A complete method of training in the resilience of mind, heart, and body we need to sustain lives of well-being, engagement and purpose in our interdependent world.


Overview

CBRT is an 8-week evidence-based modular training that teaches the science and skills people need to reduce stress, build resilience, and cultivate lives of well-being, engagement, and purpose in our ever more interdependent world. It empowers people to develop a more resilient mind, heart, and body by combining skills taught separately in other trainings—mindfulness, compassion, imagery, and breath-work—into one step-by-step introduction, providing the most cost-effective way of educating lay and professional groups in the full spectrum of mind/body research and contemplative skills.

This course is for anyone seeking a comprehensive training method for building resilience, living mindfully and compassionately, cultivating well-being and transforming stress. Resilience is a capacity to bounce back from stress, based on mindfulness and  compassion.  This course supports a life of resilience and thriving.  

Nalanda Institute’s Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) is a complete, evidence-based training in stress-reduction and self-healing developed and tested at the university hospitals of Columbia and Cornell, where it has been offered continuously since 1998. It was developed by Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, Founder and Director of Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, by integrating timeless techniques of contemplative self-regulation from India and Tibet with contemporary breakthroughs in neuroscience, positive psychology, and optimal health. 

Current CBRT Offering

March 26- May 14th, 2025

Live Online - 8 Wednesdays

12:00- 1:30pm ET

Course Information

  • The CBRT curriculum teaches the full spectrum of research-based insights and time-tested self-regulation skills:

    MODULE I: Embracing Suffering with Body Mindfulness

    Bringing mindful awareness to our breathing body helps us reconnect with our inner lives, to embrace the experience of being in a sensitive body, vulnerable to pleasure and pain, and to begin releasing the survival habits of stress, trauma, and reactivity.

    MODULE II: Stopping Reactive Habits with Mindful Sensitivity

    Staying in touch with the raw feel of our inner lives with mindful sensitivity helps us maintain balanced awareness through the ups, downs, and plateaus of pleasant, painful, and neutral experience, to anticipate reactivity, and to replace the urge to avoid or crave with the ease of acceptance and care.

    MODULE III: Breaking Free of Stress with Open Awareness

    Mindful Awareness trains us to cut through the mesh of reactive habits and stress instincts that normally block the full openness and clarity of our human mind. It empowers us to own and awaken the boundless potential for learning, unlearning, freedom and creativity dormant in us all. 

    MODULE IV: Mindful Insight: The Lifelong Path of Self-Healing

    In Mindful Insight we engage our open mind to expose the habits of thinking, feeling, and acting that shape our mindset, empowering our inner therapist to cut the roots of reactivity and grow proactive new ways of being in the world. 

    Intermezzo

    The relation between Mindfulness and Compassion: an integration of the first four weeks with forthcoming modules.

    MODULE V: Disarming Social Stress and Bias with Equal Empathy

    With the basic insights and practices of mindfulness-based self-healing in place, we are prepared to extend that awareness and care out to our interactions with others. Using the practice of Equal Empathy we begin to unlearn the implicit social survival biases and reactive emotions that make all our interactions stressful while deepening and expanding our sense of connection to others.  

    MODULE VI: Healing Reactive Emotions and Beliefs with Self-Compassion

    With more of a sense of our common humanity, we explore where our social stress and suffering comes from, and what can be done to prevent it. Using the practice of Self-Compassion, we learn to view our confused childhood selves with a wise, caring mind and begin to see through our myopic cocoon and inner monologue to reparent ourselves one breath at a time by replacing self-enclosure and self-criticism with the mature insight and care our hearts need to heal, grow, and change. 

    MODULE VII: Cultivating Prosocial Emotions with Wise Give and Take

    As we grow the ability to free our minds of self-limiting biases, emotions and beliefs, we gain access to our full natural potential to expand our circle of positive social engagement. Using the practice of Wise Give and Take, we explore our boundless human potential for care and strengthen our social muscles of love, joy and equanimity, and realize our full human capacity for feeling safe with and deeply connected to others. 

    MODULE VIII: Embodying a Resilient Self and Life with Caring Imagery

    To accelerate the natural process of positive human development we use the power methods based on embodied techniques to progressively grow and own our natural capacities for love, compassion and altruism. Focusing on visualization practice, we take inspiration in real or imagined role models of wise care who enable us to stretch our traumatic sense of self into a fully empowered, resilient and compassionate self.  

  • This course consists of:

    • Eight live online sessions (eight modules and an extra intermezzo module on the platform). Each class includes guided meditations, didactic explanations, and class discussion.

    • Access to course online platform that includes:   

      • Student Manual

      • Course module videos explaining science, practice and course theories, by Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, CBRT Creator.

      • Course videos demonstrating breathwork practices, by Mar Aige, CBRT Teacher

      • Guided Practices

      • Supplemental Reading 

  • I believe in accessibility to my courses. Thus, I offer a sliding scale. Please mindfully consider the option that best suits you.

    Please check dates and times and sign up if you can attend all or most of the sessions. Missing one session is sometimes unavoidable, but if possible, this should not be the first or last class. Missed classes are non-refundable.

    Cancellation Policy

    A full refund will be returned if you notify Victoria Fontana of your cancellation prior to the start of and up to the first session. There is no refund for cancellation as of session 2. Participants needing to withdraw after course start (session 2 or beyond) will have the option to attend a future cohort within the same calendar year (from course start date), if available, only upon written request before their original course ends.

What participants have to say…

Fair-Access Pricing

Please select the tier that aligns with your current financial situation, helping us maintain fair and inclusive access for everyone.

Supporter Rate

For those with ample resources who would like to subsidize spots for those in our community with limited means.

$425.00

Standard Fair Rate

For those with sufficient financial means to pay the fair value and help sustain the offering for everyone.

$350.00

Supported Access Rate

For those with limited financial means who would benefit from community-supported pricing.

$280.00

If you would like more information about CBRT, or if you would like to offer a program in your organization or group, feel free to reach out. I’d be glad to chat!

A woman named Victoria with short hair, wearing a white shirt, stands confidently against a neutral background.

The Teacher

Victoria Fontana, MSc, MA, PCC, is a graduate of Nalanda Institute’s Contemplative Psychotherapy Program in New York and a Nalanda Certified CBRT Teacher. Victoria holds an M.Sc. in Mindfulness-Based Approaches from Bangor University, Wales and an M.A. in Education from the University of Washington. In addition to the CBRT, she holds an advanced level Bangor University Certificate of Competence to teach MBSR and MBCT

Victoria has been an educator for over 20 years, currently an adjunct professor at IE University, where she teaches for the Center for Health, Well-Being and Happiness. She teaches Mindfulness and Compassion both privately and for the Mindfulness and Health Institute. She is also an Executive & Leadership Coach at Harvard Business School, in Higher Ed and other global organizations.

Read more


Research and Application

Research studies conducted at Weill Cornell Medicine and Albert Einstein College of Medicine with women recovering from breast cancer found that CBRT reduces biomarkers of stress, improves quality of life, lowers social-emotional and cultural role stress, enhances resilience and overall functioning, and markedly decreases post-traumatic symptoms including intrusive thinking and traumatic avoidance. Ongoing studies of the training are underway.

Nalanda Institute offers a year-long certification program that prepares lay and professional participants to teach CBRT.


About Nalanda Institute

Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science teaches people in all walks of life timeless contemplative skills informed by current neuropsychology to empower themselves and others to cultivate a wise mind, warm heart, and altruistic way of life in our interdependent world.


You may also be interested in…