CBR fosters resilience through:

• Understanding the psychology of stress and its impacts
• Strengthening capacity for compassion and altruism
• Increasing awareness of interconnection
• Enhancing overall well-being and health through self-care and self-compassion
• Identify effective ways to recharge and replenish, even during busy work days
• Nurturing connection with our personal values and community of support.

CBR’s experiential skill-building tools are highly portable, offering helping professionals simple, accessible ways to create space for self-care and replenishment they can practice anywhere, anytime.  Used daily, over time they become ‘hard-wired’ habits of enhanced resilience.

We deliver these tools in several different ways:

• One-hour lunch-and-learn webinars
• “ABC’s of Resilience” staff trainings (CEUs available)
• Hybrid (in person and online) courses
• In-person retreats held at the Garrison Institute
• Leadership Institute trainings for managers and executives
• Guest speakers at your staff retreats

The CBR team will work closely with yours to create a program that fits with your organization’s needs.

Download a printable PDF flier here.

Neuroscience research demonstrates that contemplative practices and mindful movement improve physiological and emotional regulation helping to cultivate an empowering kind of compassion. CBR harnesses these tools to deepen self-awareness and self-care, so that helping professionals can thrive in their critically important work.

In 2014, the Garrison Institute commissioned a comprehensive literature review on “The Human Dimensions of Resilience: A Theory of Contemplative Practices and Resilience” conducted by researchers Teresa I. Sivilli and Thaddeus W.W. Pace.  They found evidence “that resilience is a cluster of positive behaviors and habits of mind that can be cultivated and reinforced through contemplative practices, and that strengthening the resilience of individuals will have a positive impact on the resilience of communities.”  The paper has been widely cited and has contributed to further development of the field of contemplative-based resilience.

In 2021, leading organizational behavior researchers at Case Western University, Han Liu and Richard Boyatzis, published a peer-reviewed conceptual analysis “Focusing on Resilience and Renewal from Stress: The Role of Emotional and Social Intelligence Competencies” in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.  They argued that building emotional and social intelligence, whether through awareness and management of one’s own emotions, or through relationship with others, “can amplify the positive effects of a resilient process…Therefore, in traumatic situations, [it] can be seen as a protective factor which fosters trait resilience and prevents PTSD.”

Here are a few examples of the hundreds of organizations represented by teams and individuals who have participated in CBR programs:

• Caring for Hungry & Homeless of Peekskill
• Catholic Charities of Orange, Sullivan & Ulster
• The Congress of the United States
• Childcare Councils of Orange and Westchester Counties
• DC Government Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services
• Doctors without Borders
• International Red Cross
• The Legal Aid Society
• My Sister’s Place
• NYC Mayor’s Office to End Gender-Based & Domestic Violence
• Putnam County Child & Family Services
• Services for the Underserved
• Worker Justice Center
• YWCA of White Plains & Central Westchester

100% of participants surveyed either “strongly agree” or “agree” that as a result of taking the CBR training, they can detect sources of stress and observe its impacts; better monitor their reactions to stress and hardship; and better regulate their emotions and manage their stress.

Under Sharon’s guidance, and in collaboration with experts on trauma, we wove contemplative tools and contemporary science into original, evidence-based resilience trainings, which we piloted as the Women’s Wellness Project in 2005. It was the first program to apply the emerging understanding of the effects of vicarious trauma to supporting workers in domestic violence shelters and other social service nonprofits.

In 2009, we convened a groundbreaking multidisciplinary symposium on “Transforming Trauma: Integrating Contemplative Practice, Neuroscience and Cross-Cultural Perspectives,” assembling over 50 leading mental health professionals, neuroscience and clinical researchers, and contemplatives.

In 2010,  we held the first international Wellness and Resilience Training for humanitarian aid workers and human rights activists in Dublin, Ireland. Participants included Red Cross International, Doctors without Borders, Save the Children, and other groups. Following the success of this training, we conducted a feasibility study to determine the need for and viability of our program concept in the broader international humanitarian aid sector.

In 2013,  the project was re-named Contemplative-Based Resilience. Over the next six years, in addition to conducting CBR trainings for humanitarian aid workers at the Garrison Institute in New York, we also conducted trainings in Jordan and Rwanda, proving that CBR tools were effective for people working in the direst conditions.

Meanwhile, starting in 2011 Sharon Salzberg created and co-led a series of annual “People Who Care For People: Tools for Resiliency” retreats for caregivers and helping professionals in the US. When the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person events in 2020, Sharon and CBR faculty members created virtual guided practices for caregivers via a free, downloadable Care for Caregivers app. The app featured short guided practices easily done on breaks or between shifts. Another CBR app created on the AWARIS platform translated CBR practices into Ukrainian for use by humanitarian aid workers responding to the war in Ukraine.

In Spring 2021, following the launch of her new book Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, Sharon Salzberg again partnered with the Institute to create a six-week live online course teaching contemplative resilience tools to social activists and changemakers. It featured guest speakers from the field in conversation with Sharon and brought together hundreds of activists from diverse change fields.

Later that year we delivered online and in-person CBR trainings to non-profits in our region under a grant from the Westchester Community Foundation. In 2022 we offered CBR to  Congressional staff through House Center for Well-Being.

As a result of this work, contemplative-based resilience is now established as an important toolkit for helping professionals, and a growing network of people and organizations working to integrate them into the culture of these professions.

In view of the vast need and demand, the CBR Project now offers a faculty course to train CBR trainers so as to multiply CBR’s delivery capacity.  We also offer leadership courses for non-profit leaders who can help their organizations adopt CBR tools. As CBR embarks on its third decade, we continue to dedicate ourselves to serving people and organizations who dedicate themselves to serving others.