Self-Compassion: Opening The Heart To Acceptance

We'll be talking about self-compassion and we'll start with a meditation.

I thought one thing that you might try during the meditation is to see whether you can practice compassion during the meditation itself and when the mind wanders or you find that you get lost a little bit,

See whether your first response can be one of compassion so that when you find yourself suddenly returning after being lost somewhere you can try to assume the voice of a friend and say,

Oh well come back and join us or it's so nice to have you back here with us instead of reprimanding yourself for feeling somehow bad that your mind has wandered and that might be the actually the best part of this whole session for you.

We can start by coming home to the body and finding a way to sit comfortably,

Ease fully your feet on the floor and your hands resting gently,

Posture aligned,

Back straight,

Head upright,

Closing the eyes if you feel comfortable doing so,

Falling back into the gentle rhythm of the breath,

The simple recognition of the motion of the in-breath,

The motion of the out-breath,

The natural calming effect it has on the body and mind,

The way the breath can unhook us from thought,

So you focus just on the rising and the falling of the chest,

Flow of the breath as it enters the body and then leaves the body and the way we don't need to do anything,

You can simply ride the flow of the breath,

Expansion with the in-breath and release with the out-breath.

And now you can bring attention to some disturbance you identify in your life,

Some suffering,

Worry,

Stress,

Pain,

Hurt,

And nothing overwhelming or traumatic for this exercise but just something that weighs on you,

Where you feel that ouch or something you'd like to bring attention to,

And so just recall that situation and pause and simply recognize that this is hard right now,

Or I'm really struggling now.

You might sense in the body how this feels,

Whether it's tightness in your abdomen or in your throat,

In your chest,

As Jonathan Fowle says,

Our issues are in our tissues,

So sense where it's felt as a way to become intimate with what's here.

Now recognize the simple reality that some suffering is a part of life,

It's a part of being human,

And all human beings share the experience of difficulty,

Of struggle,

It's not wrong or strange in any way,

And you're not alone and feeling this way,

It is one of the normals for human experience.

And then the last step is how can I be kind to myself in this moment?

You might try to say silently to yourself,

May I be kind to myself,

And see whether you can meet whatever is here with care,

And connect with whatever disturbance you're feeling,

Whatever pain or stress or worry,

And connect with it in kindness and acceptance.

You can set an intention to meet the difficulty or challenge with care,

Or try these phrases,

May I be kind to myself,

May I accept everything about myself just as I am,

Again may I be kind to myself,

May I accept everything about myself just as I am,

Feeling safe enough to be open to the experience,

And setting the intention to cultivate kindness,

Wishing yourself a full measure of happiness,

Accept yourself just as you are,

Safe,

Happy with kindness.

When you're ready in your own time you can come gently back,

When you're ready you can open your eyes,

And if you like I encourage you to turn on your camera.

I always enjoy seeing people for the talk,

Connect with each other a little bit.

About 30 years ago the Dalai Lama was speaking to a group of Western therapists and meditation teachers and one of them asked what's the best approach to take with students with low self-esteem and he speaks pretty good English but he always travels with a translator and so he started going back and forth with his translator to understand the question and back and forth and back and forth and then he asked the question what is that low self-esteem and he said are you sure your students have this?

And the questioner said yes yeah I'm sure and he said are you sure?

And the questioner said yes in fact I have it myself she said and then he still was not convinced so he pointed around to people in the room and he said do you have this?

Do you have this too?

And they all started nodding and saying yes we have this too and then he just objected he said that's wrong.

How can you say that you have low self-esteem when you all have buddha nature and which means that at your core what you find there is not something that's unworthy of esteem or love but this kind of clear bright free fully awakened being is at your core that's your essence and then the rest is just a distraction you know.

And one of the odd features about this I think is that even though it's near universal in our culture this you know this low self-esteem or problems with self-esteem I think every one of us can feel like we're the only ones who don't measure up that everybody else has kind of got it all together you know and they're you're looking around and you're thinking like oh they don't look like they have this problem you know they don't look like they have this problem.

But soon to find out you know as you get to know people like oh actually you know lots of us have this problem and I saw this one quote by the comedian Amy Pooler who met with success first on Saturday Night Live about her struggles with self-hatred and she said this I wish I could tell you that being on television or having a nice picture in a magazine suddenly washes all those thoughts away but it doesn't at least for me I wish I were taller I had leaner hands I had a less crazy smile I don't like looking at myself and I'm not looking at myself and I'm not looking at myself I don't like my legs especially I used to have a terrific flat stomach but now it's kind of blown out after having two babies who use this as a short-term apartment.

So it's not just me or you it's lots of us.

Another odd thing about this is that if you start to listen to the stories that you tell yourself and the things that you're actually saying there are things that you would never say to anyone else particularly let's say a co-worker or a friend you know the smallest mistakes are sometimes you heap upon yourself these criticisms of you know why didn't I do this or do that or why can't I get anything right and you know this steady stream of comments if you were to say them out loud to someone else you would be shunned because you know we don't talk to people that way in our in our culture but you know we talk to ourselves that way.

I recall many many years ago after I accepted a job I just became convinced that I had made a bad career decision and this snowballed in my head to the point where I became completely overrode.

I started actually have panic attacks and I just had this refrain in my head that my life is over my life is over you know and then I mean it wasn't too long after that that I even at that point I suspected that that probably wasn't true like it didn't you know as much as I was telling my like maybe not quite true and then actually I became convinced that that was a really good choice as time passed but I just marvel at the power of these judgments.

