Calm: The Compassion Key
How do we achieve an inner state of almost constant calm?
This can be really tough. To develop a inner sense of an almost constant calm, you might have to be relentless and fierce in your practice of returning, over and over again, to a centre of calm within. Perhaps “relentless and fierce” aren’t qualities that come to mind when you think of creating inner calm, or when you think of mindfulness, or of compassion. In this article, I invite you to consider how to use mindfulness, and specifically the compassion tenet of mindfulness, to develop an inner positive state of calm using an almost athletic relentless and fierce approach.
The Compassionate Observer
Compassion can be defined as both an innate quality, and yet also a practice of ever progressing skill. Although compassion has often been seen as a passive, perhaps feminine, and mild quality, there is growing thought towards a “fierce compassion” which indicates a more strong, maybe masculine, and active quality to building your capacity for compassion. I mention the “masculine” aspect to invite my male readers, and male clients, to consider a more compassionate stance towards themselves to create a healthy masculine self identity that fosters resilience.
In the dictionary, compassion is defined as “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate the distress” (1). The word stems from the Latin “compati” which means “to suffer with.” Compassion is differentiated from empathy. With empathy, the observer feels the other person’s feeling. Instead, to be compassionate is to practice a state within the presence of another’s suffering by being “sympathetic” with “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune”, and exhibiting an “understanding between people; common feeling,” and is thus different from mirroring the other’s state of being (2). The difference is key to how the brainwaves of the compassionate observer behave, and the resulting exhaustion factor to the the compassionate observer. The “observer”, in mindfulness and meditation, is a key approach to practicing compassion, in that witnessing the way you respond enables you to have more neutrality, less judgment, and thus more ease of choosing an adaptive state to challenging situations.
Compassion in the Research Literature
In the research literature, compassion has been described as being composed of five elements. The first element is recognition that another is suffering. The second element is the ability to reference the universality of human suffering - that we all go through suffering as part of being human. The third element is a sense of feeling for the other person who is suffering. The fourth element is tolerating uncomfortable feelings. The final and fifth element is the motivation to act to alleviate the suffering. In this definition, we can see a step-wise progression which shows us an internal activity - an inner process - that is compassion. So, we might conclude that compassion is actually an inner action (3).
The inner action of compassion has been shown to have evolutionary advantages. Communities with greater compassion protect and care for each other better than those with less compassion. Compassion expressed between individuals increases well being and mental health for the individuals. Compassion may also act to buffer reactivity to stress and help people recover from psychological injury (4,5).
What is the action in the brain when compassion occurs? Some neuroimaging studies highlight that self compassion changes the activity in pain centres, reducing the intensity of perceived pain in those with chronic low back pain. In these studies, self criticism was also reduced, which is relevant as self criticism can significantly interfere with goal pursuit. Some of the brain activity related to the reduced pain and decreased self criticism in this study was connected to changes in activity in a region called the DLPFC, a brain region that can “pause” negative emotion. The study noted an increased capacity to attenuate shame, an emotion that blocks healing and can prevent your ability to build resilience (4,5).
In a recent study, researchers identified that cultivating compassion was associated with increased parasympathetic response measured by an increase in Heart Rate Variability, or HRV. As you may know, when you increase your HRV, you improve your heart health, and reduce your risk of heart attack. In addition, the researchers found that people who cultivated compassion had better follow through in practicing the training intervention, and thus more effective habit change. They also found that, when self criticism could be dissolved and replaced with “self-reassurance”, this protected against anxiety and depression. “Self-reassurance” in this study was defined as the ability to be encouraging, resilient, and aware of your positive qualities and capabilities in the face of setbacks, mistakes, or failures. They found that self criticism increased amygdala activation, whereas self-reassurance decreased amygdala reactivity. As we know, the amygdala tends to fire to protect us, but can lead to impulsive actions that we later regret, or overdrive and overwhelm that cloud our thinking and judgment. Developing skills to calm the amygdala is key to the inner locus of calm (6).
If it may interest you, the intervention in the above study was Compassionate Mind Training, which includes (a) grounding and body posture, (b) soothing-rhythm breathing, (c) mindfully noting when self-criticism arises, and (d) cultivating the compassionate self. CMT has been noted to reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, stress, and fears, and to increase states of contentment, calmness, and safety (6). CMT is similar to the transformational work that I do with my clients, first regulating the nervous system, then taking a deep dive to face more subconscious states that are problematic, and then meeting these states with inner innate strengths, often uniquely exhibited in each individual.
