Compassion

In this guided meditation, you are invited to connect with a soothing quality or state, to breathe in a way that feels soothing (or calm), and to also connect with kind, wise qualities inside of you.

I recently had the opportunity to hear Celeigh Cardinal sing in person. There were many touching moments: lyrics speaking of beauty and grief, funny moments, and this song, when the audience felt a collective ‘wow.’

The YouTube video below shows a different live performance from the one I attended. The song is on Celeigh Cardinal’s album, Boundless Possibilities (2024). Brennan Cameron is on keyboard.

Thank you, Celeigh, for sharing your gifts, and thank you also to Brennan.

We are always in relationship. We are in relationship with the world around us, with other people, and with what we experience inside ourselves. One relationship we can be curious about is the relationship we have with our own emotions.

Some emotions may be easier for us to experience than others. For one person, anger might feel harder to acknowledge or be with than sadness. For someone else, the reverse might be true. Even joy, contentment, or a feeling of relaxation can sometimes be difficult to experience. What feels easier or harder is specific to each person, and it is something that can change over time.

In this meditation, you are invited to practise offering loving-kindness toward a sensation or emotion that feels easier for you to experience, and then toward one that feels more difficult. You don’t have to choose a sensation or emotion that feels like the hardest one.

This meditation also gives you an opportunity to practise offering kind wishes toward yourself.

Wanting to be outside yesterday as part of the day and also desiring to make something, I recorded this meditation while sitting by a lake. Listening later, I heard the words but also found myself getting lost in the soothing sounds of the crickets and the movement of water.

Movement.

Movement is something I often seem to have conversations about. Moving between this and that. Between pain and beauty. Between activity and rest. Between effort, courage, and taking a break. Movement as essential.

From the meditation:

Yesterday I watched from my neighborhood as Canadian military personnel arrived in a helicopter and, from that hovering helicopter, rescued a crane operator who was trapped at the end of the arm of the crane, due to a huge fire and smoke below the crane (and the crane’s cab). I also witnessed, as so many others have, the swift, prolonged, and skilled actions of numerous fire fighters, police, and other emergency responders and technicians, as well as volunteers Read more ›

The musician, Matt Andersen, is phenomenal. When I heard his live performance of the carol, O Holy Night, a few years ago, it took my breath away.

Last week, while listening to his studio recording of the same carol, I was struck by pairing the end of one particular line paired with the beginning of the next. Read more ›

The first time I heard the song, Sisters of Mercy, written by Leonard Cohen and performed in this instance by Serena Ryder (studio version), I was riveted. At the song’s conclusion, I took a deep breath and uttered, “Wow”. Needless to say, I really like this song. Read more ›

In light of Amy Cuddy’s research in the previous post on the effect in her studies of posture on certain outcome variables such as hormone levels, what do you think might be the hormone levels (and other variables) for this little guy? Read more ›

Compassion-focused therapy aims to help us cultivate certain skills, qualities, feeling states, and motivations (e.g., skills and qualities compassion, feelings of safeness, the motivation to show care and to alleviate suffering). These we can then use to help work with particular difficulties or situations such as shame, self-criticism, or difficult emotions. Compassion-focused therapy also aims to help address and alleviate the fears and blocks we may have to experiencing compassion Read more ›

I pledge to spend the rest of my life focused on developing and promoting ways to increase compassion among millions of people worldwide.
—Dr. Yotam Heineberg (May 2013)

Here is a recording of a short presentaiton given by Dr. Yotam Heineberg, “The Future of Psychology: Compassion-Focused Outcomes” (May 2013). I watched it this morning and  thought to myself, “What an awesome way to start the day”. Read more ›