LOVING ROCK
“Your role is to be a loving rock, so another person can push against you and pull against you, and you stay rooted in love.”
—Ram Dass
Karma Yoga Training Program
How do we do this?
How do we open our hearts to suffering? How do we support our communities on their spiritual paths? How do we show up for the world? How do we tell the truth with love?
This is like a yoga teacher training, except centered around an aspect of karma yoga, the yoga of selfless service. Rather than assisting someone into a physical pose, loving rocks provide a foundation for our friends and communities to blossom into who they really are.
The goal is to strengthen skills, compassion, and presence within the community and to de-professionalize our natural helping impulse, and it is a central praxis of Sacred Community:
Sacred Community awakening itself through compassionate action.
This two-part, 14-month online certificate program is designed for compassionate beings who see service as a core element of their spiritual path and feel called to deepen their ability to be a “loving rock” for themselves and others on their spiritual journeys.
INTRODUCTORY COURSE
The first half of this training is a 7-month introductory course titled “How to be a Loving Rock.” It runs from March–September of 2026 and will meet on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month at 5pm PT/8pm ET.
COURSE BEGINS IN:
Hi, my name is Sitaram Dass
I spent my formative years in my mid 20s as a caregiver for my spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, who showed me the path of Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of service and devotion.
One day he was giving a talk to a group of end-of-life caregivers, and he said the following words: “Your job is to be a loving rock, so the dying person can push against you and pull against you, and you stay rooted in love.”
In that moment, every hair on my body stood on end, and a spontaneous thought arose in my mind— This is what I want to do with my entire life!
I spent the next 15 years trying to figure that out— How do I become a loving rock? This journey has led me to places like hospices, hospitals, homeless shelters, psychiatric facilities, prisons, jails, group homes, meditation retreats, sufi zikrs, kirtans, yoga trainings, and eventually to get my master in social work and become a licensed therapist.
In many ways I am still figuring out what it means to be a loving rock, but I also realize that I have gained skills along the way that others may find useful for their own journeys. And, I see the sharing of these skills as the leading edge of this ongoing inquiry— How do I become a loving rock?
This program has developed from listening to the needs of the SCP community, and it seems to have grown naturally from the seeds of SCP’s core values, vision, and mission. I am excited to offer this training along with the help of some dear friends and wise elders.
Guest Lecturers
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Swapnil Abrol (he/him) will be a guest teacher for the Dream Logic module in the Advanced Course.
He discovered the Bhakti tradition through a formal Amazonian shamanic apprenticeship. Through connecting with Maharajji, he found himself returning to his once neglected Hindu roots. Now following the path of Bhakti yoga, he deepens his practice through devotional musical expression. Also an active participant in the world of business, Swapnil enjoys learning new ways of bringing love and compassion into worldly situations.
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Steven “Stever” Dallmann, PhD will be a guest teacher for the Practice module in the Part 1 Course.
He is a spiritual practitioner, writer, teacher, and licensed psychotherapist. In 2008, he founded the non-profit Liberation Institute in San Francisco, a community organization with an innovative model of offering mental health services to the entire community regardless of income. Stever currently resides and practices on the island of Maui in Hawaii, from where he continues to guide the ever expanding Liberation Institute and is deeply involved in Hanuman Maui (The Ram Dass Loving Awareness Sanctuary), Aloha in Action, and various community and writing projects. steverdallmann.com
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Pavan Das (M. Ceurvorst) (he/him) will be a guest teacher for the Loving Awareness module in the Part 1 Course.
He is a community organizer, multi-media artist, and nonprofit leader. He resides on Maui, where he serves on the board of Hanuman Maui: Ram Dass Loving Awareness Sanctuary. His time with spiritual luminaries like Ram Dass and Thich Nhat Hanh informs his commitment to cultivating a lived spirituality through which to effect social change. His service projects aim to foster resilience and prosociality in individuals, groups and communities through the skillful application of contemplative and devotional practices. pavandas.com
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Beverly Hsu (she/they) will be an expressive arts facilitator throughout the course.
