The science and practice of compassion

Part Two

We can tell how compassionate a listener is by just watching video recordings of listeners and speakers. When one person is talking about their own stress or suffering and the other person is listening. You turn the sound off. People just watch the listener and people are pretty unanimous about what compassion looks like when you’re listening and number one is approach orientation of the body. So rather than “Yeah, I’m interested in your suffering” (slouching and turning away) there’s a sense of turning toward and leaning in. So, you’re doing that now, which you may find it actually helps you connect. We’re embodying something that may support the listening process.

Attention to the things that really communicate compassionate listening and help us find our own compassion is called non-aggressive eye contact. I think if you are listening with your whole body you don’t need to stare into someone’s soul which may be uncomfortable for the person who’s speaking (laughter). So, when you’re thinking about your eye contact I want you to think about being generous with your full attention. You’re listening with your ears, you’re listening with your posture, and you can be very kind with your eye contact.  The person knows you’re listening, but they also don’t feel like they are being, you know? So that’s the attention part.

 Finally, I invite you, this is with your mind, because you won’t be talking, we know you won’t be evaluating, judging, interrogating verbally, but I also want you to invite you to have this attitude of listening with the desire to understand what the person is sharing. That’s really the full intention here is to understand both what’s said and what is unsaid, and to just try to have that sense of resonance and connection.

 I think there are some groups that are not exactly four which means I’m going to check-in and we may go a little bit more than four rounds. If there are fewer people in the group, you get to sit and breathe while others continue. Who doesn’t want more time to sit and breathe? It really encourages you to not shift gears and talk about the weather. When your group is done, you sit together and breathe. Okay?

 Somebody who typically does not volunteer to go first in settings like this, put your hand in the air. In every group this is going to happen. Every group. Okay, hopefully, did you guys get that back there? No? Somebody who doesn’t always volunteer to go first, put your hand in the air. Okay, now one of them, whoever got their hand in the air first, that person is talking first, and we will go clockwise from that person. Does that make sense? Are we now clockwise? (Laughter) Great. Okay.

Everybody close your eyes and drop your gaze. To the person who is going to be sharing in a couple of seconds I want you to remember what your expression is, that statement, feel free to say it once or twice or three times or say it and elaborate on it. When you’re done or when you hear the bell ring we’ll come back to this place of silence. Those of you who are going to be listening, connect to your own breath and drop your own story for the moment.

Okay, now everyone open their eyes and listeners begin to share your full attention with person number one, who will begin when they’re ready, gaze dropped for the moment, and we’ll conclude this practice with a practice of holding opposites. (After the participant shared with the group) You may have heard, and you may have shared some things that have some vulnerability to them.

 I invite you to see if you can breathe in and be with the emotional tone of that rawness, or that vulnerability. If there is an emotional tone, or a sensation of having shared that, or having heard this, I want you to actually have a sense of breathing with that, making room for it. At the same time in the sharing there were acts of courage and generosity and you may have experienced a sensation of connection or compassion or a fear of compassion. If any of that was present I invite you to bring it into your awareness as well. So, both at once making room for any sense of vulnerability or rawness at the same time making room for the experience of courage and connection.

(After a few minutes of silence)

Go ahead and open your eyes again and share your attention one last time with your group. I invite you to thank them for listening and sharing. If someone stands up too long, you can steal their seat (laughter). No, just kidding. There is one other guideline now that we’re going to introduce having done some sharing. The last guideline is what was shared stays in that circle. If during our break you see that person hanging out this is not the time to go up to them and be “like what you said was so cool, that just resonated with me or you know my therapist has talked to me about that issue and I have some advice” or “I am a therapist let me give you my card.” No. No. That was a closed circle now and it’s done. And even be mindful that sometimes we go to workshops like this and we go home and want to share what we experience with others and sometimes we do that by telling stories about other people instead of ourselves. Even to that I’m going to suggest, no, this will be closed in the circle and if you think about going home and telling people about what you experience that it would be from direct experience.

There will be other exercises where we really debrief it together. What I want to do right now is shift to the first science part. A little science break. So, are any of these people in the room? (referring to the slide displayed) I should ask since this is a local group. No, okay.

These are images from a study that I was part of where we looked at whether the eight-week Compassion Cultivation Training Program at Stanford University that we’re doing small tasters from today, whether that helps transform people’s fears of compassion. Something I didn’t mention before we dived into that exercise is that very high levels of fears of compassion in people who agree with a lot of those statements I showed you, that’s associated with depression and anxiety, fears of happiness, and stress. I’m not sure which one causes the other. It could be that fearing compassion shuts us down from many of the positive experiences that would support our mental well-being, or it could be that sometimes when we’re suffering it actually is the hardest to open our hearts to suffering. But either way to address fears of compassion is itself a very important process. Not to be like let’s forget those fears and march on to compassion. The process of exploring them seems to be a very important part of the benefits of exploring compassion.

