#38 The Neuroscience of Kindness: Small Acts. Great Love.

#38 In this episode I share how my encounter with a dying butterfly reminded me that compassion, presence, and loving (not fixing) transforms our lives through neuroscience, mindfulness, and spiritual alignment. We explore how  kindness rewires our brains for peace. Kindness is coherence. Presence is love in action.

I’ll put the a link to the video in the show notes here

Show Notes.

 In this episode we explore:

The science of kindness and compassion: how it changes your brain

How to find meaning-even in endings-by savoring pure connection

Listen and realign with the miracles around you 

Thank you for joining me!

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Transcript

A Garden Moment Sparks Kindness

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey, welcome back. Welcome to Just Count Me In, Transform Your Life. I'm Sari. Thank you so much for joining me again. Or if you're tuning in for the first time, I hope you enjoy this. This episode was inspired actually by something pretty magical that happened to me this week. I was in my garden clearing out the old for the new, getting ready to plant, and that was good. And I had been thinking in the morning about kindness because I've got just the kindest neighbors here, and one of them had actually made us a really nice dinner when I was sick the other week, and the other one made a piece of jewelry for my daughter because it was her birthday just out of the goodness of her heart. And I was just thinking, what a kind place. And moments after I was thinking about that, I looked down and I saw a butterfly just laying there, and she couldn't fly. And her wings were still, she wasn't dead, she was very beautiful laying in the grass, and they were fading. Her wings were fading, and I could tell that she was probably getting ready to be done here. I had just picked a bouquet of flowers because I was taking down some wildflowers, and I pulled some to give actually to give to my neighbor to thank her for the dinner. And something deep inside of me just was like, you know what, bring them to the butterfly. She can't get to the flowers. And so I did. And I put the flowers all around her. And in that moment, she actually lifted herself up. I videoed this and posted it. I'll put the a link to the video in the show notes here. And she was dragging herself from flower to flower, just enjoying in her final moments the getting nectar from the flowers. And I could just feel how much she was in it. And that moment wasn't about saving her. I couldn't do that if I tried. It was just about offering beauty and witnessing life with love and about giving because it just felt like the natural thing to do, not because it was going to change any outcome. And that is actually the essence of true kindness. I realized then this wasn't about saving her, it was about offering love, not because it would change her, but because love just wanted to come through me and express itself. Modern brain research has shown us for a long time that when we act with kindness, even in the smallest ways, our brains change measurably. Acts of kindness stimulate the ventral vagus nerve, part of the parasympathetic nervous system that calms your body down. And this activation lowers the heart rate, lowers the blood pressure, and moves us from stress into a state of safety and connection. At the same time, the brain is actually releasing oxytocin, the bonding hormone, like what happens when moms nurse their babies, that builds trust and empathy along with serotonin and dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitters that lift our mood so much and reinforce connection. Even witnessing acts of kindness triggers those same circuits through mirror neurons. Our brains respond as though we perform the kindness ourselves. So at that moment with the butterfly, offering beauty to a creature at the end of her life was not small at all to me. And I thought about Mother Teresa and I thought, man, she's such a saint. And I, you know, aspire to be as good of a person as I could be. But I remember she said it's about doing small acts with great love. It doesn't always have to be about doing these big, huge acts. And I thought offering beauty at the end of someone to the end of her life was not really small at all. My brain and my heart entered coherence. My body was just filled with such calm and such joy and that stillness, and I could feel her peace too. Kindness really is not emotional. It's actually biological medicine because it heals the giver and the one receiving. That means love is energetically contagious. Your compassion uplifts your own biology and that ripples into everyone around you. We all know that the most powerful person in the room is the one that's most open and most loving. So that simple moment with the butterfly, it wasn't small at all. It was like a wave of coherence that I felt, and she felt, or he felt. Presence he taught is love in the purest form, the kind that needs no fixing, no solving, just seeing. I read his book, Peace is Every Step, and he explains that when we breathe mindfully, and he does walking meditations and bring our full attention to another being, whether it's a person, a flower, even a dying butterfly in this case, our energy becomes one with compassion and peace. And neuroscience now know what he was talking about. Mindful breathing activates the prefrontal cortex, that part that responds with empathy and regulation, and it quiets down the amygdala, which