Heart Meditation for Cultivating Self-Compassion

This is a talk and guided meditation from the Insight Meditation Community of Washington’s 2017/2018 New Year’s retreat. It includes reflections on how cultivating compassion towards ourselves is essential for our own well-being and happiness—and a key to opening our hearts to the suffering of others. It concludes with a guided self-compassion meditation.

Transcript

The focus of the heart practice this afternoon is on self-compassion.

And I want to just begin by locating this practice within the heart practices that we're doing and that Kyra Jewell introduced and gave an overview of yesterday in yesterday's session.

It's compassion is the second of the four what are called Brahma Viharas.

Brahma Vihara translates as divine abode or sometimes called our best home.

These are beautiful qualities of heart and mind.

The Buddha said we should always abide in at least one of these qualities.

Quality of loving-kindness,

This intention of wishing well to ourselves and to others and to all beings.

It's immeasurable,

Boundless quality that we don't necessarily have right now in this moment,

But that we can cultivate and develop and train our heart in.

So loving-kindness.

And then the second is compassion.

Compassion is the heart opening to the suffering of others,

All of ourselves.

And the third is called sympathetic joy or appreciative joy.

Essentially joy in the happiness of another.

Seeing that somebody is doing well,

Is happy,

Is successful and feeling joy in their happiness.

Maybe not such a common one in our culture these days.

This person has something,

Maybe they'll be less for me,

But this is a kind of a sense of abundance of happiness in another's happiness.

And the fourth is equanimity,

This kind of balance of heart and mind that allows us to meet the joys and the sorrows with an equal mind.

So the second of these qualities of compassion is called the quivering of the heart in the face of suffering.

It's really a natural quality of humans,

Maybe of other animals as well.

A natural concern and a caring in the face of another's suffering or our own.

We see it in the way we react when we see somebody get burned,

Touch a hot stove or bang their head.

We kind of do a mirroring of it.

We actually,

As we know,

I think we have these neurons in our brains that mirror others and we see.

So when they feel pain,

We reflect that pain as in the mirror.

So it's a very natural quality.

It's a caring for others and their well-being and wanting to respond,

Wanting to respond to alleviate their suffering or in the case of self-compassion,

Our own suffering,

Wanting to alleviate the suffering.

So I'm just going to just share a few kind of broader reflections on self-compassion before we move into the meditation.

The Japanese hermit monk,

Ryo Kahn said,

Oh,

That my monk's robe were wide enough to embrace the suffering of the world.

Oh,

That my monk's robe were wide enough to embrace the suffering of the world.

Kind of the heart open with compassion to others and to the suffering of the world.

So in this session,

We'll practice cultivating self-compassion,

Bringing this quality of care and concern and the wish to alleviate suffering to ourselves.

For me,

It's difficult to overstate or overestimate the importance of self-compassion in helping us respond to fear,

To stress,

To worry and to a range of challenging emotions and mind states and also in helping open our hearts.

Quite a few practitioners report that they don't have difficulty being compassionate to others,

But find being compassionate to themselves more difficult.

And I'm just wondering today,

Does that resonate at all?

How many find it easier to be kind and compassionate to others than to yourself?

OK,

It's like slightly more than half.

Not surprised by that.

It's worth reflecting on.

You know,

And I think it's natural and very much thinking about Tara's talk about our kind of limbic reactions.

You know,

We want to defend ourselves against threats that are coming in.

We want to armor ourselves and to a certain extent,

You know,

She's talking about it's wise to do that.

We want to protect ourselves when we really are in danger or threatened,

But we can do that.

We can kind of overdo that.

We can do it where we're not genuinely threatened,

But there's a kind of an internal sense or narrative that this will be too painful or difficult to open to.

So we can armor ourselves to protect ourselves from feeling pain,

From opening to to what we feel is difficult or painful to open to.

