Self-Compassion in Meditation: Part 3 of the Series ‘How to Start Your Own Meditation Practice’
In this post:
The Wing of Compassion in Mindfulness
The Qualities of Self-Compassion
Self-Compassion in Practice
Tips & Inspiration
Video of Guided Self-Compassion Meditation Practice (it’s at the bottom of the page if you want to go straight there)
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The Wing of Compassion in Mindfulness
What often draws people to starting or strengthening a meditation practice is a moment of personal crisis or challenge: work or life stress (or both) have become overwhelming, a relationship or job has ended, we are struck with an illness, or the world has been hit with a pandemic. Moments like these can reveal just how much inner strength it actually takes to live this life, and because meditation is often ‘advertised’ as being a practice that can help us build inner reservoirs of calm & resilience, people may come to meditation in these times of crisis. This is a wonderful thing, because, as I mentioned in Part 2 of this series, meditation has 2 wings to support us through times of struggle: the wings of wisdom and compassion - and it is specifically self-compassion that can be the key to moving forward through suffering, and beyond it.
Even if struggle or crisis has not been the catalyst for leading one to start meditation, very soon into our practice, we can become aware of just how much the mind can judge itself - labeling our thoughts, our actions, and even ourselves as good or bad. Just how much we can blame, shame, guilt and criticize ourselves can become all too clear when we sit in stillness and listen to our thoughts. For these reasons & more, I think it is important to speak now, early in this series, about how self-compassion is such a vital part of the meditation experience. The origins of meditation are actually steeped in a tradition where compassion for self and other are assumed as a given - but this is not so for us now. Our modern culture has tended to focus more on projecting out a perfect image of ourselves, and when we don’t live up to it - even in our own mind’s eye - we can get lost in disappointment, self-judgement, possibly spiraling down even into feelings of unworthiness. Meditation can be a wonderful doorway to profoundly changing our relationship with ourselves precisely because compassion for self and other are an inherent part of the practice.
The Qualities of Self-Compassion
Self-compassion has been studied and researched quite a bit lately, and how it can be a vehicle for personal healing & transformation. Researcher & professor Kristen Neff & clinical psychologist Chris Germer have done extensive investigation & publication in this area. They describe self-compassion as having 3 parts: 1. mindfulness, 2. kindness, 3. common humanity. I will briefly describe below what they mean by these 3 qualities, but if you are interested in this topic I highly recommend that you investigate the work of these 2 brilliant people further.
With mindfulness, we cultivate a non-judgemental, spacious awareness, so that we can acknowledge when negative thoughts arise, without grabbing onto them as absolute truth, or setting them in stone. We acknowledge that blame, shame, guilt, criticism, disappointment of ourselves happens from time to time, but we breathe with this experience, knowing that our thoughts are not permanent - not even our negative ones - especially if we give them space & breath, to transform & evolve.
Kindness means that we understand that holding ourselves up to a perfect ideal, is neither realistic nor kind.
We recognise that we are doing the best we can with what we are given, and we are gentle with ourselves. This is where we can start to treat ourselves as we would a dear one, because hopefully, we are.
Common humanity means that we recognise that we, like all human beings, make mistakes, and that our plans & desires don’t always realise as we would like. Common humanity also helps describe how compassion is different from pity. With self-compassion, we treat ourselves with kindness & respect. We don’t look down on ourselves, like ‘poor me’, when things don’t turn out as we had hoped. Self-compassion is also different from self-esteem, which can often be based on our merit - like somehow there might be occasions where we deserve to receive compassion and other times when we don’t. When we give compassion to ourselves, it is unconditional. It is given simply because we are a human being
A 4th component of compassion is the desire to relieve the suffering that we are feeling. This is what differentiates compassion from empathy. While both have the factor warmth & kindness, compassion has the wish to help ourselves (and others) with our struggle. This is where wisdom, the other wing of mindfulness, can come into play, as we contemplate what compassionate action to take for ourselves. This is not about how to ‘fix’ a problem or ‘make the suffering go away’, rather it is about how we can wisely & kindly support ourselves through inevitable challenges. Often the wisest actions are simply acknowledging & honouring our thoughts & feelings, and allowing them to be here, as well as deepening our self-care practices, so that our inner reservoirs of resilience & patience are as full as possible.
