Self-Compassion Practices & Resources

Articles

Guided Talks & Meditations

 
 

Mindfulness & Meditation Resources

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation

Being with the Body

Mindful Walking / Walking Meditation

 

PRACTICES TO LIVE BY

Drawing Boundaries (as a radical act of Love)

Research shows that people with the most compassion and generosity for self and others draw the clearest boundaries. If we're feeling burnt out, resentful, angry or depleted, it's very hard to summon compassion and generosity. Resentment can be a canary in the coalmine to ask ourselves, "Where do I need to put a boundary in place?"

PRACTICE: What is ONE boundary you can put in place right now that would support you, restore more of You to You? It could be a boundary of time, physical space, putting one of your priorities first above others. 

You hold… “the wild and ever-young force of imagination that contains intuition and instinct, and the wise elder force of knowledge that holds boundaries and carries the heart of the visionary.” 

 - Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Find & Replace: Permission to Feel What you Feel

PART 1: Replace the word “Selfish” with Self-Sustaining and Self-Honoring

Sometimes the word "Selfish" is used when people talk about doing something for themselves. This can be a zinger for women. Try replacing the word "Selfish" with "Self-sustaining" or "Self-honoring".

Example: 

From - It is ok to be selfish and draw a clear boundary. 

To - It is ok to be self-sustaining and self-honoring and draw a clear boundary.

The analogy of the oxygen mask illustrates this well as does the image of a blood donor with the tap open. It is not "selfish" to put one's oxygen mask on first. It is not selfish to only donate blood to a limit that reserves a healthy, robust amount for our own body. Ultimately (if perhaps unexpectedly), it is the very act of self-sustaining and self-honoring that allows our fullest expression in this world and in turn, expands our capacity to care and show up for others .

PART 2: Either/Ors/Buts with AND. Feel What You Feel and Feel It All.

There is a tendency to feel wrong or guilty if our actual feelings aren't cooperating with what we believe we "should" feel. Every emotion has an intelligence and merits being fully seen and allowed. This practice invites replacing the word “But” with “And” in sentences below to allow our language to make room for all our feelings.

  •  I'm grateful to have my job AND it is incredibly stressful.   

  • I feel grateful for this unprecedented time to be together as a family AND depleted by the expectations and demands of being together all the time.    

  • I am deeply relieved I and my loved ones are safe and well AND I feel _____ (powerless, helpless, enraged, defeated) that life plans I had counted on, hoped for and wanted are canceled or tenuous with uncertainty. 

  • I feel lucky to be enjoying some aspects of this time AND immense sadness for people affected directly by the virus or job loss.   

Emotions are not an either / or AND there is room for it all. Feel what you feel. Unapologetically. 

Fear and scarcity immediately trigger comparison, and even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked. My husband died and that grief is worse than your grief over an empty nest. I’m not allowed to feel disappointed about being passed over for promotion when my friend just found out that his wife has cancer. [ You’re feeling shame your kid's home-schooling is so exasperating?] Please—­that’s a first-­world problem; there are people dying of starvation every minute.  The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough. Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world. The [ER Doctor in New York] doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce. Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us.   - Rising Strong by Brené Brown

Getting Comfortable with Uncomfortable

Many people share the (sometimes searingly) difficult experience of sitting in uncertainty and discomfort. Even a silent lull in a conversation can make us cagey. Our brain does NOT like discomfort, unease or uncertainty and is apt to deliver a fake news story just to give us a tidy sense of closure.

Example: Imagine being in the midst of a testy back and forth exchange on messaging. You deliver a zinger text and look down to see the 3 dots. The person is writing back! And then the 3 dots go away. How many of us would feel comfortable, spacious and full of ease with the disappeared response?  How many of us instantly make up stories and scenarios? (Oh no. I went too far and the person is never going to talk to me again. Or…my retort was so amazing, they are speechless - Boom! Or… I know exactly what they’re going to text back - and when they do, I already know what I’m going to say back!)

