4 - The Importance of Compassion

Barbara Newell and Matthew Aldrich discuss the importance of compassion in a comprehensive mindfulness practice.  They specifically touch on self-compassion and bonus material is available that dives down into Matthew's experience with self-compassion. 

Visit barbaranewell.com or thewaytowellbeing.com for more resources.  Also Barbara offers free initial consultations which can be booked here.

The Way to Well-Being is a collaboration between Barbara Newell, mindfulness + meditation teacher and a former Buddhist nun who trained under Thich Nhat Hanh, and Matthew Aldrich, mindfulness student.

This collaboration was born out of a desire to provide a more structured approach to developing long-term sustainable well-being through the cultivation of mindfulness.

As a newcomer to mindfulness, Matthew accelerated quite quickly and with relative ease in developing his meditation practice.  Upon reflection with his teacher Barbara, it became apparent that recent therapy focused on reducing emotional reactivity was extremely helpful and contributed to this benefit.  While Barbara had extensive experience and knew the immense benefit of addressing emotions in a mindfulness practice, she and Matthew noted that the traditional teachings were often missing or didn’t sufficiently explain the role of emotions.

While there are numerous books about mindfulness, the information can sometimes be conflicting, too conceptual, or just inadequate related to the actual implementation in a busy modern life.

It became apparent that a more structured approach with practical guidance and techniques could help numerous people find their way to well-being through mindfulness.

Transcript

spk_0:   0:13
welcome to the wayto wellbeing podcast, where we explore a structured approach toe wellbeing through the cultivation of mindfulness. This is Matthew Aldridge. I'm a mindfulness student,

spk_1:   0:26
and this is Barbara Newell, a mindfulness teacher.

spk_0:   0:30
So today we wanted to explore the area of compassion. And we really believe this is foundational toe well being. So to start off. Barbara, how would you describe compassion?

spk_1:   0:45
So going back, first of all, to the definition that we gave of mindfulness, which is paying attention on purpose, nonjudgmental e in the present moment to the unfolding of moment to moment experience so that nonjudgmental Lee has a quality of kindness or of compassion? Um, kindness. Sometimes you may have heard of a form of meditation called loving kindness, meditation, or sometimes the the poly word. That's Ah, on ancient language that's used in Buddhism, the poly word for loving, kindnesses, meta. And that means simply friendliness and kindness. So it's the root of words we have, like amity. Um, yeah, friend Amita in French. Um, so that's that quality of friendliness and that's that's the way that we want to pay attention in our mindfulness. We want to pay attention with this kind of interested curiosity, not with an agenda. Um, some people like to quote the story of George Schaller, who is the primatologist, Um, who made these incredible advances in studying chimpanzees. And when he came back and was presenting about what he had been, the insights that he'd been ableto have into the socialize of chimpanzees far greater insight than others had been able to have before. He was asked, What did you do? How did you How were you able to see so many things that other scientists before you who studied chimpanzees couldn't see? And he said I didn't carry a gun. And so he was allowed much more deeply into the witnessing of what was really going on in that society of chimpanzees. And so, similarly, when we suddenly approached our witnessing or observing of our experience of what our body is doing or feeling what our mind is thinking or believing. If we go in with this agenda of, I'm going to get rid of the bad stuff and fix it all and make it all good. It's kind of like going in with a gun. And so if we can go in and stud with this kindness of friendliness, an openness to whatever is and allowing it to be a zit ISS, we're liable. We're likely to learn much more and understand much more. And also, as I think, we also mentioned that paradoxical action is more possible where, when we accept ourselves completely as we are, then we're free to change. Whereas if we go in with this self improvement agenda, what we resist persists. So that's that's the sense of kindness is the sense of friendliness, of caring, of wanting, wishing well to whatever whomever we encounter to two aspects of ourselves, even if there's pain or suffering involved, we're not trying to fight against it. And so compassion is sometimes described as what happens when that when that kindness, when loving kindness, meets pain or suffering it's that very natural. Um, when you have a kind, when you have a friendly attitude in you and you meet, let's say, your friend who's in pain or suffering. Naturally, you feel that sense of care, of concern of wanting to somehow relieve their pain or suffering. If there's a way, so that kind of intention or that kind of mind or heart meeting um difficulty is how I think of compassion.

