30-Day Mindfulness Challenge – Compassion Meditation

The 30-Day Mindfulness Challenge kicked off on Wednesday, January 12, 12:00-12:30 pm ET with a compassion meditation practice. This post includes a brief summary of the event and resources to sustain your personal practice.

Summary

Compassion meditation is designed to cultivate compassion and kindness for self and others. The practice invites participants to actively engage with the mind to help generate feelings of compassion and kindness, qualities that are important for personal well-being and for being an effective RC colleague and treater.

As RC treaters, we know that compassion fatigue is an occupational hazard wherein our emotional well runs dry from repeated acts empathizing with others. Compassion practice helps replenish our well – to refill our cup – so that we can serve others.

Self-compassion is also essential in the workplace where judging, criticizing and shaming ourselves is often followed by withdrawing, isolating and silencing – the direct opposite of the caring connection that is needed to sustain an RC culture.

For more on this topic see Compassion Meditation as an Antidote to Compassion Fatigue, including PowerPoint slides on the relationship between types of empathy, compassion and compassion meditation.

Challenge Tips

Consider the following steps as a way to sustain your successful Challenge experience:

• Recommit to your Challenge intention
• Experiment with Compassion meditation using this 9-minute script (a version of the one used in our community session) or this 5-minute script offered by Kristen Neff, a leading voice for compassion meditation.
• Consider the prompts found in the Challenge Tracking Calendar
• Record daily minutes of practice in your calendar
• Encourage your RC colleagues to join you in the Challenge by sharing the registration link – it’s not too late to join the Challenge 

Micro Practice (1 minute or so)

Consider practicing the Self-Compassion micro practice by repeating the following:

"May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be at peace, may I be free from suffering."