But kind of the paradox or the irony or contradiction is that it's this very armoring,

This shutting ourselves off from our pain and suffering that really keeps us separate from who we truly are,

That from being fully alive,

Fully awake,

Joyful,

Connected with others,

Connected with life.

We can't,

You know,

We don't have a kind of valve that says,

OK,

We keep out the unpleasant stuff,

But we let in the pleasant.

We might want to do that,

But it doesn't tend to work that way.

When we shut down,

We're preventing a lot of things coming in and a lot of openness to to life.

Essentially,

We're kind of putting that barrier around ourselves.

You know,

The line from Leonard Cohen,

You may know,

You know,

There is a crack,

A crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in.

That's how the light gets in.

I want to just share a short reading from something shared by a practitioner from the New York Insight Meditation Group who was moving towards her final days.

She said,

My days are short and as I grow weaker,

I experience so much gratitude for my meditation,

Not only the joy and ease it brought,

But the hard parts for every bored and restless sitting and every fearful fantasy and every pain and ache I sat through and every itch I didn't scratch was training for kindness,

A training for the muscle,

For bearing witness,

For the trusting spirit that carries me now as I face my death.

I want to just give a little bit of not too much,

But some kind of the science of self-compassion.

Maybe it might be helpful to some kind of more skeptical types,

You know,

To just to give it a framing because more and more self-compassion is growing.

The understanding of the need for self-compassion,

The importance of self-compassion is growing.

There are many,

Many courses now being offered in mindful self-compassion,

Kind of broadly based on mindfulness-based stress reduction,

But focused on very much on self-compassion.

And one of the leading researchers is Kristin Neff,

Writer and researcher and teacher on self-compassion.

She defines self-compassion as having three key components.

The first is self-kindness,

Being gentle and understanding towards ourselves rather than critical and judgmental.

So self-kindness,

Being kind,

Just what we cultivate in our practice of meeting our experience with kindness.

Can very easily see the difference between that and the harsh judging voices,

Blame,

Criticism,

And the self-kindness being just acceptance.

Oh,

Can I meet this with kindness?

So self-kindness first.

The second is recognizing our common humanity,

Feeling connected with others rather than feeling isolated and alienated.

So,

You know,

As we're sitting and we might feel,

You know,

I'm feeling a lot of sadness or grief right now.

And if you can open yourself just to reflect on the people throughout the world who right this moment are also feeling grief and sadness,

You know,

Whether it's in their own homes or having lost somebody or in a refugee camp or in so many other places,

Just to take ourselves out of the sense of we often feel of kind of isolation and aloneness.

It's almost as though I'm the only person feeling this and just to open in that way.

So recognizing our common humanity.

And the third quality or third element is mindfulness,

Holding our experience in a inbalanced awareness rather than identifying or holding on or pushing away.

So these three qualities of self-kindness,

Common humanity,

Recognizing our common humanity,

And mindfulness and mindful awareness.

And just a little bit about,

You know,

What the studies,

The science has shown around self-compassion.

Kristin Neff has developed a scale to kind of measure,

You know,

These three qualities,

The kind of the degree of self-kindness versus self-judgment,

The amount of the kind of degree of common humanity versus a sense of isolation,

The kind of degree of mindfulness versus kind of being caught up in experience.

And so developing,

She found that and studies found have found that higher levels of self-compassion were associated with lower levels of mental health symptoms.

And a review of over 20 studies found evidence for the importance of self-compassion for developing well-being,

Reducing depression and anxiety and increasing resilience to stress.

And there's much more that could be said about it.

The way that self-compassion decreases cortisol,

The stress release,

The stress related chemical,

And also decreases heart rate variability,

Which is linked to less rumination and perfectionism and fear of failure.

And self-compassion is also associated with healthy behaviors,

Sticking to one's diet,

Reducing smoking,

Et cetera.

So all of that just to say that this is a quality that's associated with well-being with greater kind of improved ways of dealing with stress and greater well-being in general.

And the good news,

Of course,

Is that we can train ourselves in self-compassion.

