Tend, Gather and Grow
Compassion courses and healing spaces — so you don’t have to do it alone.
What do I need?"
A simple, powerful question.
Yet many of us struggle to ask ourselves what we need.
We push through our days on autopilot. We run ourselves into the ground trying to "have it all".
But there is another way...
I am here to guide, teach, and support you as you learn to ask yourself: What do I need?
And I will hold space for you, as you learn to listen to your heart answer.
Come exactly as you are.
You are enough.
Our offerings
Weekly Group Practice for all levels
Regular group practice in a safe, supportive environment.
Through reflective exercises, meditations, and group sharing, we tend to our relationship with ourselves, gather inner strength, and grow from a place of care.
These meditation sessions are gentle and inviting, intended to provide you a healing space to connect with and care for yourself.
- Weekly meditation class: Thursdays 17:45 - 18:30 at Yogaverset, Ringsted --> Sign-up here
Copenhagen location, dates and times - Coming soon
8-week Self-Compassion Course
The 8-Week Mindful Self-Compassion course is a supportive group programme designed to help you break patterns of self-judgement or criticism, while guiding you to form a healthy, supportive relationship with yourself. Learn to treat yourself like you would a good friend.
- Date & Times: Tues 19 May - Tues 7 July, 12:00 - 14:45, and Sat 20 June, 10:00 - 14:00.
- Location: Copenhagen, venue TBC.
- Group size: 10 maximum
Find more information and details below.
Send an email to info@tendgather-grow.com or use our contact form to register your interest.
What is Mindful Self-Compassion?
Have you noticed that you are far kinder and more supportive to your friends, family or co-workers than to yourself?
Have you struggled with feelings of shame, anxiety, disappointment, or frustration with yourself?
Do you criticise yourself for not being good enough? Clever enough? Good-looking enough? Brave enough?
Does it seem like everyone else has their life together, while you are struggling to keep up?
You are not alone.
We all experience some form of self-criticism or judgement throughout our lives. But when self-criticism becomes a pattern, it can stop us from living our lives the way we want.
It can even harm our relationships with others.
But there is another way.
Mindful Self-Compassion involves responding to yourself in the same supportive and understanding way you would with a good friend.
Learning to be compassionate to yourself, you are kinder when you have a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don't like about yourself.
You become more resilient.
You learn how to take care of yourself.
Not because you are broken. Simply because you feel bad.
When a child has the flu, their parent will care for them even though they know they can't cure them. What if we could do the same for ourselves?
Mindful Self-Compassion teaches you to treat yourself with tenderness when you experience pain and hardship.
It teaches you to show up for yourself in tough times by realising that you are struggling, and giving yourself what you need in that moment.
Mindful Self-Compassion is a teachable skill.
You can learn it.
Through the 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion course, you will learn how to notice when you are stuck or suffering, and how to give yourself what you need to move through that difficulty without judgement.
Through exercises, meditations, individual reflection, and group discussions, you will learn:
- how to stop being so hard on yourself
- how to handle difficult emotions with greater ease
- how to motivate yourself with encouragement rather than criticism
- how to transform difficult relationships
- the theory and scientific research behind mindful self-compassion
- how to become your own self-compassion teacher
Why learn the skill of self-compassion? Is it worth it?
The 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion course includes: conceptual learning, meditations, and informal self-compassion practices designed to be used in daily life.
From the very first session you will gain practical tools to apply immediately.
These tools are designed to enhance wellbeing, reduce stress, and improve feelings of self-worth.
Thousands of research studies show that people who develop the skill of Self-Compassion are more likely to:
- Feel happy, optimistic and satisfied with their lives
- Appreciate their bodies and feel satisfied with their appearance
- Demonstrate higher levels of emotional intelligence
- Show grit, motivation and determination to meet important goals
- Focus on learning and personal growth
- Cope with work challenges and feel more competent and effective at their jobs
- Maintain healthy work-life balance
- Draw healthy boundaries and say no
- Be forgiving and compassionate toward others
- Feel authentic and experience intimacy in relationships with others
- Sleep well and have a strong immune system
How is the 8-week course structured?
All sessions last 2 hours 45 mins, including a break. The only exception is the Retreat session which is 4 hours and takes place mid-way through the course. There are 9 sessions in total including the retreat session.
Participants are encouraged to practice for 15-30 minutes daily throughout the course. The more you practice in daily life, the deeper and more habitual your self-compassion skills will become.
All sessions are a combination of experiential, embodied learning, and teacher-led dialogue and group discussion. The majority of learning happens through your direct experience of the practices.
Session 1: Introduction to Mindful Self-Compassion
Objectives: Meet your teacher and the group, understand what MSC is and what it isn't, explore the link between self-compassion and wellbeing, build a foundational self-compassion practice.
Session 2: Practicing Mindfulness
Objectives: Understand and experience mindfulness as a core element of self-compassion, explore emotional regulation through focusing attention and warmth.
Session 3: Bringing in Kindness
Objectives: Understand and experience the difference between kindness and compassion, build a foundational loving-kindness practice using phrases.
Session 4: Discovering your Compassionate Voice
Objectives: Deepen loving-kindness practice, explore your relationship to your self-compassion learning journey, begin motivating with encouragement instead of criticism.
Session 5: Living Deeply
Objectives: Cultivate and deepen compassion for yourself and others, discover and open to your core values, practice listening compassionately to others.
Retreat session (4 hours)
Objectives: Discover the power of silent practice, experience mindfulness and self-compassion as an integrated whole, explore savouring of present-moment experience.
Session 6: Meeting Difficult Emotions
Objectives: Use mindfulness and self-compassion to experience difficult emotions without over-identifying or judging yourself, experience how shame can be released with self-compassion.
Session 7: Exploring Challenging Relationships
Objectives: Identify your unmet needs in relationships and learn to meet them with self-compassion, experience how self-compassion can help in the context of care-giving.
Session 8: Embracing Your Life
Objectives: Experience savouring, gratitude and appreciation as a deeply healing and connecting practice, integrate and reflect on your self-compassion journey and how you will take it forward.
Welcome, from your teacher and guide
I'm Maria Schmidt. A Group Facilitator and certified Self-Compassion teacher. I have over a decade of experience guiding individuals and groups through times of transformation, change, and growth.
My inner journey began 15 years' ago when I left my home in the UK and travelled to New Zealand. What began as a holiday turned into a life-long path to healing and wholeness.
I bring several years of hands-on experience in group facilitation. I guide people to learn deeply about their relationship with themself and others, in order to heal and grow. The feeling of kinship and connection that emerges in groups is immensely powerful.
Through teaching the skill of Self-Compassion, I am delighted to share the transformational power it has to heal and nourish people's relationship to themselves, and with those around them. We all need more compassion and care in these challenging, painful times.
It is my calling and honour to create supportive spaces for you to tend to your needs, gather in community, and grow in compassion together.
Are you ready for your inner journey to begin?