Emotional Intelligence Four-Week Online Course
“The proof of our emotional intelligence is how much time we spend in the Brahma Viharas”
—Qapel Doug Duncan and Catherine Sensei Pawasarat
The spiritual path is the hardest—yet most worthwhile—path one can undertake. To walk the path and meet our challenges, we need serious sustenance. Joy is a vital treasure that can feed us and put the air under our wings.
In what can be seen as a dark time for our whole planet, joy is vital to cultivate for ourselves and for each other, in our aspiration to benefit all beings. This online course with teacher Catherine Pawasarat Sensei throws open the door to joy, and revitalizes it as a resource for the journey of awakening.
Have you ever said something and watched the other person’s face change—realizing they heard something completely different from what you meant? Or felt a wave of conflicting emotions arise, not knowing whether to suppress them, express them, or somehow transform them?
From one perspective, we could say that conflicting emotions are the source of all of our suffering. Difficult situations can arise, but if we don’t have conflicting emotions about them, we don’t suffer so much—or at all.
This course offers something rare: the chance to learn how – from the meditator and Dharma practitioner perspective – to work skillfully with emotional risings. It aims to help you show up in kinder, more compassionate, and wiser ways in the world. And one of the side benefits? You’re generally a happier person.
July 26 – August 16, 2026
Sunday morning online classes 9:30-11:00am MT, july 26, Aug 2 and Aug 9
Saturday & Sunday August 15-16 – 9:30am and 2:30pm (approx 60-90 min)
focus area
Buddhism
Psychology
practice
Course & Optional
Home Retreat
Duration
Four
Weeks
Day/Time
Sundays from 9:30-11am MT
format
In-Person or
Online
Beyond Spiritual Bypassing
Here’s the truth many of us meditators need to hear: a lot of us use our meditation practices to bypass conflicting emotions, which is different than transcending them.
In this course, we’ll look at the difference between bypassing and transcending these emotions, and discover how to use conflicting emotions skillfully to propel us further on the path. What if those difficult emotions weren’t obstacles, but fuel?
The Year of Transformation
2026 is the year of transformation here at Planet Dharma. That means growth, skill development, transcendence.
Think about it: how many of your challenges right now trace back to a miscommunication? A text message that landed wrong? A conversation where you felt completely misunderstood?
We could likely say that 90% of our problems are related to misunderstandings in communication. Does that resonate?
Communication isn’t just a valuable skill—it’s vital. To be able to communicate something in a way where the other person hears what you mean, in a wholesome way, that’s a real, very high skill. Because they can hear something completely different.
When more of us are able to communicate that way, it will undoubtedly improve the quality of life for all beings on the planet. The more effectively and wholesomely we learn to communicate, the better off the Earth is.
So when we talk about emotional intelligence, we’re talking about the Bodhisattva vow—and an important aspect of ecological restoration for all.
What is Emotional Intelligence, Really?
Emotional intelligence has a lot to do with being true to ourselves, having integrity, and being able to communicate in that integrity with others in skillful ways—and the ability to receive the same.
With the development of emotional intelligence of this kind, if someone behaves or speaks in a way that’s not so skillful, we’re able to receive it in a way that’s skillful. That is a form of wholesome transformation.
Think of it as sending skillfully and receiving skillfully, regardless of what the other person is doing. And of course, in our own development, we endeavor to support others to be or become skillful too.
Body, Speech, and Mind
In this course, we’ll look at working with emotions to help us with the Speech aspect of Body, Speech, and Mind. Using the Himalayan Buddhist perspective, the Body is located in the forehead, Speech in the throat, and Mind in the heart.
Emotions are located in the throat too, so they relate to wholesome speech and self-expression—which relates to creativity!
When we talk about the Body, Speech and Mind of the Buddha, the deity Vajrapani represents the Body, Chenrezi—the realm of compassion—represents Speech, and Manjushri represents Mind. Thus, the skillfulness of our compassion pertains very closely to our Speech.
Your Unique Line of Development
Here’s something liberating to consider: we can think of Emotional Intelligence as its own Line of Development in the Integral model.
You might be brilliant cognitively, advanced spiritually, or gifted artistically or somatically—but not so high in the Emotional Intelligence line. This course is meant to offer us all resources to grow in the Emotional Line of Development.
Conversely, someone might be high in the Emotional Line but not so high in the others. This course might give them a chance to shine and become more aware of growth edges!
What to Expect
Catherine Sensei will offer exercises for students to undertake with their Sanghas in the weeks between classes.
As you engage with the course materials, notice: What arisings are coming up for you? Is there emotional content? What kind of emotional content do you feel prepared to transform, to allow the arising to pass away? Do you have the skills to transform it into something generative?
