Exploring Self-Compassion Meditation Take a moment to get comfortable in your posture.
Let your posture be like a container for your practice.
Bring your focus of attention to the breath at the nostrils.
Let the felt sense of the breath moving in and out of your body teach the mind to be present.
Form your intention to cultivate and practice compassion for yourself.
And connect with your motivation.
Why would you want to do this?
What is the benefit to you and to others?
Connecting to the details of the breath again,
Noticing as best you can the subtle touch of the breath at the nostrils,
And following the breath down into the body,
To the back of the throat,
Into the chest,
Into the belly,
And following it back out again.
And as you settle the mind with the breath,
You can expand around this awareness to the body as a whole.
And towards the end of the settling stage,
Just focus a little more on the out-breath.
Noticing how the body relaxes as you breathe out.
And seeing if the mind can learn from the body.
Body releasing breath and relaxing.
Mind releases involvement with thinking and begins to settle.
Bring your attention more fully into the body,
With your attention moving to the soles of your feet,
And noticing the contact of the soles of your feet with the ground.
Noticing the weight of your body as a chair supports you.
Noticing your posture like a container holding your practice.
The mind resting in the body,
Body resting on the ground beneath you.
You may want to check in with obvious sensations that you notice now.
No need to control or create anything,
Just lightly noticing what is already here.
You can invite in a quality of curiosity and gentleness to this experience.
See if it's possible to get a felt sense of the whole body breathing with your awareness from breath to breath and moment to moment.
Reconnecting with your intention to cultivate and practice self-compassion.
Developing a compassionate attitude is a practice of starting from where you are,
Just as you are,
And a process of noticing all the things that block it.
It's an acknowledgment of innate potential.
It's not about the addition of compassion,
Rather it's a subtraction of obstacles.
Everyone has compassion.
Just ask yourself,
Do I want to help or harm others?
Do I want others to be happy or unhappy?
Right now,
Intention is all that's needed to know that just like me,
Everyone wants to be happy,
Healthy and well.
And you can place your hand on your heart as a gesture to soothe yourself.
And then breathing in and out of the body,
Opening with the in-breath,
Softening with the out-breath,
Opening to your experience as a whole,
Simply allowing your experience to be as it is.
No rush,
Just opening and softening with the intention of kindness towards yourself.
Asking yourself,
What do I need right now?
How can I be more kind to myself?
Now extending a sincere wish to yourself.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be well.
May I be kind to myself.
May I give myself the compassion I need.
If there is a resistance,
A tightening,
Tension,
Discomfort,
Just seeing if it's possible to make room for this as well.
Inviting in a quality of acceptance and willingness for this experience of difficulty.
See if it's possible to extend kind attention to that as well.
Expanding around this awareness to the spaciousness around you,
Resting your awareness here in the wider space.
See if you can get a sense of you in your environment.
This includes noises in the environment,
Distant and nearby noises,
Including those coming from within.
If thoughts arise,
That's okay.
Just notice and touch back to grounding whenever you need to as an anchor.
Breathing in,
You are aware you are breathing in.
Breathing out,
You know you are breathing out.
And in this way,
The breath is an anchor,
Holding your attention in the body,
Holding it present.
In this awareness of the space around you,
Just notice how the body exists in the space and is surrounded by it.
Now let go of the sense of trying to do anything and just be there.
Let go of practicing anything and in a casual way,
Just allow yourself to experience whatever is most obvious to you right now,
Directly.
And as a way of concluding your practice session,
You can reaffirm your intention and motivation by framing something in your own words like,
I intend to carry the practice of self-compassion into my daily life with a motivation to connect to others who are like me and struggle like me.
And when you're ready,
Just releasing the practice and see if you can carry the awareness of this into all your future moments.
