Compassion Meditation
Participants listen to an audio recorded, guided reflection on their feelings of empathy, compassion, and motivation to help and support others in a sequence from close loved ones to friends to acquaintances to strangers or even adversaries. A kind of mindfulness practice, compassion meditation focuses on developing a mindset of common humanity, nurturance, and open-hearted helpfulness.
Reasoning
Compassion meditation can increase feelings of connection with others as well as one’s sense of value, or mattering in social relationships. A reflective practice that involves tuning into feelings of closeness and support, and extending empathy, concern, and supportiveness to others, compassion meditation strengthens benevolent and altruistic perceptions and attributions in social contexts. Compassion meditation increases feelings of compassion in response to one’s own, as well as other people’s suffering, which motivates affiliative and helpful behaviors that help people regulate unpleasant emotions, increase sense of meaning and purpose, and improve social bonds.
Procedure
Participants listen to an audio guided compassion-themed mediation. Compassion meditation typically begins by inviting participants to find a comfortable quiet spot and relax. Then participants are asked to picture someone who they feel close to and who they love very much, and who loves them in return. Then, participants are instructed to notice the physical sensations around their heart like warmth, calm, and openness. Compassion meditation may encourage participants to imagine a golden light emanating from the loved one into their own heart, and while imagining this, to imagine the loved one saying these phrases to them:
May you have happiness.
May you be free from suffering.
May you experience joy and ease.
As a next step in compassion meditation, participants may be instructed to think of a time someone else was suffering, andnotice how this feels in their body. They may be instructed to focus on their heart area, and notice feelings of tenderness, warmth, and openness. Again, participants may be instructed to breathe deeply, and imagine a golden light, this time extending from their own heart to their loved one and silently recite the same phrases:
May you have happiness.
May you be free from suffering.
May you experience joy and ease.
Participants may also be instructed to contemplate a time when they themselves have suffered, and notice how they feel when they think of their own suffering. Participants may be directed to imagine a golden orb in their own heart and silently recite: ,
May I have happiness.
May I be free from suffering.
May I experience joy and ease
Some compassion meditations also include instructions to visualize someone they neither like nor dislike (e.g. a stranger), or someone they have had difficulty with in their life. Again, the instructions often involve slow careful breathing, attention to physical sensations, and silently reciting the same kinds of phrases:
.
May you have happiness.
May you be free from suffering.
May you experience joy and ease.
A final part of some compassion meditations invites participants to extend and recite well wishes for all sentient beings.
Primary Citation & Study Summary:
Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E., Caldwell, J. Z., Olson, M. C.,Rogers, G. M., and Davidson, R. J. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1171-1180.
Adults in Wisconsin received either a 30 minute version of this compassion meditation training or a training aimed at mitigating negative emotion by helping people think differently about a negative event. Participants who completed two weeks of the compassion training demonstrated more altruism—they gave more money to a victim of unfair treatment. This altruistic behavior is a strong marker of compassion.
What’s more, the people who received the compassion training showed different brain activity in response to pictures of suffering: Their brains showed greater activity in regions known to be involved in understanding the suffering of others, regulating emotions, and experiencing positive feelings in response to a reward or goal. In this case, suggest the researchers, that goal was alleviating the suffering of someone in need.