I wanted to show you the results of this first study we did. It was a randomized controlled study where the control group was a weightless group. They weren’t getting any training at all. The people were randomized, it was a nine-week training, and we had 60 folks exploring compassion through a very similar process to what we’re doing today except without PowerPoint slides.

Here’s what we found:

Percent improvement doesn’t mean we increased their fears it means we decreased their fears.

You’re looking at the fear of compassion for others, the sense that people will exploit me if I’m too compassionate or there are people that don’t deserve compassion and we saw about an average of 40% reduction in people agreeing with those items, fully endorsing them.

 A reduction in the fear of compassion from others. A smaller percentage, in fact about 15%, which motivated us more to talk about that when we saw it was not moving quite as much. Still a significant decrease in feeling embarrassed or guilty or nervous when other people show us compassion or a fear of not wanting to depend on that compassion.

Finally, fear of compassion for self. The sense that self-compassion will make us weak, that we won’t be able to get everything done that we want to get done, or that we’ll be overwhelmed by our own suffering if we bring compassion to it. That also decreased about 30%. One of the things I found so encouraging is this number at the top, a correlation of .24 (improvement) with home practice time to the degree that people were going home and doing the practices, the meditation practices that we’re doing here today, like the breath focus and then our next meditation will be a compassion meditation.

The degree that people went home and did this was positively correlated with this transformation over time. The reason that I really love that finding is because it demonstrates that our willingness to connect with our own barriers to compassion is really the process by which we find freedom from that suffering.

So, as we go through the practice of meditating today I want to really encourage that often the direct experience is, this is hard, it’s not what I expected and at the same time it’s exactly what is needed.

Question (inaudible)

Oh, it was those items that I showed you. Those were scale items. The ones that I went through and asked you to find, the ones that resonated the first set was a fear of compassion for others, the second set was receiving, and the third set was self-compassion. It was the direct endorsement of the items that I shared with you.

Question (inaudible)

Not endorsing them quite as much. One of the answers to the question is does that mean after the training they don’t have those fears anymore. No, it’s like anything else. What happens is we start to get a little bit of room around them. So, I may still notice that I get anxious when other people are showing me compassion but doesn’t feel so thick, it doesn’t feel so rigid, and therefore on a scale I might endorsement it a little bit less. That’s the change we’re looking at. If you’re interested, I’ll give you a link to the full scale.

So, we’re going to do one more practice before we move on to the next barrier for compassion and this is a self-reflection within the meditation practice. I’m going to be asking you why you want to cultivate compassion.

 I presume you do because you’re here but if you don’t that’s okay. Also, you can still ask the question why might I at some point want to cultivate compassion? And what resistance are you willing to explore for the process of cultivating compassion? This may be the same resistance that you shared in your small group and then we’re going to see if you can we can bring both into the same spacious container.

So, I’m going to ask you to go back and forth in your own attention between these two and practice that fundamental skill of holding the opposites in your own mind when it comes to compassion. We’re going to try to hold both the barrier and our own desire and willingness at the same time. It’s going to be a pretty short meditation, but it’s actually something that will end up being very helpful in every meditation that we do.

With this in mind go ahead and come back into what feels like your mountain stance or seat so you can stay seated or stand up and sit down again as needed. Make a choice that feels stable and steady. Maybe you sense your feet on the ground if you’re sitting in a chair. Maybe you make a choice to actually spread the flesh on your buttocks so that you can feel your sits bones. Don’t spread them while you’re standing. That’s just obscene. (laughter). Go ahead and have a seat if you are already sitting, go ahead and have your seat for this meditation and then either close your eyes or drop your gaze and find that quality of the sky of the breath.

 Draw your attention to your own breathing. Sense the expansive quality of the breath.  Let’s find that quality of the heart, both qualities of the heart. I’d like you to bring to mind a reason that you would like to explore cultivating compassion. If You aren’t sure you might just repeat that question in your own mind. If you are able to feel something like an intention, or a willingness, or a clarity I invite you to turn to your body and see if there is a sensation associated with recognizing this intention. What does this intention feel like in your body?

