How Self-Compassion Softens Meditation Resistance And Fear

We explore how to meet resistance to the present moment with compassion instead of force, especially when mindfulness starts to feel scary. We work through what to say when a client wants to stop because they do not want to “see” themselves, and how to keep the practice gentle, safe, and flexible. 
• why resistance often shows up as tightening, distraction, or avoidance 
• treating ourselves like a friend through kindness and self-compassion 
• how to respond when someone says they want to stop 
• questions that invite safety and clarity rather than pushing 
• asking what someone truly wants from mindfulness or coaching 
• offering options: breath, walking, senses, yoga, loving kindness, gratitude 
• why forgiveness can feel heavy and how to build toward it 
• grief, trauma, and readiness as key context for meditation resistance 
• not taking client dropout personally and finding the right fit 
• body scans for beginners and how to scale intensity 

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Mindfulness Exercises with Sean Fargo is a practical, grounded mindfulness podcast for people who want meditation to actually help in real life.

Hosted by Sean Fargo — a former Buddhist monk, mindfulness teacher, and founder of MindfulnessExercises.com — this podcast explores how mindfulness can support mental health, emotional regulation, trauma sensitivity, chronic pain, leadership, creativity, and meaningful work.

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• Practical mindfulness and meditation teachings
• Conversations with respected meditation teachers, clinicians, authors, and researchers
• Real-world insights for therapists, coaches, yoga teachers, educators, and caregivers
• Gentle reflections for anyone navigating stress, anxiety, burnout, grief, or change

If you’re interested in:

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• Trauma-sensitive and compassion-based practices
• Teaching mindfulness in an authentic, non-performative way
• Deepening your own practice while supporting others

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Transcript

Welcoming Resistance With Compassion

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. I'm Sean Fargo. Today we're going to be exploring what it means to meet resistance to this moment with a sense of compassion or care or gentleness. A lot of us when we carry resistance we hold on, we create barriers, we tighten, we distract and it's really tricky and sometimes really scary to meet our own resistance with compassion. Treating ourselves like we would treat someone else with a sense of kindness. Meeting ourselves as a friend. Kind of slowing down and meeting this moment in a friendly way. So this is where we're going to be exploring so that we can feel more ourselves again, a little bit lighter, a little bit freer and a little more friendlier. Yeah, I'd just like to open it up to any comments, questions, requests, anything at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

I had a student for two times. She was very happy and everything. She invited me to give, to offer a demo to her insurance, the biggest general insurance in Italy. So I'm very honored. She wanted to stop because she said, Oh, I don't want to see anymore. Because each time I see something of myself, of herself. So I didn't know what to say. Because if she doesn't want to see, she doesn't want to see. I was surprised, yes, very surprised. I didn't show it, but I was very surprised because she was happy. Is this the same woman you have brought previously? Then suddenly she said, Oh, I want to stop because I don't want to see. She said she was seeing too much of herself.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

I didn't know what to say. I still can say something, but I don't know what to say exactly because actually we did only body scan. So she didn't want to. Kind of strong resistance at a certain point. What should I tell her? I mean, I don't think it's correct to convince. No?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Yeah. Because she's already, so to say, convinced. Point is that she she has chosen not to see, not to sense, not to feel, not to be with herself. She said, Oh, I don't want to see, I don't want to be with myself.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Most people don't. What they mean is they don't want to be alone with their thoughts. And you know, it can be scary. And you're correct in that it's not something we should try to convince them. And you have more of a relationship with her, so maybe you can find the right words here. But if it was me in your shoes, I would ask her what she means and say something like, Yeah, it's understandable that you don't really want to be with yourself right now. That's totally fine. What's coming up for you? Is there something that you're kind of afraid of holding or thinking? I'm guessing she knows what it is.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

I'm sure. You know, I should.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Maybe there's some old trauma, maybe there's certain fears. And so we can ask very gently, what's coming up for you? We can ask if there are parts of the practices that you've done together that do feel safe. Are there parts of this that you like or that feel safe or that feel helpful?

SPEAKER_03 4:29

She said she was very content, very safe, very happy for that. But she didn't want to see herself. I guess at the age of 10, she lost her mother and she misses her a lot. But I didn't ask exactly, is this the reason?