In actuality, the person may left to use the restroom, stopped by the vending machine and chatted with a colleague without ever having seen your message. During that time, we have worked ourselves into a twister running monte carlo simulations on what the disappeared dots mean.

The brain is likelier to pick its' favorite hypothesis and runs with it until proven otherwise. Even then, we may be so attached believing the story we made up, we can't even see the fact-based story when it arrives. 

In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown shares her take on riding out difficult emotions when they arise.

“I did an experiment several years ago to see how long the intense, in-the-moment discomfort lasts…I landed on eight seconds. In most situations, there are eight seconds of intense discomfort.. "Oh, my God! It's like riding a bull! You have to make it eight seconds!" So now, when I know something hard is "fixin' to happen,"…. I mean, c'mon. We can do anything for eight seconds, right? The discomfort may linger long after, but the hardest part of the ride has settled down.”

Consider Riding the Bull as a gentle experiment or practice to Get Comfortable with Uncomfortable. Some reflection questions to deepen Riding the Bull Training

  • What thoughts accompany the experience? 

  • What emotion(s) are present? What is their intensity (or subtlety)?

  • What physical sensations arise in the body (e.g. racing heart / slowed heart, warmth / coolness, etc.) Are any sensations more / less prominent in areas of the body?

  • Are there any patterns or insights that surfaced in riding this particular bull? 

NOTE: The invitation is to approach this (and all) practices with a NON -JUDGMENTAL friendliness about what arises. You might imagine yourself and a good friend, arms linked, kindly and curiously checking it out together. 

Fire Burning as Destruction, Purification & Creation Ritual

Fire is an element of destruction, purification and creation. The practice described here includes two invitations offered in a guided Fire-Burning Ritual. This practice is offered as a way to symbolically burn away a limiting belief, story or fear. Next, you cultivate an intention for what you’d like to bring into the space that was cleared. The guidance suggests writing words or an image on a small piece of paper that represent a limiting belief. On another piece of paper write an intention you would like to bring into your life.

Allow each piece of paper to burn* as you say the phrases below.

For letting go of the thoughts, stories and fears that hold you back from being your true self: Dear Universe: I no longer need the lessons that these feelings, things, or circumstances would teach me. If I haven’t already, I intend to learn these lessons in a different way that feels better and opens my heart.

For your intention you wish to cultivate: I invite this intention into my life at this time to serve my highest and best good. I intend that this intention or action will fuel me to be more present, and to keep an open heart.

*Fire FFT: A fire-oriented, in-home practice may need some additional safety measures. Little Herbal Apothecary is a wonderful shop in my town that sells small cauldrons and hand-crafts amazing candles, lotions, soaps, etc. Perhaps order a small cauldron before burning things at home. Fireplaces and candles also do the trick.  

 

Additional Resources

Myths of Self-Compassion - Any of these 5 myths sound familiar? Understanding what gets in the way helps build our capacity for greater self-compassion

Saturday Cartoons on Blame with Brené Brown (3 min)

FFTs (F* First Times) - Unlocking Us Podcast

Expanding Emotional Literacy and Fluency

Mindfulness of Race: Ruth King writes, teaches and speaks about Mindfulness of Race. Ruth has greatly influenced me as a meditation teacher and helped me wake up to the invisibility of white privilege and my role as a white ally in healing systemic racial harm. Her book, Mindful of Race, along with these have deeply impacted me: White Fragility Why it’s so hard for White people to talk about racism by Robin Diangelo and Awakening Together by Larry Yang.

READINGS

Full Excerpt from Beloved by Toni Morrison as spoken by Baby Suggs

When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees….

Love it. Love it Hard.

Excerpt from Confessions of an Innocent Bystander by Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk and writer

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.

Clearing by Martha Postlewaite

The Unbroken by Rashani Rea

The Journey by Mary Oliver

Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

Excerpt from Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

Somewhere in this process you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation they have not.