In an eight-week course,

A study of participants found that the program raised participants' self-compassion levels by 43%.

So it's something that we can develop,

That we can cultivate.

So that's enough of the kind of the science of it.

And we'll move in a moment into the meditation.

And just invite you to just take a couple of quiet,

Quiet minutes to settle,

Find a comfortable,

Relaxed posture.

Just a little bit of background to the meditation.

This meditation follows a similar format to the loving-kindness meditation.

But with the emphasis on cultivating compassion towards ourselves.

And the approach is very similar to what Kyra Jewell presented,

You know,

Laid out yesterday,

Where we have these kind of three parts of our consciousness,

If you like,

Where we can activate the more cognitive mode through the words and the phrases,

The more intentional quality.

You know,

May I be happy,

May I be safe,

That kind of evoking the kind of more the understanding,

The cognitive.

And then the felt sense coming into awareness of the body,

Connecting with the feelings at the heart or the chest or anywhere in the body,

Touching into the felt sense,

Kinesthetic kind of engagement with this practice.

And the third is the visualization,

The possibility of visualizing.

You know,

As we do sometimes with the loving-kindness meditation,

Where if we find it difficult to send loving-kindness to ourselves,

To wish ourselves well,

We can,

Because whether there's a lot of judgment or harshness,

We could think of ourselves as a baby or as a child.

And then kind of that becomes an easier doorway,

Often,

Not always,

But often,

To allowing those wishes,

Those intentions to come in.

So those three elements,

Just to kind of keep those there in the mind and the heart as available in this practice that you can kind of connect with.

Just let yourself settle and relax,

Relaxing the shoulders and letting the chest be open.

You might invite a smile,

A half smile to the face,

To the,

Particularly to the corners of your eyes and your mouth.

It's helpful you could think of a loved one,

Dear friend,

Parent,

Child,

Pet,

Or a time or a place that you felt happy at ease.

Just inviting that sense of ease,

Maybe inviting in some joy.

Like take a deeper breath or two to help you open and settle.

And as we begin this meditation,

I just want to share a reading from Thich Nhat Hanh.

It touched me very much as my mother is moving into her kind of,

I don't know,

Final days,

Not days,

But maybe,

You know,

Definitely a stage of her life.

And this is a beautiful,

For me,

Was a beautiful reflection from Thich Nhat Hanh.

The day my mother died,

I wrote in my journal,

A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.

I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother.

But one night in the highlands of Vietnam,

I was sleeping in the heart of my hermitage.

I dreamed of my mother,

I saw myself sitting with her and we were having a wonderful talk.

She looked young and beautiful,

Her hair flowing down.

It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died.

When I woke up,

It was about two in the morning and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother.

The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear.

I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea.

It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside.

The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight.

It was a hill covered with tea plants and my heart was set behind the temple halfway up.

Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants,

I noticed my mother was still with me.

She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often.

Very tender,

Very sweet,

Wonderful.

Each time my feet touched the earth,

I knew my mother was there with me.

I knew this body was not mine alone,

But a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents,

Of all my ancestors.

These feet that I saw as my feet were actually our feet.

Together,

My mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

So just take some moments to relax and let go of any tension in the body and mind.

You might just move your attention down the body and just invite a relaxing,

A softening.

And see if you can open to whatever is present right now,

Whatever is here in the body and in the heart and the mind.

And bring a kind attention to any suffering you may be experiencing right now.

Sadness,

Loneliness,

Fear,

Hurt,

Worry,

Confusion.

Whatever is here,

Whatever is here,

Whatever might be difficult.

And meet your feelings with kindness and with care as much as you can as making space for whatever is here.

Allow yourself to let go of any story or narrative about why you're feeling sad or lonely or angry or hurt.

And open to the feelings that you're experiencing.

Just allow what's here to be here.

Just allow it,

Give it space.

Open to the bodily feelings that are present with kindness and with acceptance.

You could place a hand on your heart if you like and hold any painful feelings that are present with kindness.