Now bring your awareness back to the quality of the breath, literally sensing the flow.  Now I invite you to bring to mind either a resistance that you are interested in exploring or perhaps there is a particular suffering that you feel some edge around that you are interested in bringing your compassion to. If you can find that edge or that resistance see if there is a sensation in your body (pause) and then bring your awareness back to the breath and for a few breaths I invite you to imagine you can breathe in your own willingness, intention or desire, the sensation or the idea of it. Breathe in your own willingness and intention. And for a few breaths imagine that you could breathe in the quality of resistance or suffering. I invite you to imagine that you could choose to breathe in those sensations or that awareness.

We’ll conclude this practice by finding a quality of attention and heart that is big enough to contain both at the same time. Can you sense or be aware of both your own desire to broaden compassion and any resistance or suffering that might be present?

Beginning to open your awareness back to the space around you and we’re going to stay in silence for about a minute in case anyone wants to pause with or take notes about anything that stands out to you about that practice. If you’re good just stay where you are and breathe with a sense of open awareness of the space around you.

 One of the things I love about compassion training is that people are too embarrassed to give dirty looks when cell phones go off. Let’s stay with that. You’re into your technology. It’s good. I want to remind you or tell you that this is being recorded, not the individual groups when you were talking in small groups, that’s not being recorded, but these full group conversations will be recorded, and I hear put online somewhere. You’re not miked so you may not even be picked up at all but as we do these full groups know that the content, I may be repeating it, so everyone can hear it, and just keep that in mind what you say if you are willing for that to then go out to an audience bigger than who’s here or maybe not.

I would like to know how that practice, the last practice, was for you. The attempt to hold in your awareness at the same time, both a desire to broaden compassion and an awareness of resistance of suffering. What that experience was like to try to be that spacious container. What stood out to you?

Kelly: I’m going to repeat the question: This is the awareness that you kind of want this and you have some skepticism about just how much. Right? There may be limits to what is going to be helpful. In terms of you specifically said self-compassion.

Participant 1: Yes.

Kelly: So, you were aware of both at the same time and was there a part of your mind that could kind of be with both at the same time and not freak out about the fact that they were both present?

Participant: Yes.

Kelly:  Yes! Great. Victory. Thank you for sharing. That was the practice. What else stands out to you about that practice? This is physical sensations we’re interested in.

Participant 2: I thought about why I want to cultivate compassion and I felt a warm feeling around my heart.

Kelly: Great so bringing awareness to sensations of wanting to cultivate compassion and you sensed a warmth around your heart. Did others feel something around the heart?

Participant 3: It felt like resistance. Really, it felt a little bit like an edge. So then when I tried to put them both together it was kind of in between. The physical sensation was quite evident.

Kelly: So, this is the observation that there was a fullness and warmth of the heart when focusing on the intention and like an edge like you didn’t have full access to that quality when you brought to mind resistance and when you try to hold them both the same time it felt somewhere in between the two.

Kelly: Did someone else have an experience?

One of the things I really love about this type of practice is that it’s a practice of expanding more when we bring in something that triggers a sensation of contraction. So, this is like a baby version of the bigger practice something that you might be familiar with, the practice of Tonglen, where we try to get very, very spacious and actually open towards enormous amounts of suffering that we might typically want to keep at bay and protect ourselves from.

Part of what this practice is and were going to bring this quality into other meditation practices, is the idea is that when you notice that shutting down or something else arising that doesn’t feel like fullness of the heart or expansiveness that allows you to lean in, your job is to go back to that quality of expansiveness and warmth and invite the quality of resistance or the sensations into that. So, it will be a nice challenge.

Kelly: Do you have a question or observation or comment?

Participant 4: Observation. I want to cultivate compassion because I have a strong sense of how I’m limited by the lack of it. That was my thought, and then you asked about how does that feel? What came immediately was fear of the compassion and my reflection on that was that I want to develop the compassion specifically because of the fear, that’s where there’s something to learn.

Thank you for sharing that. I’m so glad. That’s a very brave thing to say. I want to particularly highlight how valuable that is. So, we had a sharing where the sensation of intention to cultivate compassion is what we typically associate with compassion; warmth around the heart in some folks, sometimes we hear that, and we think the experience I had was shutting down, freaking out, or fear or other things like that and it’s so important to acknowledge and name the diversity of experience that we have as really an act of compassion for ourselves.

So, this is exactly the process that I think allows us to cultivate compassion toward the fear that then transforms the fear.

 Kelly: Yes, question? Do you want us to pass the mic down? Thank you very much.

Participant 5: Self-compassion brings me in touch with my loneliness and that’s hard.

Kelly: is there a part of you that can be with how hard that is?

Participant 5: Yes.

Kelly: Great. Thank you.

Participant 5: It’s a gift.

Kelly: Yes.

