How was MBCL developed?
Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL) was developed by Erik van den Brink and Frits Koster in the Netherlands. Learn why they created this follow-on programme and meet its founders.
The development of MBCL
Erik van den Brink and Frits Koster began developing MBCL in the Netherlands in 2007 while working in mental healthcare. They wanted to offer a compassion programme for people who had completed MBSR, MBCT or a similar mindfulness course and wished to deepen their practice.
Some participants valued what they had learned in their mindfulness course but found it difficult to bring those skills into daily life. They wanted more support in responding to pain, stress and suffering, as well as to persistent patterns of self-criticism. Finding a balance between caring for others and caring for themselves was another important theme.
Erik and Frits developed MBCL to offer explicit compassion practices in a trauma-sensitive way. The programme builds on participants’ existing mindfulness skills and invites them to explore how they relate to themselves and others with greater kindness and care.
MBCL was first offered in mental healthcare. It has since been taken up by healthcare professionals and people working in other fields.
Founders of MBCL
Erik van den Brink
Co-founder of MBCL
Erik studied medicine in Amsterdam and trained and workedas a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in the UK. After returning to the Netherlands in 1995, he worked in mental healthcare in Groningen. He co-founded the Center for Integrative Psychiatry and also worked in psycho-oncology.
Erik has long been interested in approaches that support people’s capacity to help themselves. He was among the early practitioners to bring mindfulness and compassion-based approaches into mental healthcare. His work draws on a longstanding personal meditation practice in Vipassana, Zen and secular forms, and he was trained by founding teachers in MBSR/MBCT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and Interpersonal Mindfulness (IMP).
Together with Frits Koster, he developed MBCL and wrote several publications about the programme. He also teaches at mindfulness training institutes in Europe and beyond.
Frits Koster
Co-founder of MBCL
Frits is a meditation teacher and a senior teacher of MBSR, MBCT and Interpersonal Mindfulness. He spent six years as a Buddhist monk, studying Buddhist psychology in monasteries in Southeast Asia. He has written several books on Buddhist psychology, some of which have been translated into English.
Together with Erik van den Brink, Frits developed MBCL and wrote books about the programme. He teaches MBCL courses, retreats and teacher training internationally, both in person and online.
Frits also teaches meditation retreats with his wife, Jetty Heynekamp. With Victoria Norton, he edited Mindful Communication (Routledge, 2023). He works with Zohair Elabd on training in mindful communication and developed Mindfulness-Based Training in Forgiveness (MBTF) with Joyce Cordus.
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