Just know that just this simple gesture is available at any time just to connect with any difficulty you're feeling or just connecting with the life that's here,

This body,

This heart,

This mind,

This spirit.

And set the intention to meet the painful feelings with care and compassion and understanding.

Know that you're not alone,

That others too are experiencing difficulties,

Pain and loss.

This is a shared human experience.

And now you might repeat these phrases to yourself with kindness.

May I be safe.

Just feel how it is to breathe in the wish,

The intention that you be safe.

Just feel how that lands for you safe from harm,

Inner harm,

Outer harm.

May I be safe.

May I be happy.

May I be happy.

Sending that wish,

That intention to yourself that you be happy.

We know happiness causes happiness.

May I be happy.

May I be kind to myself.

May I be kind to myself.

Wishing that wish,

That intention of kindness,

Even if there may be in a habitual way a lot of harshness or judgment,

Just wishing for yourself that you be kind.

May I be kind to myself.

Just breathing in that wish,

That intention.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I accept myself as I am.

So there may be non-acceptance,

There may be resistance,

But we're sending the wish,

The intention,

That the heart open enough to accept ourselves as we are.

May I accept myself as I am.

You can,

If you like,

If you feel it helpful to make any changes in the phrases,

Substitute a word or a phrase of your own,

Or even let go of the phrases and just evoke a wish or wishes for yourself of well-being,

Of acceptance,

Of kindness,

Of safety.

And if you repeat the phrases,

Just open to whatever bodily feelings might arise,

Meeting whatever you experience with kindness and acceptance.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I accept myself as I am.

See how it is to just invoke these wishes,

These intentions for yourself,

To send yourself wishes of safety and happiness and well-being,

Kindness.

And whatever comes up,

See if you can meet it with kindness and with acceptance.

If resistance comes up,

See if you can make space for that.

If doubt comes up,

This can never work for me or I don't deserve it,

See if you can hold that too with kindness,

Just making space for whatever's here.

And if the mind wanders,

Just gently letting the attention come back to the phrases or to the bodily feelings that are present.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I be safe.

May I be happy.

May I be kind to myself.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I accept myself as I am.

May I accept myself as I am.

With this practice,

As with really all of the heart practices,

We can be creative.

If we feel closed or blocked,

We might imagine ourselves being in a state where we're happy or safe or self-accepting or a time we were.

We could imagine someone we love wishing us,

Wishing these qualities on us,

For us.

Connecting to with the felt sense in the body,

Perhaps inviting an opening of space or an expansion of any feelings of warmth or connection with ourselves.

Meeting resistance with as much kindness as we can,

Making space for any difficult emotions that come up.

And if they feel too intense,

We can just come back to the breath,

Come back to the body,

Come back to the basic mindfulness practices.

And then when we're ready,

We could come back,

Come back to the heart practice.

Just see what your own internal knowing,

A discerning quality of heart and mind kind of invites you towards.

May I be safe.

May I be happy.

May I be kind to myself.

May I accept myself as I am.

In these final minutes of the meditation,

I invite you to open to whatever feelings or sensations are present.

Allow yourself to take in any feelings of kindness towards yourself that arise.

And if no feelings come up or if you experience difficult or negative emotions,

Meet this with kindness and acceptance.

Understanding the efforts and intentions you've brought to this practice of cultivating kindness towards yourself.

May I be safe.

May I be kind.

You might feel yourself here in a field of kindness,

Held in loving kindness.

Finish with Naomi Shehab,

Nye's poem,

Kindness.

Before you know what kindness really is,

You must lose things.

Feel the future dissolve in a moment,

Like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

What you counted and carefully saved,

All this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride,

Thinking the bus will never stop.

The passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you.

How he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.

Only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread.

Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say,

It is I you have been looking for and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Thank you.

Just a word as we finish to invite you to incorporate any of these heart practices into your regular meditation,

Mindfulness practice in any way that feels helpful to you.