spk_0:   4:35
Khanna. So how do you go about cultivating that kindness and compassion if that's not kind of your predisposition?

spk_1:   4:46
So one of the as I was just mentioning, that's Ah, it's a classic form of meditation is the loving kindness meditation and in that one were invited to use phrases repeatedly, and there are a few that are classic like. May I be safe? May I be? May I have physical wellbeing? May I have mental wellbeing? May I be free? Um, and we're also invited to use whatever phrases really resonate for each of us. So we there is one sense in which it's, um it's a repetitive kind of almost a mantra or ah, um, a prayer that we say, and we don't only direct it toward ourself. We then go on to direct it to people we love and even neutral people. Um, like the cashier at the grocery store and so on on and eventually to people who we find difficult in our life. So that's one very classic, time honored way of cultivating a mind state of kindness. And at first it can seem, yeah, a little bit, I don't know, ritualistic or wrote or, um, even mechanical. And yet, um, as we may have found, if anyone is practicing some kind of prayer, basically what we what? We practice grow stronger. So even just sending our mind in that direction intentionally, even if it feels like there's all kinds of things that aren't kind and us. But just even inviting and expressing the intention and the desire to be kind does help to grow it. And when those other things do come up, um, but that feel like the opposite of kindness. We can look at them with kindness, with compassion that their parts of us are. Dimensions are yeah, habits that we have in our thoughts and feelings that are that are painful.

spk_0:   6:51
Yeah, and a E. I think it's important to know that neuroscience has looked at and done brain scans of like monks who practiced, um, meta meditation and techniques to enhance compassion. It was interesting there in one study, they were actually thought the machine was broken because they were so surprised about. There's a specific part of the brain where compassion usually arises, and what they noted was it was like off the charts on DSO. Those techniques do actually work. They structurally change the way you look at the world and the way you interact with it. So I think it is. It does sound like mechanical and and just kind of just repeating words. Can that actually change things? But I do think it changes how you view the world, Um, and so I think we have a tendency, very much so, as we've talked about him in previous podcast that we look at the world as a threats on DSO. Very often, when that person criticize us, they we almost view them as, like home. That's Ah ah, it's a threat and it's a problem. And if we actually instead look and really see that very often the person may have reacted that way based on, you know, they were having a bad day. They they were suffering and they're lashing out. Maybe we said something that they viewed us threatening s so if we can start to see things differently and look at people instead of as, like predators or these threats and instead of will look at their wounded, um, people just like us and very often if we can see that and relate to it and be compassionate towards that, I think are reactivity. Fundamentally, shifts

spk_1:   8:51
are reactivity, are stress level will go down when we can remember. And a lot of our practices are often simply to remind ourselves and to help our mind come back from that kind of stress fight or flight response. Um, and very often what we might need to do in that kind of situation is, even if only for a moment begin with extending the company the kindness and the compassion toward our own being that they just did something and we felt threatened. We feel our our heart starting to race or our hands starting toe clench your jaw or something. Maybe we want to run away. Maybe we want to fight them. We want to say something snappy back and to turn toward that in our own experience, right on the spot, and this does take practice. It really. That's why we practice these things mindfulness and meditation. It's We can't just read about it and say, Oh, yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Now it's ready. Here on the spot. It's a training because there is so much both in our evolution and also in our culture, that is, um, encouraging us to be reactive and to be fearful and to be t go into fight or flight. So when we talk about, um using, for example, the meta meditation too deep in these states, it's good to remember that there are all kinds of other things coming into our our senses all day long. Every day that can go in the other direction we are. We are actually taking in and deepening other states, depending on what we watch on television. If we're watching a lot of scary stuff crime dramas, we may not realize it, but we're deepening the habits of seeing the world is a dangerous place. The scary people and things can happen to me at any moment and people who are scheming and conniving and killing. Um, so just to be aware that if this seems like a mechanical practice, but it's really just to be more intentional about the mind states that were cultivating where so much of the time we just kind of absorb things that are stimulating and exciting but also can condition our mind to see the world is a scary place. And, um, there is a lot of research and even whole centers now being established in major universities to study compassion and the benefits that it has on individuals and on society. And one of the pioneers in the field of self compassion is Kristen F, whose work I highly recommend. Um, her website is, I think, self dash compassion dot or GE and cheese. She's really she is the pioneer of the field, and now there are many, many studies, not just her own, but in the beginning, around 2003 or so, she was the only one looking into this, and she was inspired by having sat with a mindfulness meditation group that encourage this self compassion attitude. And she found it so effective in her own life that she decided to make it her field of study and and teaching and writing.

