Giving And Receiving Compassion

This meditation guides the listener to cultivate compassion for a difficult or overwhelming person they have recently interacted with, as well as towards themself. This is helpful especially when a helping provider (teacher, therapist, etc) is experiencing burnout, vicarious trauma, and/or compassion fatigue. It was developed by Kristin Neff.

Transcript

Bringing to mind a person that you've been working with or caring for recently that feels overwhelming to you.

And allowing yourself to get in touch with some of the pain that this person is experiencing.

Perhaps calling up a recent interaction with them,

What their face looked like in the interaction,

How you felt,

And shifting your focus to your breathing,

Especially each out breath.

And as you breathe out,

Imagine yourself sending love and care to this person.

You might even imagine your breath as a white light or the word kindness.

And now switching your focus to each in breath.

Feeling each in breath and recognizing that you're suffering too with this person.

Breathing in some kindness,

Compassion,

You're suffering too and you're worthy of some compassion in this situation.

And now putting them together.

Each out breath sending compassion to this person and each in breath compassion for yourself.

Just an easy flow,

One for you,

One for me.

And then as you breathe,

I'm going to say some words.

Everyone is on their own life journey.

I'm not the cause of this person's suffering.

I can't make it go away.

This moment is difficult to bear,

Although I may try to help if I can.

Just noticing how this is all sitting in your body.

And deeply connecting with the idea that anytime you breathe in you can give compassion to yourself,

Open your heart to yourself.

And you can also give that compassion to the person that you're working with,

With every breath out.

Now releasing the process and in a moment you'll hear the bell sing and when you can no longer hear it,

Allowing the eyes to gently open.

And giving yourself a kind wiggle or stretch.

Reviews

Very soothing and validating, thank you so much!!