Gentle Questions And Safer Options

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Yeah, and it's impossible for us to figure this out. But maybe I'll just share a few things for all of us to consider when we approach or when we're speaking with a client who's not totally comfortable with proceeding. So maybe we can step aside from this specific client for now and just speak more generally about this type of situation. We can ask them what they're wanting. Are you wanting healing? Are you wanting physical ease in the body, less stress or anxiety? We can ask them what they're wanting. Like, what do you think would be a positive outcome with our work together? Like, I think that's a beautiful question at the start of any kind of coaching or counseling arrangement. Is like, what would you like out of our experience together? And really dive deep into what it is that they're really wanting. And sometimes we may need to ask that several times to really get deep down into what they're really looking for. What are their hopes for this type of work or work with you specifically? We can present a variety of practices and options. So we can present somatic-based practices like mindfulness of breathing, body scans, mindful walking. Some of us are yoga teachers, so we can bring mindfulness to yin yoga or other kinds of yoga. We can practice outside or inside. We can practice art-based practices like self-compassion, loving kindness, gratitude. Can even do like mindfulness-based practices around generosity, equanimity, and forgiveness. Usually with forgiveness, we want to do other practices first, like self-compassion and breathing. Forgiveness tends to be a little heavy, so kind of building our way towards the three classic forgiveness practices of forgiving others, asking for forgiveness, and forgiving self. We can present practices like mindfulness of sounds, tastes, smells, to practice coming back to this moment in a way that often feels safer. Our eyes are open, maybe we have a piece of chocolate or the smell of a candle, you know, something sometimes pleasurable, just coming to this moment, coming to our senses in a way that may feel quite pleasant. So, in other words, offering optionality can be helpful. Offering curiosity, like what is it that you really want? What are you curious about, or how might you envision our work resulting in? It's totally understandable that you may not want to be with yourself fully right now. Totally get it. A lot of us don't. I can assure you that our work together can be quite gentle, can be quite caring and accepting of whatever comes up, and at any point, if it feels like it's a little too much or different from what you're wanting, just let me know and we can chat about it. You don't really like my style, that's totally okay. There's lots of other mindfulness teachers out there with very different styles. And I encourage you to keep practicing in a way that feels right for you. And I'm happy to work with you on that. Sometimes it's helpful to share that there is research and science showing that these practices are quite effective, that we can all do them, but that we just need to find the right practices and to start slow. Kind of like going to the gym. We don't try to lift the heavyweights first. We start with what feels appropriate, and we know that it just takes practice. Yeah, and I think it's also helpful to not take these things personally because it's not really about us. I know. Even if it was, it's not a big deal. Like when I started working with people and they didn't want to continue, I was like, oh well, it must mean that I'm not a great teacher or I'm not sounding like Cartole or something like that. I don't know. Buy a cardigan sweater and have a foreign accent or something.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

But she invited me to uh her company. So it's very contradictory to my eyes. She didn't want to do it, but she invited me in June or July, she said. So to give a presentation, a demo, something like this. Maybe I'm too logical.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

It doesn't make sense to me, but well, I hope you don't lose any sleep over it.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

No, not for this. For this friend of mine, yes, I lost, but not for her. I didn't know how to handle the situation. I wanted to know why. That's all. And she said just I don't want to see. Yeah. That's all. I don't want to see. Okay. That's her right. By the way, it was for free, it's not for the money or something.

Grief, Readiness, And Body Scan Myths

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Yeah. Thank you. Well, good luck. Hi, Kate.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

I just had some thoughts. I've worked in my professional life creating mental health and substance abuse interventions with people for HIV positive, who live out the street, and I've experienced a lot. And I can really appreciate a person's desire and seeing that a practice is really helpful for others, and not wanting to fully engage and do all the parts because I'm just not ready for it. I don't want to see these things yet. That's not the stage of life that I'm in, but I want others to access this. So I think it's an interesting combination. And I'm not sure that it's really unusual. I'm resonating with the person who you're talking about. And I could imagine myself five years ago kind of doing saying the same thing. Well, I'm literally creating interventions for others. I'm not ready to do this for myself.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Yeah. Thanks, Kate. Yeah, Stephanie.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

I also wanted to add to that as well. It resonated with me from the perspective of your client. When my mother passed away in July of 2024, and I couldn't meditate for months because it was too painful. You had mentioned that her mother passed away. So maybe she's going through a grieving process and she just doesn't have the capacity to go there, you know?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

One more thing. I had mentioned and working with some months in Cambodia, but they're pretty appalled. The only pushback where we were saying body scan, like you're doing bodies, you can't do body scan until you're years into this. Like, no, I don't think we're talking about the same body scan, but just to throw that in there also is kind of I don't know what to do about that. But what it was interesting, I was very surprised that they just thought that was a super advanced technique. Beginner and young people should be engaging in.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Yeah. I think body scans are fine for beginners. I don't see that as necessarily as an advanced practice. You can get as advanced as you want with the body scan, but on our podcast, we've offered 30 different kinds of body scans, some quite appropriate for beginners.