As I mentioned in the message for this talk the teacher Jaya Ruggard says the most important long-term relationship you have is with yourself.

James Barras another teacher says that there's one person in the world who really understands you and in fact gets all of your jokes and that's you.

So what would it be like if we could be a friend to ourselves the kind of friend that we are to other people?

What would we say to our a good friend if they say to us I just did something really stupid or you know I can't stop thinking about this thing that happened in the past and can we extend to ourselves the kind of compassion that comes quite naturally to us you know if we're thinking about a friend.

I'm going to suggest how to do this and it really follows the steps that we traced in the meditation.

The first is mindfulness realizing what's happening when you pull up a memory or something painful happens and you sense that your mind is going to turn that corner and begin to dwell on whatever is painful that emotion that feeling or that physical sensation.

So pause and realize or listen to the self-judgments to the suffering.

This is the radical shift in mindfulness.

It's instead of letting the mind spin or trying to distract or escape just the simple realization to yourself I'm suffering right now or ouch you know this hurts.

Or the one I use a lot is this is hard or sometimes this is really really hard.

And not using mindfulness as like a secret escape hatch or you know some kind of way to exit what's happening but just being able to feel how difficult it is.

The classic formulation for self-compassion practice is simply mindfulness and love but there's a psychologist Kristin Neff who added a step in between which I find really helpful which is remember that other beings are suffering as well.

Like it's something that we actually share.

You're not alone.

You can feel connected to others.

It's not just me who can't get this right.

I had a law school classmate who was one of the top students in the school and was going into the law review office.

He was on the law review office one morning and they had left this this panel in the floor open because they were doing some mechanical work down a few feet down there and they had not put any kind of barrier around it.

So she inattentive walked right in and dropped about six or eight feet down to the bottom and severely injured her back and caused her enormous pain particularly when she sat.

So during lectures she actually had a morphine pump that you could see her pressing while she was sitting there.

So I got to know her and we would talk and I would ask her one day this question.

It's sort of like what do you do for support?

How do you do this?

I mean she was such a marvelous person.

If you didn't really ask her you wouldn't know any of this.

She had a very bright personality and she said the people with serious disabilities,

Students with serious disabilities at the school all know each other.

And she said I've got this person I talk to who actually has it worse off than me who has much more serious challenges and every time I'm feeling low or you know I need some help I call her and we talk and she said and that person has somebody who has somebody who has somebody.

So this experience of it's just not you you know it's just not you.

Last step.

Offering yourself the same kindness that you would offer a friend who's suffering.

They say that applying mindfulness to suffering is like opening the shades in a dark room and letting the light come in and offering compassion when you're suffering is like opening the door and letting the fresh air in.

Or this definition of compassion what naturally happens when love encounters suffering.

What naturally happens when love encounters suffering?

Compassion naturally arises.

Or one more definition when love meets suffering and stays loving.

So this from the Buddha.

Question to the Buddha.

Are kindness and compassion part of the path?

Answer.

No it is not part of the path.

It is not part of the path.

Kindness and compassion are the entire path.

Or this also from the Buddha which I think I've said before.

You can search throughout the whole world for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than yourself and that person is not to be found anywhere.

You yourself as much as anyone in the world deserve your love and affection.

Okay so two ways to do this.

First is words.

Loving kindness,

Phrases directed to yourself.

May you be happy.

May you be at ease.

May you be free from inner and outer harm.

Or just very simple expressions like you would use with a friend.

You can say to yourself I'm sorry dear or I'm here for you now.

And the last one.

Human touch.

So this is great for interrupting the fight flight freeze response and returning to balance.

I'll give you I'll give you three of them okay in quick succession.

First you can try a few more.

Hand on the heart center not the physical heart but kind of in the center of your chest where you feel that mind-body connection and feel the sensations.

We can place a second hand on top of the first hand.

Relax.

Feel the warmth.

How the energy is redirected.

Okay next one.

All right hands down.

You take a few more.

Okay next one.

All right hands down.

You take your right hand and you can gently place it on your cheek just as a as a parent or a loved one would do.

You just feel the softness of the touch.

Take the other hand and you can place it on the opposite cheek.

You can feel whether you could sense this being held for a moment.

Just like a mother would hold a beloved child.

No words are needed just this gentle touch allows the love to flow.

And then last one perhaps my favorite.

Put your hands down.

Take the right hand and you can place it at the edge of your rib cage.

At the edge of your rib cage.

Now this is not a big stretch but just see whether your fingers can reach back to grasp your side.

Okay then you take the left hand and you place it under the right elbow to grasp the right side of your rib cage.

Just get your arms so they're comfortable.

Don't really stretch just see if you can reach both of them around and then feel yourself giving yourself this body hug.

Just focus on how it feels at your sides to be held.

Just feeling the warmth and acceptance.

And I'm going to close with these words of Michael Gerson,

The calmness who I read this morning.

I'm going to give you a little bit of a Michael Gerson,

The calmness who I read this morning and the paker just died of cancer at the age of 58.

He was known I think by many as a voice of reason and a person of deep faith and compassion who also suffered from severe depression and gave a talk a few years ago in which he said,

I suspect that there are people here today and I include myself who are stalked by sadness,

Who's stalked by cancer,

Or stalked by anger.

We experience unearned suffering or give unreturned love or cry useless tears and many of us eventually grow weary of ourselves tired of our own sour company but then he continued even when strength fails there is perseverance and even when perseverance fails there is hope and even when hope fails there is love and love never fails.