spk_0:   12:05
Yeah, let's let's talk a little bit more about self compassion, because this is something that I think it's very relevant in our society. Ah, and culture here in the West, because in a lot of ways, our culture really, um, kind of suggest that you need to be very self critical. It expects allowed out of you. And I think I've seen very often people really be like, Well, I didn't do very well or I'm not good enough And all of these types of things. And if you study modern psychology, mean what they're learning is a lot of that negative core beliefs about either ourselves or the world are really the root of a lot of our psychological problems. Um, and I think very much I mean, this was learned thousands of years ago by the Buddha is that those believes and really dictate how we relate to the world. And they can very much reflect the, uh, kind of our experience. And so I think, through compassion as we shift to that thinking away from the negative and realize the reality it fundamentally shifts. Um, are us?

spk_1:   13:24
Yes, that's so, so true. And you're touching on One of the most common myths about self compassion is, and Kristen F. Really has studied all of these myths and and exploded just about everyone of pump. Maybe every one of them. That that's one of the most common things you'll hear is Oh, I I can't just be self compassionate towards everything and myself are also never improve. I'll just become a blob and never get anywhere, that it will completely remove all my motivation to to grow and to learn. And the studies have shown exactly the opposite. But people are more motivated when they have self compassion. There's also a common myth that it will make me weak. It will make me, um, not advocate for myself and again. The studies have shown the opposite. That people actually take better care of themselves and are are strengthened in their life and their behaviours when they're practicing self compassion. And there are a number of other similar, um, myths that have been studied and shown to be the opposite of what, um, we might expect.

spk_0:   14:33
And I mean what I want to ask you, Barbara, and I'll just touch on this based on my experience. I mean, in terms of self compassion, I think, is the doorway, um, in really the gate open to the path The wellbeing is that you in very often in discussions with other people, that's like one of the hardest things I think people complain. And if if you find that in yourself, it is the one area you really need to work on. Um, in a lot of ways, it's easier for us to show compassion for other people. But, um, in if we're struggling in that realm, working on that and addressing that I think can really be transformative.

spk_1:   15:14
Yeah, definitely. And it is a practice. It's a training. Um, we need to practice it and and invite ourselves to keep coming back over and over because the habits can be so strong from our own family history, from our schools from our workplaces. So it's it is a practice to intentionally cultivate that state and also to look for friends. I mean, that's also part of this practice is supporting each other on the path of going in the direction we want to go in together. So noticing if some of the people we spend the most time with our heavily critical are really judgmental, um, we might start to see if there are other people we can spend more time with who are who are compassionate, who are kind.

spk_0:   16:08
Yeah, and just a note on the practice. I think one of the things I just wantto make a note here is that with mindfulness, it is repetitive. It's a lot of it takes time to develop, just like if you were playing sports it. If you're gonna go out and play basketball, you're gonna get better. As you keep on doing the same thing over and over and over again, it ultimately becomes a habit. Ah, and that's really what we're suggesting here When we say you just need to keep at it and keep practicing. It isn't going to be a one off thing where all of a sudden, yes, you're the, um ah, great basketball player. It's like, No, it takes a lot of time takes a fair amount of effort to get there, but it is also filled with rewards.

spk_1:   16:54
Yeah, again, I would just remind us all that when we're not practicing mindfulness were practicing mindlessness were actually always deepening something in in our behavior. And so are we deepening presents to our experience? Are we deepening running away from her experience or fighting or experience or running away from our fighting

spk_0:   17:17
each other? So I think that's it for today. Um, being very much appreciate you listening in to the podcast. If you need more information, feel free to reach out to our website at the wayto wellbeing dot com. Additionally, Barbara Eyes available via her Web site at barbara Newell dot com. Thank you very much, thanks.