Beverly is here to make art and delight in God—in all their forms. Inspired and guided by Ram Dass’s teaching that “social action happens heart to heart to heart,” she is exploring how we connect hearts through art, conscious design, and service. Beverly is currently in a M.A. program for expressive arts therapy and mental health counseling. Some of her ideas and creations are shared at beverlyhsu.com ✨
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Anna Le (she/they) will be a guest teacher for the Companioning module in the Part 1 Course.
She is a Vietnamese-American, Bay Area native, and psychotherapist. She is a Bhakta, student of Ram Dass, and devotee of Neem Karoli Baba “Maharajji”. She utilizes compassion-based practices, mindfulness, and various spiritual modalities through a trauma-informed lens to heal others. She is interested in alleviating collective suffering and aiding in collective liberation. She holds a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Sonoma State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from University California, Davis.
Course Schedule
Part 1: How to be a Loving Rock
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What does it mean to be a loving rock? How do we want to show up in the world and in our lives? What intentions do we want to set for this course? What commitments do we want to make?
Besides our individual commitments, we will all read over and explore SCP’s central values and ethics statement. While engaging in this course, each of us will commit to living into these values through contemplation, inquiry, and daily action.
We will also:
Read and study the SCP invocation
Meet your new cohort
Get acquainted with the online class portal
Receive the syllabus
Sign up for first spiritual support session
Classes
3/5 - Orientation
3/19 - Opening ritual and ethics vows
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A loving rock is someone who can rest in a loving awareness while present with others. In order to practice this, we begin with the study and experience of the nature of Loving Awareness.
Classes
4/9 - Small group discussion and guest lecture with Pavan Das
4/23 - Monthly class and Q&A with Sitaram Dass
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If we want to change, transform, or deepen, we need to actively cultivate the skills and values we want to embody. In this module we will:
Deepen study into various contemplative and devotional practices
Make a personal commitment to practice, and be assigned an accountability partner so we can help each other honor our commitments together.
Classes
5/14 - Small group discussion and guest lecture with Stever Dallman
5/28 - Monthly class and Q&A with Sitaram Dass
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To be a loving rock, we first need to learn to tend to ourselves. As the invocation states, we do this by “being mindful of our thoughts, feelings, triggers, and motivations and by leaning into authenticity, vulnerability, and courage.” By learning skills to tend to the self, we can see clearly when we get caught, learn to let go, and return to our loving presence.
Increase personal mindfulness and awareness skills of our body-heart-mind so we can be truly present with others.
Learn our own triggers and develop a personal “operating and troubleshooting manual” so we can deepen awareness of our habitual responses and how to best respond
Classes
6/11 - Small group discussion and guest lecture
6/25 - Monthly class and Q&A with Sitaram Dass
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As the SCP Invocation states, “We tend to each other through attentive, compassionate, non-judgmental listening, by letting go of the desire to fix others or give unsolicited advice, and by leading with appreciation and curiosity.”
In this module, we will learn:
The “microskills” of how to be a loving rock
Reflective listening skills
Mindful and heartful listening
Companioning not fixing
Classes
7/9 - Listening “microskills” with Anna Le
7/23 - Monthly class and Q&A with Sitaram Dass
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In this final 4-hour training on the SCP model of spiritual support, we will learn a model of support that integrates the concepts and skills of this course.
What does it mean to be a spiritual friend?
How to witness both humanity and divinity and create an allowance for both to emerge
Nishkam Karma- service without attachment
Practice giving and receiving spiritual support with a cohort member.
Classes
8/6 - Spiritual Support Training P. 1
8/20 - Spiritual Support Training P. 2
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For the final module of this introductory course:
Graduation ceremony and ritual
Reflect on our journey
Set intentions and make commitments for our life moving forward
Students will have the opportunity to sign up for the continuing "Advanced Course.”
Classes
9/24 - Final class and graduation ritual
Part 2: The Advanced Course
*Exact dates to be announced at a later time
*Requires prerequisite Part 1 Course to attend
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At SCP, we see being a loving rock as someone who can tend to the “five things” outlined in the invocation: ourselves, each other, the group, the world, and the shared presence unifying it all.
