The Power of Compassion
Compassion is often misunderstood. There are ideas of compassion being some kind of pouring out of oneself in a sacrifice of energy and self. However, this is not compassion. Compassion is actually a frequency of being, that can be strengthened with regular practise.
What is “Compassion”?
Compassion is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it."
"Sympathy" is defined in the same dictionary, as "an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other; unity or harmony in action or effect; feeling of loyalty, tendency to favour or support; the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity; the correlation existing between bodies capable of communicating their vibrational energy to one another through some medium."
Compassion can sometimes be more easily accessed through feeling kindness. EEG studies in monks feeling compassion for impoverished children, show that when they feel as if they are in the children's shoes as a way or feeling empathy as if they were feeling what the children are feeling themself, their brain rhythms get dysregulated and they become sad; whereas when they practise compassion for the children, their brain rhythms stay stable, even, and balanced.
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So, we can summarize compassion as a state of sympathetic consciousness, where there is awareness of the other being, without having to become the other being, or match their state of consciousness. With compassion, there is also a tendency to favour and support both oneself and the other being that we are in presence with.
Sometimes people can become confused that compassion means to give up oneself - to abandon your own experience of the present moment. In fact, compassion includes an awareness of your own experience in the present moment. When you deepen into acceptance of your actual experience in the moment, without judgment, you are able to step into more clarity as to the reality of the present moment. When you step into that clarity, you now can navigate the moment with more ease and ability.
Compassion involves not only acceptance, but then also a choice to be in the energy and the frequency of compassion. Compassion is a measurable shift in your electromagnetic field, that can potentially shift others around you, depending on how strong your capacity to hold space for, emanate and radiate the energy of compassion is.
You strengthen your capacity to be in compassion through practise. It is that simple, and also, that difficult. A daily practice of a positive state of being, involves a resetting of your physical, emotional and mental state of being. Even, you spiritual state of being. So, you have to practise this and, as with all learning, you will meet resistance. So, you have to be strong enough to practise, despite your resistance.
As growing the will power to practise can be challenging, I developed several peer reviewed tools based in scientific evidence to help you practise compassion. You can find these in my shop, including a guided meditation, two self directed online programs, and a group meeting online starting this year.
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So, in summary, compassion includes a welcoming of the truth of the moment, and this truth includes the truth of what you are experiencing as well as what the other is experiencing. In true compassion, you are able to emanate a certain frequency of being, that can influence the other being to experience compassion as well. You are also able to hold compassion for yourself, which helps you to learn how to exist with healthy boundaries, which is part of the fierce nature of compassion that can be an additional area to contemplate and practise.
COMPASSION
• sympathetic consciousness
• tendency to favour or support
• sensitivity
• your biological and brain rhythms stay stable, even, and balanced
• equanimity
• welcoming
• stable, even, and balanced brain and heart rhythms
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Some of my physician readers, may be wondering how the practise of compassion connects to the study of compassion fatigue. What is compassion fatigue?
Compassion fatigue is made of two components, burnout and vicarious traumatic stress.
Burnout includes frustration, anger, exhaustion, and mood changes, doesn't impact function but impacts quality of life, can be connected to misalignment with values and can be reduced mainly from organizational restructuring but also, through scientific evidence-based approaches to lifestyle to reset the nervous system.
Vicarious traumatic stress involves exposure to traumatic material, can occur in high stress settings, is exacerbated by excessive workload, can be connected to feelings of powerlessness, and worsens with interpersonal strains and tensions. With traumatic stress there can be lasting change including: increased cortisol and norepinephrine, reduced hippocampal size, reduced anterior cingulate size (the ACC is the shifter between sympathetic and parasympathetic states) and increased amygdala firing leading to more intense expressed emotions, that can be hard on relationships and thus success in work life and personal life.
Through a practise of self compassion, you can create greater well being, higher quality of care of others, resilience, engagement and presence, reduced emotional exhaustion, reduced burnout and stress, reduced negative emotion, greater self compassion and even reduced incidence of depression and anxiety.
Self compassionate people are:
more emotionally regulated in response to adverse events
less extreme in responses
focus less on negative affect
have more self acceptance
have less loss of control
have more psychological strengths including: resilience,
happiness, optimism, wisdom, curiousity, and courage
are more confident to explore, and have greater emotional intelligence
are more motivated towards achieving their goals and can reduce tendencies of maladaptive perfectionism
Self compassionate people have:
• less burnout
• less anxiety
• less depression
• less shame
• less fear of failure
• less rumination
• greater life satisfaction
• greater social connectedness, emotional intelligence, and happiness
In a meta-analysis of 27 articles examining 1020 health care professionals in total, mindfulness combined with self compassion was found to be significantly beneficial, with stronger benefits when learned during a retreat.
To learn more, and start your self compassion practise, you can review the guided meditations, self directed online programs, group virtual program and retreats on my website. If you are interested to coach individually with me, simply contact me to discuss further. My style of individual coaching is highly customized, using the tools of neuroscience and well being that are suited to your lifestlye and challenges in a specific way to create greater ease.
For physicians, I also specific physician coaching, for leadership or self development. Contact me to learn more, or visit my page on leadership programs.