Sometimes people will do a loving kindness practice at the beginning of a sitting for five minutes or ten minutes or at other times do a whole session of loving kindness or just occasionally just dropping in the phrases of loving kindness or self compassion or other forgiveness if we do forgiveness meditation to particularly when challenging emotions or difficulties come up.

So to know that these practices are available to kind of use whenever it is most helpful to do so.

Thank you.

Thank you for your attention and practice.

Thank you for listening.

To learn how you can support the teachers and Dharma Seed,

Please visit dharmaseed.

Org slash donate.

Reviews

🙏

Love the slow pace of the meditation. Allows time to reflect on each component. Practiced kindness and acceptance towards my wandering mind.

Thank you for the gentle reminder that the body may die but the spirit lives on forever. Some people think grief happens only when someone dies. They may not know that it is possible to grieve deeply for someone who has a progressive cognitive illness. The poem you shared by Thích Nhất Hạnh reminded me that my mother is still with me. I am in the process of losing my mother to Alzheimer’s but it is reassuring to know if I look deeply enough I can still find her. Disease cannot take her from me. Her spirit goes on.

Most helpful and hopeful session to all that I have done to this point in my journey. Love the suggestion of doing a 5min loving kindness and or forgiveness meditation before daily meditation, although this now will be my daily meditation as the pace and guidance was so helpful. Thank you Hugh 🧘‍♀️

Thank you, Hugh. I am learning so much from your guided meditations.

Perfection. With eloquence , tenderness , wrapped up with an artistic bow of fluidy rhythm and so much love. What a talent source has bestowed upon you. Grateful that it has been shared with our brothers and sisters. In gratitude and adjust a little not more self compassion this afternoon - 🤍🖤❤️

Amazing 🙏
Many thanks for this wonderful session - the talk, the story from Thich Nhat Hanh, the meditation and the poem at the end: All included so much love and care. With deep gratitude 🙏

A wonderful thouthful reading and meditation. Thank you.

Thank you for this wonderful teaching. Namaste 🌛💜🌜

oh the Quivering of the heart
as it finally feels the pain
that so long has denied
the truth of ultimate reality
we have tried so hard to hide

and it finally emerges from the shadows
and is mirrored so creatively
in our immersive dreams
and the breath of our awakening

oh the quivering of the heart
of this world
that’s been torn apart
divided into disparate parts

and when ewe hear the calling
of the SOS that’s broadcast
from the rooftops of our mind
we must heed the warning
and take shelter there inside

and perhaps to find the answer
is to heal with love in time
and accept this being human
has no permanent comfort zone
that we purchase for long in life

oh to calm the raging emotions
and to find the peace of mind
to go into the stillness
and be embraced by Love divine

to see the gift of compassion
humbles us as it reveals
at the heart of being human
we must accept our vulnerability

Poetic journey to self acceptance and self compassion

Your calm voice is the one I look for when I’m stressed. Your message always touches my heart. Namaste 🙏🏼

Thank you Hugh! I’ve learned a lot from your guided meditations!

WOW - so very profound and powerful! Thank you! 🙏 😊 ❤️

Both informative and comforting. Thank you so much for the beautiful work you are doing!

Very instructive talk. I didn't know about the sympathetic joy, although it makes sense. I need to do the meditation again as I was lying down and fell asleep. Thank you.for your teachings and warm presence! 🙏🌳🍃

Thank you Hugh for a beautiful, heartfelt talk. It helped me shed the tears I was finding so hard to let go...

I am visiting with family to support my sister coping with Alzheimers. This meditation helped ground me, providing some self care in a difficult time. I love the way Hugh incorporates such wonderful poetry into his talks and practice. Thank you, Hugh.

Genuine presence with the experience of uncomfortable body sensations, emotions, and allowing what is to be as it is.

Thank you so so much. I haven't really had a concept of self-compassion. I frankly thought it sounded rather self-indulgent. But in fact it was a very sweet and gentle experience. I may do it again