compassion

Cultivating Compassion

(video 4:59) The Science of Meditation Summit interview with Dr. Kelly McGonigal was all about compassion, her research and experience.

Compassion for others is an instinct, according to her research, as social animals we’re geared towards helping our community members relieve their suffering. This keeps our survival group strong.

Self-compassion is not instinctive. Instinctively we respond to our own suffering with stress: distress, shame, guilt, fight, fight, freeze, etc.

If we’re going to train compassion for self and others, she suggests that we do both at the same time. Cultivate compassion for others, practicing to improve that natural process, and also include self-compassion in the practice to build that as well.

Watch the video for a brief description of a compassion practice.

Enjoy!,
Elena
www.ElenaMariaFoucher.com

3 Steps to Empowerment, Step 2: Acceptance

As we become aware of ourselves, our daily thoughts, feelings and actions, then we can start to accept them… most will be easy to accept and some will take a bit of compassion. For some we will want to step out of denial and out of resistance and into compassion, non-judgement and acceptance.
Why might this be useful?
If we want to go from fine to fantastic then we want to accept all of ourselves… step out of denial and resistance of the parts that we feel we don’t like and into acceptance. Then we start to know the truth of how fantastic we already are!
Can you accept all of you?
Some days I’m better than others… I’d love to know what kinds of things you’ve done that helped you to accept parts that were “unacceptable”?
Enjoy,
Elena
theJoyLab.net