Participant 6: It was very easy for me to feel that in my heart and then the resistance I felt very much in my abdomen and I could feel them at the same time and it made me realize that perhaps I am thinking about those things and those physical feelings or going down the road in the future if I could put more thought into that and pay attention, that will bring them back to my mind , to be able to, if that makes any sense?

Kelly: Yes. So, this observation that you can absolutely use sensations in real life when confronted with suffering or with our own resistance. This is such a key insight. I wasn’t going to show you some of the studies. There’s some interesting research suggesting that the ability to turn toward your physical sensations can actually be a key distinction between compassion and not compassion whether it’s anxiety, overwhelm, or self-criticism. We’re going to continue to explore this process of: are you willing to turn towards those sensations? And when those sensations arise, even if they are gut sensations of resistance or heart sensations of fear that turning toward those sensations transforms, just how much control do they have over us?

Kelly: Okay we’re going to move on thank you very much for sharing.

 I want to turn to the question of two competing responses that come up when we experience awareness of suffering. We’re going to talk about that little bit, then we’re going to take a break then come back and do our next prolonged meditation practice which will be a practice of compassion and lovingkindness for anyone of your choice that you would like to experience compassion and lovingkindness for.

(After a break)

We’re going to begin now, this is like a little tiny exercise not a full meditation. I invite you to drop your gaze or close your eyes and just see if you can touch, just touch in, don’t drown in it, just touch. I want you to bring into mind someone you care about, a pet, a human, it doesn’t have to be any particular relationship; a friend or coworker, a family member, a partner, a child, relative, anyone you care about and whomever comes to mind even if it’s a squirrel who lives in a tree near you it’s fine.

We’ll call this “friend or loved one”. As you bring this friend or loved one to mind I want you to imagine being with them, maybe a specific memory or just imagine them with you right now. Notice how this makes you feel.

Now I invite you to remember or imagine a time when this friend or loved one was suffering in some way. Maybe they were sick, or angry, or scared, or sad.

Notice how you feel when you think of this suffering.

Now go ahead and open your awareness back to the space around you. That was not a meditation, just a little touch in. I invite words or brief phrases. We don’t need a mic for this just call out words or brief phrases that describe how it felt to bring to mind the suffering of a friend or loved one.

Difficult, fear, sadness, anger, hurt, sorrow, closing down, helplessness, this sounds great give me more of this. Anything else? Concern, elation, love, any physical sensations? Tightness of the chest. Anything else? Very interesting, a little bit of narcissism shows up. Tightness of the back. Tears. Yes, anyone else in the back? Because I know you are here. Support. Anything else back there? Resentment.

 Great. Thank you for demonstrating that when we are aware of suffering there’s a very wide range of responses we can have that may or may not include that wonderful process model of compassion that I shared with you; awareness of suffering, a little bit of a sense of distress, but just lots of care and concern and love that motivates us to act skillfully to relieve suffering.

Science has a lot to say about this process and I think one of the first things that’s really helpful to recognize when we start to explore compassion is that compassion is one of really two competing instincts for when we are aware of suffering of a loved one or a friend. We have this other kind of caregiving, close bond instinct that often triggers, this is from researchers at Berkeley who call it empathic distress, but you could say it’s sympathetic distress or just freaking out and falling apart when you are aware of a loved one in pain or suffering in some way. It is a natural instinct to feel like a dagger is in your heart, to feel overwhelmed, because you don’t want your friend or loved one to suffer and maybe it makes us resentful and maybe it makes us afraid or maybe it makes us want to shut down. This is a very real instinct that competes with what we often think of as being the more ideal instinct of just being aware of suffering and feeling warmth and tenderness and being able to act skillfully rather than shutting down or getting angry or falling apart.

One of the things that the researchers at Berkeley highlight that I think is really helpful when we are considering the value of cultivating compassion is that empathic distress competes with compassion as a response to suffering as a signal to the person who is suffering that we ourselves are in need of compassion now. That our own empathic distress when we start crying, when we start panicking, when we start shutting down, that it’s a way to elicit social support and care from the person who suffering. It’s for ourselves. A little bit narcissistic, right. It’s for ourselves that now we have made the suffering, we sort of turned the tables and we have now taken in the suffering to the degree that we are the one in need of support and help. When we respond to suffering from this point of view, to the person who is truly suffering before it became our suffering, that’s a very difficult place to put that person in who now is trying to tell you about a diagnosis or difficult relationship or something like that and now suddenly there’s this giant wall or barrier and it’s my job to console. This empathic stress really gets in the way of our ability to offer support and to act skillfully. One of the reasons that we cultivate compassion is so that we know what to do when this shows up. We recognize it is completely natural and often the more you care the more this is the case. It’s often evidence of our own connection and love and that compassion is different from love. Love can lead us in directions that don’t always allow us to relieve suffering.