In this module we will “tend to the group” by learning and practicing group facilitation skills. We will learn group facilitation in the model of the SCP Satsang Hang. This will grant us the skills needed to facilitate a wide variety of groups. It will also increase our capacity to be a good group member. Whether we are at the table with friends, attending a small group discussion at a spiritual retreat, or actively facilitating a support group, this module will better prepare us to be loving rocks in the many group settings of our lives.
Four-hour training on how to be a loving rock in a group setting
Learn group facilitation skills
Practice facilitation of an SCP “Satsang Hang.”
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How to show up for grief- for our friends, for our communities, and for our own personal lives.
Because grief is so central to the human experience, we have a dedicated module on it. Below are some of the words that are read before each of SCP’s monthly grief circles.
All grief is valid, but no grief is the same. From the cataclysmic to the mundane, from the personal to the global, from the supported to the rough initiation, grief has different needs at different moments. What works for me may not work for you.
Grief is communal. Sometimes we may need to process grief in solitude, but even that is made possible by a community of care. Other times we have a deep need to share and be witnessed.
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The SCP Invocation states, “We tend to the world by acknowledging we are not separate from collective sorrow, collective aid, or systemic influences associated with race, class, gender, sexuality, or ability.”
In this module, we will:
Ask, What does it mean to be a loving rock in the face of the world’s suffering?
Explore the nature of power, privilege, and intersecting oppressions
Inspect personal bias
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For many of us, it is even easier to be a loving rock in the midst of suffering than it is in the midst of conflict.
In this module, we will explore:
How to stand compassionately yet firmly in our values
How to set healthy boundaries without manipulating or shutting us off from others
How to share difficult truths with kindness
How to tell the truth with love
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Although not necessary, the spiritual path often intersects with transpersonal experiences, altered states of consciousness, and subtle planes of existence. Learning to explore and integrate these in skillful ways can enhance our path and our ability to be a loving rock for others.
In this module, we will explore:
How to skillfully navigate non-ordinary realities and nonlinear thinking.
How to integrate reality-shaking experiences into our daily lives.
Staying grounded in the void
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The final training for the course, in this module we will:
Synthesize previous concepts into the model of SCP spiritual support
How to identify and work with common patterns of being “stuck” on the spiritual path
identifying the various “stages of change” so we can be present as a loving rock no matter where someone is at on their journey
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For the final module of the course:
Graduation ceremony and ritual
Reflect on our journey
Set intentions and make commitments for our life moving forward
Monthly Time Commitment
It is estimated that this course requires 10 hours of time each month. This can vary and it also depends on your own personal commitment. A sample breakdown of a given month is as follows:
2-hour class
2-hour reflection groups, partner exercises, or guest lectures
2-4 Satsang Hangs (1 hour each)
2-3 hours of personal study (reading, listening to audio, or watching videos)
1 hour of homework through online discussion board
Daily personal practice
This program entails…
Classes & Curriculums
Monthly lectures, Q&As, and trainings
Small reflection groups and partner exercises
Course materials for personal study with online Discord for discussion
A free pdf of the upcoming book on Loving-Awareness
Personal Development
Receiving an individual spiritual support session with Sitaram Dass
Attending regular “Satsang Hang” spiritual support groups
Accountability for personal practice and reflection
Skills Training
Personal practice
Partner exercises
Spiritual peer support—giving and receiving
Group facilitation practice
Nishkam Karma
Souls not roles
Mindful and heartful listening
Honoring silence
Companioning not fixing
Healthy boundaries
Transcendence and Imminence
Learning and Practice
Apprenticing grief
Divinity within humanity
Cultural humility
Power, privilege, and intersecting oppressions
Traversing nonordinary reality and nonlinear thinking
Geting “stuck” on the path
Stages of change
Course Registration
In line with SCP Values, this is a sliding-scale course with scholarships available for those in need.
Part 1 of this course is a 7-month, 140-hour certificate course, and the sliding-scale cost is between $500-1000. We kindly ask people to pay at the highest rate they can afford.
Need a scholarship? At SCP, we want to support everyone’s spiritual path of service. If you feel called to join this training but are unable to pay the minimum amount, consider applying for a scholarship.