Through this whole process, we learn how to become our best ally, rather than our worst enemy. We learn that taking away our sufferng is not always possible, nor is it always necessary, but what is necesssary, is that we hold our own hand on our heart through the struggles that life inevitably brings to us, as it does to all. We learn that kindness is not something reserved just for other people, but that, in fact, it starts within ourselves, so it can radiate outward with ease.
Self-Compassion in Practice
Let’s make this concrete. You started reading this blog series of how to start a meditation practice, you followed the instructions that I gave in Part 2 for a simple practice - finding a comfortable posture, focusing on feeling the ground and the breath, and as you started to relax the body, instead of feeling your usual tension, like white noise in the background, you started to notice how much you judge & criticize yourself with your internal chatter. You might have noticed the tightness in your stomach more than usual, or the heaviness in your heart. You might have felt like you are not a good meditator at all. Initially, all of this can feel worse than the tension - like, it’s better to stuff everything down and ignore it, instead of feeling what’s here.
With the breath as our anchor, in small, incremental amounts that are tolerable for us, we can let these pent up thoughts & emotions into our spacious attention, and bathe them in compassion. With mindfulness, we allow our thoughts & feelings to be here, without pushing them away, or holding tightly to them, or even believing in them. We give them breath & space to be, to transform & eventually to move on, like the clouds in the sky. With kindness & common humanity, we recognsie that stress, negative thoughts, discomfort & disappointment happen to all of us, and we cultivate a space of warmth & gentleness for whatever our experience is. It can help to put our hand on our heart, or our belly, or anywhere on our body that helps us feel the warm energy that we are sending ourselves.
As we sit, bathing ourselves in compassion, we can turn to the other wing of mindfulness - wisdom - as we investigate what compassionate action we can take. We can ask ourselves “What do I need that I can give myself right now in this moment?” And we can wait patiently until the wise voice inside of us lets us know what we need, and what we can give. Often, what we need is just what we are doing - to give ourselves the space, time, and permission to honor & feel our feelings. Perhaps we recognise our need for more rest, so that we have more energy to handle our stressful lives. Wise action is not about ‘fixing’ a problem, rather, it’s about understanding how to support ourselves through life’s ups & downs.
All of this is done with connection to our bodies, meaning that we notice how this experience of giving ourselves wise compassion feels in the body. We get a physical sense if it. Intuition lives in the body, so by always grounding everything in our physical being, we can learn what we need and how to care for ourselves on a deeper, more unconscious level.
Tips & Inspiration
Giving ourselves compassion is not always easy, especially if self-judgement and self-criticism are deeply rooted within us, or if it was a learned behaviour through our culture or our family. This is where it can be helpful to visualise someone or something else giving us the warm energy. We might imagine a grandparent, our pet, Mother Earth, or a spiritual figure giving us the gaze of unconditional love, when we can’t give it to ourselves. Likewise, when we are looking for our inner wisdom and come up blank, we can imagine a wise teacher, the earth, or the sky, and we can let a bigger source of wisdom speak to us. I often visualise compassion & wisdom embodied together as the sun: expansive, warm, wise energy radiating down on me, surrounding me, and filling me.
Feeling this radiance fill us from the inside out can be a gateway to discovering the source of wisdom & compassion within our own selves.
I think it is important to point out that when we give ourselves compassion, it has been shown that we can actually reach our goals and aspirations even easier. While practicing self-compassion might seem like we are ‘letting ourselves off the hook’, or ‘being easy on ourselves’, taking us further away from realising our goals, it actually does the opposite. Giving ourselves compassion can actually stop the paralysing habit of being so hard on ourselves that we end up giving up on ourselves. When we treat ourselves with respect and kindness, we encourage ourselves that ‘we can do it’. We acknowledge that reaching goals is hard, as it is for all human beings, but that we can become our own coach and cheerleader.
And the final thought for now is: when we practice this with ourselves, it becomes easier and more natural to be compassionate to others. Self-compassion is not selfish - it primes our heart to be even more generous with others.
With all this in mind, enjoy this short meditation featuring the practice of self-compassion. There is a brief introduction, where I speak about some of the things outlined in this post, and the meditation begins at the 10 minute mark.