Wild and Fierce Compassion
My inspiration for this post on compassion is two-fold. First, I have been working on a wellness program for providing resilience in the face of vicarious trauma, which is now a term being connected to the term “compassion injury” or “compassion fatigue.” So, the question of “what is compassion?,” has been subconsciously running in the back of my mind. Second, today I took my surf board into the wind and hail and found myself thriving in the tossing surf, to my surprise. The waves were large, fierce, smashing and creating great white water cascades to catch and ride. I loved the relentless wild waves, returning over and over again, blasting me with energy, and requiring the emergence of a capacity in me to meet them with equal ferocity and playfulness, when I had felt tired on my walk out towards the water. This requirement from the waves to meet them with a matching ferocity, recharged my energy, and enabled me to later access an apres-surf amplified state of bliss.
I thought, what if my capacity for compassion could be like these waves? Relentless. With a rhythm of smooth areas between waves, a building, a crashing that brings play, ferocity, and requires of me an inner wildness and force and strength to come into action, and then an aftermath of a smooth ride and coasting, then a fall into the buoyant ocean’s arms. Could there be a “sea of compassion” that I find respite in when my own stores are feeling thin and weary? When watching the waves of emotion in my brave patients as they wrestle the pains emerging from submerged areas of consciousness, can I find the sweet spot in accompanying them on their emotion ride? Is this how I practice, in part, in an intuitive and less cognitive way, a compassion that is innately buoyant? Can I inspire my patients to find the same quality of compassion within themselves?
Sometimes in our practice, as health care providers or public service providers, we feel a certain fierce compassion for our patients. We might view them suffering with their feelings of great anger or sadness or fear and we may then relentlessly apply a belief in our patients’ capacity for strength. Sometimes our patients might argue with us, disagreeing that they have the strength within. Yet, relentless, like the ocean waves, we continue to lead the hunt for the strength within them, to show them how to fiercely find compassion for themselves, to tolerate the waves of uncomfortable emotion, and return, over and over again, to find the sweet spot of inner calm.
As a guide to others’ healing, I find it relevant to develop my own inner compass so that I can hold space for return from the overwhelming emotional states that my patients can get lost in. My understanding of my profession is that this is key for all of us as we work to hold emotional space of safety and healing for our clients and patients. My current teaching and learning focus is to relentlessly locate the sweet spot of calm, with a variety of resources. Mindfulness teaches techniques to find the sweet spot of calm. Athletic backgrounds can teach us to find the sweet spot of calm, where we are both doing and observing, in order to achieve unusual physical feats. Yoga and meditation training and daily practice teaches us to calm the fluctuations of the mind. My current breathwork training is helping me to track and find new ways of living from this inner sweet spot of calm.
In a way, to find calm, you can both become like the ocean as you notice your inner tossing and turning waves of feelings, while also observing the inner ocean, recognizing that it is only one aspect of your experience. The metaphor of surfing can be useful when you face these inner states of overwhelm. Surfers speak to finding a state of oneness, where boundaries disappear and all things are happening at once - the ocean changing around you and you adapting to the ocean - all of this occurring at once in a coordinated evolving non-local state, also called sometimes a flow state. By being able to feel the changing environment around you, notice it for what it is without romanticizing or dramatizing the present moment in all its aspects, and then finding an adaptive intelligence to respond to this constant change, you can open the portal to the sweet spot of calm.
Reflections
I leave you with these three potentially inspiring questions:
1/ What would it feel like to have unshakable calm, in the face of external change, and in the face of inner storms?
2/ What would you be willing to do, consistently, to practice and train to develop this inner state of unshakable calm?
3/ How can you be more encouraging, resilient, and aware of your positive qualities and capabilities in the face of setbacks, mistakes, or failures?
Wishing you the best always,
Dr. Love
Literature References
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Oxford Languages Dictionary
C Strauss and colleagues, 2016. What is compassion and how can we measure it? A review of definition and measures. In: Clinical Psychology Review, Volume 47, July 2016, pp 15-27.
M.P. Berry and colleagues, 2020. Brief Self-Compassion Training Alters Neural Responses to Evoked Pain for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Pilot Study. In: Pain Medicine.
Lutz J and colleagues, 2020. Neural activations during self-related processing in patients with chronic pain and effects of a brief self-compassion training - a pilot study. In: Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 304, 111155.
J. J. Kim and colleagues, 2020. Neurophysiological and behavioural markers of compassion. In: Nature 10, 6789.