The final weekend of the course will be a flash retreat that will include exercises for students. The flash retreat registration is a separate registration.
Deepening Your Learning
The course links beautifully to Catherine’s Sensei weekend retreat in September 2026 on the north and south nodes in AstroDharma. The nodes work reveals the deeper patterns at play, while emotional intelligence gives you the skills to navigate them skillfully. We strongly recommend taking them together for a complete approach to working with yourself and others.
Course Texts
We’ll draw on these texts and other sources:
Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?
A scientific dialogue with the Dalai Lama
Narrated by Daniel Goleman
Emotional Intelligence
By Daniel Goleman
Course Schedule
July 26 – August 16, 2026
Class Times (Mountain Time)
- Sunday July 26 – 9:30-11am
- Sunday August 2 – 9:30-11am
- Sunday August 9 – 9:30-11am
- Saturday & Sunday August 15-16 – 9:30am and 2:30pm (approx 60-90 min)
The formal and participatory teachings for this course will occur on Sundays, with a separate registration for the Saturday-Sunday flash retreat on the fourth weekend. Class times are estimates and may change slightly.
We encourage you to connect with Sangha outside of class times to discuss and deepen your learning of the material.
Flash Retreat Weekend: August 15-16
To deepen and integrate your experience, the final (fourth) weekend during the course will also be a Flash Retreat (August 15-16), offered by a separate registration, which will include exercises to engage in. This can be done at home, or with us at Clear Sky Meditation Centre in Eastern British Columbia.
Formal group sessions will be held at these approximate times:
- Flash Retreat morning session: 9:30am MT
- Flash Retreat afternoon session: 2:30pm MT
- Sessions will be 60-90 mins in length.
Meet the Teachers
Catherine Pawasarat Sensei
Catherine Pawasarat Sensei is a contemporary Dharma teacher, attendant, consort, co-teacher via Planet Dharma and co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center. In addition to Buddhist philosophy and its applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living and universal spiritual tools including transpersonal astrology and Japanese arts.
She trained daily with Acariya Doug Duncan from 1998 until his passing in 2024, in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that is rare in the modern West. She received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 2003.
FAQs
Dana:
You may have come across this elsewhere in the form of “pay from the heart.” Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity.” With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. It’s our joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match our time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.
The dharma has been built on generosity. No one is excluded for lack of funds. However, it is also extremely beneficial to give as much as you are able.
Typically people give in a range of $120-$500 USD for a course.
As we’re committed to ensuring everyone has access to the Dharma, please feel comfortable to give less if you are not financially secure. Another form of giving dāna is to offer service, and if you are interested in providing support in a non-financial way, we invite you to contact us.
If you are financially secure, we invite you to generate merit by providing more financial support to the Triple Gem. Contributions like these make the difference in supporting our teachers, teachings, and center.
Learn more about the practice of dāna here.
In a traditional model of in-person teachings, a retreat center or urban meditation center invites teachers to visit. In these cases the centers have infrastructure and organization costs to cover, which might be covered by an admin fee. For the teaching itself, dāna to the teachers is offered in a bowl. This honors both the sustainability of the teachers, and of the supporting center.
We’ve tried to recreate this approach online. The teachers’ time and the teaching themselves are offered on the basis of dāna, separate to the admin fee. With our dāna offering we are making a direct gift of generosity to the teachers to support their teachings and livelihood.
The admin fee* goes to support the infrastructure and organization necessary to support them to teach. As anyone with an online business will know, the costs of setting up good infrastructure to support effective teaching and connection online can be surprising.
Our admin fee changes based on the date of registration.
Register four + weeks prior: $80
Register two to four weeks prior: $100
Register less than two weeks prior: $120
*We also do not wish to exclude anyone from the Teachings, so if you are not currently in a financial position to afford the admin fee, please contact the course Registrar via registrar@planetdharma.com so we can support you to attend.
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Below are a few of the work and benefits that your admin fee payment is supporting:
- High speed internet (to allow interviews and classes on-line)
- Online class systems (Zoom)
- Registration / admin systems (Eventbrite, Basecamp)
- Communication systems to keep everyone informed, share connection details, teachings and other resources (Mailchimp)
- Online storage (for example, Dropbox, to allow us to let students watch recordings, and to store and share selected teachings in other forms such as podcasts and video later, and Amazon cloud)
- Quality sound, video and editing equipment (both for live teachings and to provide good enough quality for later sharing as podcasts and video). We are regularly updating our equipment to improve your user experience.
- Online calendar booking system to allow students to book interviews
- Website hosting and maintenance for sharing upcoming courses, teachings, blogs and other resources.
We welcome any questions. May all our efforts be sustainable, abundant and for the benefit of all beings!
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