governs fear and reactivity. In other words, they're finding now that presence literally reshapes the brain towards peace. When I sat with that butterfly, I wasn't doing anything special, but I was fully there. No phone, no thought of tomorrow, no resistance to what was happening. That stillness became a kind of prayer for me. Presence turns endings into sacred space. To be truly present is an act of love. It says, I see you, you matter, this moment matters. He also taught that we become one energy, the energy of peace. It's active love. Presence becomes the bridge between sorrow and our serenity. There's also a soul lesson here. Love is the gift itself. Kindness and presence are inseparable. You can't be one without the other. The butterfly reminded me that life doesn't ask us to fix everything, contrary to the way I lived for a long time. It asks us to just be love wherever we are. Neuroscience confirms it changes the brain. Abraham reminds us it aligns us with source. Ticknot Han shows us that it transforms suffering into peace. Esther Hicks, when she's channeling Abraham, teaches that love is the highest vibration in the universe. And every single time we choose love over fear, we align ourselves with source. We act from that place of pure giving, not to fix, not to prove, but simply to love. It's like a stream of well-being. When we act with that love, we are tuned in to who we really are. And that is exactly what I felt on that day. I remembered that love doesn't need results. Love is the result. And when you choose that frequency, your energy becomes magnetic. You attract more ease, more clarity, more alignment because you've shifted from trying to control life to simply flowing with it. You never stand still. You're either moving toward love or away from it. And kindness is one of the most natural ways to move toward it. The real miracle of kindness is actually that it reconnects us with who we really are. We are love in motion. What's so beautiful is that wisdom and science tell us the same thing. Kindness and presence, strengthen neural pathways for empathy and peace. Tik Nan Han is reminding us that true love is full attention, mindfulness embodied. Abraham Hicks teaches us that unconditional love is the vibration of source. And I love integrating things. I'm a connector, and I realize that when you choose kindness, you are not just being nice. You're literally rewiring your brain, regulating your nervous system, and aligning your energy with the divine flow of life. And the ripple effect, it's very much there. You elevate everyone you touch, sometimes people who don't even see your face. That butterfly did not need me to fix her. I couldn't, even if I tried. She simply needed to be met with love. And at that moment, I felt like both of us had a healing experience. One by peace and the other by purpose. So every time you choose to be kind, to be present, to bring beauty into the world, you're part of something divine. You are the miracle unfolding. So today let your love be a bouquet. Offer it freely. Give it up joyfully and trust that it's enough because it always is. Maybe that butterfly's wings were too tired to fly, but her spirit was still teaching. Love doesn't end, it expands right to the very last minute. I mean, I texted my daughter and I said to her, gosh, I hope that I'm enjoying life like this and just being with flowers and getting the sweetness of life in my last minutes. Because even in her last minutes, she did what she loved to do. And may that be said of all of us. I mean, what a great way to go out. Kindness is not weakness, it's actually awakened strength. And the more we practice it, the more we rewire our brain for peace, the more we tune our hearts to source, and the more we transform the world simply by being love in motion. The opportunity to offer kindness, even or especially when it won't change the outcome and we don't expect a return on our investment. Love is never wasted energy. Sometimes we're not meant to fix. We're meant to witness with love. Every act of kindness ripples through that collective energy field. The butterfly became a mirror of compassion for me, showing that offering beauty, even to a dying creature, is a sacred, sacred service. Here are some journaling prompts that I thought you might like. When have I offered love simply because it was time for me to give, not because I expected a result? Even just writing about this, I felt so good. I felt like something was just lifting me up when I journaled about this. And how does my body feel when I slow down and offer presence instead of jumping in and offering solutions? Actually, your body would probably feel better because it takes all that frustration out of it when we're just being present and not trying to figure out how we can help the other person to feel better or what they could be doing differently, or imposing what we think are solutions on people, and then getting frustrated when they don't take them. Your body actually feels better. What small act of kindness could I offer today to myself, to someone else, even to the earth? And what endings or transitions in my life are it's a loud go-kart, inviting me to soften, to savor, to be more fully present. My love is never wasted. It transforms me and the world around me, and each act of kindness aligns me with the vibration of source. Presence is my greatest form of love. My nervous system rests at peace every time I live from compassion. I see beauty and divinity in every moment, especially in letting go.