I wanted to show you some pictures of what’s going on in the brain that researchers have found distinguish compassion from empathic distress that would lead us to not be able to act as skillfully. I’m showing you, these are by the way if you’re not all brain people, these are three pictures of the brain in the same orientation. Imagine you are getting a side view of the brain and the forehead is here on all of these and you’re looking into the middle of the brain and little more of the side of the brain in the middle slide.

So, the first area of the brain that seems to become really important for the experience of compassion rather than other responses is a system of the brain associated with your sense of self. That is, you need you need to recognize self-relevance or connection in the other who is suffering. If you don’t, often we just feel nothing at all or maybe we feel angry or irritated or schadenfreude, where we’re happy to see that person suffering. We need to actually see ourselves in the one who is suffering. Now this is where we could go off into empathic distress because we can see ourselves so strongly it is like looking in a mirror and suddenly it is our suffering now. We need to see ourselves in the one who is suffering but we also, importantly need to have a sense that the self is not the one who is suffering. So, there is recognition of self without over identification. When that happens, it gives rise to an emotional response and you’re looking at areas the brain in here including the insula which is an area of the brain that gives you access to the embodiment aspect of your emotions. You understand that my heart is doing this, and it means something, my stomach is doing this, and it means something. That it’s the part of the brain that is really listening to your body and understanding the emotional tone of what’s going on in your body and that seems to be a really important basis for a sense of care and concern and a desire to give care. Also, it’s the same region of the brain of the stress response and that’s totally part of compassion. You feel a kind of heightened urgency and your attention gets a little bit narrow to the suffering. This is really what matters. I’m now going to orient toward and I’m now going to pay attention. There’s this mixture of distress as well as this care and love.

The area of the brain that seems to really distinguish compassion from sympathetic and empathetic distress is a system of the brain that starts in the midbrain and goes to your frontal cortex and your motor cortex and is sometimes referred to as the reward system of the brain. This is the system of the brain that makes you approach something you want. So, if I had chocolate in the room and you all like chocolate and you find yourself, you don’t even know how it’s happening, but your hand is reaching for the chocolate. You don’t have to think about it you just instinctively approach and lean in and move toward. This system of the brain, when it becomes activated, is that sort of missing component in empathic distress that really transforms it into compassion. The desire to approach rather than protect oneself from or escape. It’s the same system of the brain makes you want to buy something to drink something or hug someone it’s literally approach motivation.

 In several studies different research groups have found that if you compare sadness, grief or distress to people reporting actual compassion that this is the missing link. It’s this desire to approach rather than lean back and escape. I find it very helpful to see some of this brain imaging research because I can often recognize myself at sort of different parts of this process model and often when I am feeling myself in empathic distress that I need to really touch in with each one of these and sometimes it means tuning into the body and often it means choosing to lean into what I’m feeling because even if it’s your own distress that you decide to embrace and approach you’re actually bringing in that quality of approach and acceptance and moving toward, that allows you to do the same for whatever the actual suffering is. 

One other thing and then we’re going to take a break and when we come back we are going to do a practice that allows you to do that for the suffering of your friend or loved one. The other thing that really distinguishes distress from compassion is whether your body is pushing off into a kind of fight or flight response or calmer caregiving response. Not caregiving like, oh my God, I have to protect them from their suffering, but that kind of ability that allows you to be calm and present even when the other one may not be able to when they’re suffering. an example of this is just looking at a very specific nerve, the vagus nerve, that innervates the heart and slows it down when you’re experiencing compassion.

Some of you may have had this experience when you thought of a loved one suffering, that the heart rate sped up. Did anyone have that experience? In a compassionate response often, what happens is that the heart rate speeds up, that’s the initial recognition of suffering and what allows it to unfold as compassion is somehow the nervous system says alright let’s stay calm so that we can stay present and engage so that we do not have to flee or fight we can be directly involved here. And the heart starts to slow down, and the breathing tends to slow down too and there’s a synchronization between breathing and heart rate. This sometimes happens spontaneously but we can choose to make it happen by awareness of our body and breath. So, when we come back from the break what we’re going to do is a very simple breathing exercise to help us choose a state like this of the body and then we’ll go through a formal compassion meditation practice.

End of part two

 

 

 

 The words so, and, but, then , actually, & and have been replaced by punctuation in a handful of instances. Compassion Cultivation Training was substituted for C. C. T. in the introduction. Microphones were turned off about midway through the presentation so audience participation is muted.
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