4 Best Practices for Implementing Compassion Meditation
While there is no wrong way to practice compassion meditation, some things can enhance the benefits and experience of it.
Pause for a moment of safety (prepare the mind)
Mindfulness is considered a prerequisite for compassion meditation (Gilbert, 2005). Taking a moment to pause, focus on the breath, and find grounding in the body can help clients create a safe and calm space within themselves.
Compassion meditation invites clients to recognize human suffering and have the strength and grace to breathe out peace. Feeling safe, secure, and stable makes the experience easier and more meaningful.
Cultivate an intention
Setting an intention is a good way to focus thoughts, energy, and emotion on meditation. The intention may be first to yourself, then to one other person, and then to society or the world at large.
The basic intention of compassion meditation is to truly understand the commonality of human suffering and desire relief and peace.
Expect nothing in return
Most forms of meditation should have an atelic approach, meaning that there is no end goal.
Compassion meditation is a practice that is done for its own sake and experience. True love, according to Zen Buddhism (Gilbert, 2019), is the wish for others to be happy without expecting anything in return. It is altruistic and without conditions.
Have a systematic and consistent approach
Compassion meditation, like other forms of meditation, takes practice. Scheduling in a few minutes each day to build up a compassion muscle in the same way you would work up to heavier weights in the gym is one way to think of it.
The lightest weight would be finding compassion for a loved one, and the heaviest would be feeling compassion for a difficult person or enemy.
Any steps taken to begin a compassion meditation practice will lead to healthy changes and positive emotional states.
Exploring the Research, Effectiveness & Benefits
There is a growing body of research that demonstrates the benefits of compassion and compassion meditation.
Polyvagal theory and compassion
Compassion has been related to social connectedness, positive engagement, decreased levels of anxiety, and improved pain tolerance (Desbordes et al., 2012).
These findings are rooted in the polyvagal theory, which posits that physiological states and social processes are closely connected.
Vagal pathways increase parasympathetic and decrease sympathetic activation when emotions such as compassion are felt. Changes in the central nervous system help to reduce anxiety and stress and lead to an increase in pain tolerance (Desbordes et al., 2012).
Compassion meditation and empathic response
One study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison was the first to use fMRI scans to show that positive emotions such as compassion and loving-kindness can actually be learned. The research used magnetic imaging scans to examine brain activity in people with extensive experience practicing compassion meditation (Land, 2008).
The study examined 32 participants (16 Tibetan monks with at least 10,000 hours of meditation experience and 16 matched controls who were taught compassion meditation two weeks before the brain scan). The participants were exposed to negative and positive human vocalizations designed to evoke empathic responses (Land, 2008).
Results showed significant activity in the insula portion of the brain, which plays a key role in bodily representations of emotions, when the monks were exposed to emotional vocalizations. Researchers determined that the strength of insula activation was associated with the intensity of the meditation (Land, 2008).
Improved resilience
Compassion meditation has been found to decrease burnout and increase resilience in health care workers (Lutz et al., 2015).
A four-week phenomenological study of compassion meditation training among health care workers found that it improved relation to self, increased empathy, and led to resilience (Lutz et al., 2015).
These findings suggest that incorporating compassion meditation into workplaces with high levels of stress may be an effective way to decrease burnout and improve mental health.
Improved immune response
Compassion meditation may also improve immune processes that are related to physical and emotional health. One six-week study compared a compassion meditation group with a health discussion control group on levels of cortisol and interleukin plasma and distress responses and found that markers of stress response decreased in the meditation group (Pace et al., 2010).
Emotional and mental wellbeing
Further research demonstrates that compassion interventions are beneficial for numerous emotional and mental health concerns. A pilot study that examined compassion meditation training showed a decrease in depression, shame, anxiety, and self-criticism (Gilbert & Proctor, 2006).
The benefits of compassion meditation are numerous. As research continues to examine the practice, we could see how it potentially impacts individuals, groups, organizations, and society at large.
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