4 LIVE Interactive Video Q&A Sessions

Each Sunday, we’ll meet live to discuss our experiences as a collective, ask Jonny questions, and receive direct, insightful feedback.

Woman Practicing Meditation

Community Connections

Reflect on practice experiences with coursemates in our portal. Optional: team up with Inquiry Partners for mindful listening exercises.

Schedule

Photo - Alarm Clock - Schedule

Dates & Times

Course Launch: Tuesday, March 1 (First lessons posted – no meeting)

LIVE Interactive 1: Sunday, March 6 @ 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET (60 minutes)

LIVE Interactive 2: Sunday, March 13 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET (60 minutes)*

LIVE Interactive 3: Sunday, March 20 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET (60 minutes)*

LIVE Interactive 4: Sunday, March 27 @ 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm BST / 6pm CEST (60 minutes)

Replays will be posted in the days afterwards, for those who cannot attend live.

*Due to clocks changing in North America, Interactive 2 and 3 will start 1 hour later than normal for those in North America only.

About Jonny White

Jonny White is a Psychotherapist, meditator and Psychotherapy Trainer. He has worked as a Core Process Psychotherapist for 20 years and is Director in waiting at the Karuna Institute in the UK. The Karuna Institute has been offering Masters, and Masters level, accredited psychotherapy trainings that fuse Buddhist and ‘western’ understandings of the body/mind for over 30 years. 

Jonny lives in Somerset in the UK with his family.