on compassion and mindfulness

[such_heights]

So a couple of people on my rlist have been posting resources to do with meditation, mindfulness and practicing kindness and compassion lately. Given there seems to be some interest, and this is also something I'm working on at the moment, I thought I would share some resources that my psychologist has given me on the subject.

In my sessions with her at the moment we're essentially working on developing a kind of anti-depression toolkit based on ideas of mindfulness and extending compassion to oneself. Those ideas stem from Buddhist tradition and are being increasingly used by Western health care professionals to help patients tackle a range of issues and conditions. In my case I'm particularly focusing working to minimise self-criticism and low self-esteem, but it can be useful for a number of different situations as well as having potential benefits just in general. Kindness is good!

One of the things that I've been trying to learn recently about self-criticism, beating yourself up, whatever you want to call it, is that it's not very helpful. As well as being bad for my mental health and general wellbeing, it just isn't very conducive to me actually doing whatever it is I'm chastising myself for not doing. So I'm trying to internalise the kinds of things that I'd imagine a supportive friend or a good teacher saying instead, but it's hard.

Anyway. If you're interested in any of this for any reason, you can download the booklet I've been working from here - mediafire link to .pdf - and this is the main website, Compassionate Mind, though I confess it's basically horrible to navigate so I don't know if there's content there of any interest.

Further reading:

happydork has a list of eight mindfulness exercises.

sheafrotherdon has detailed book recommendations on the subject.

Comments

[verasteine]

I've nothing to add, really, except this: I did mindfulness therapy myself and am totally agreeing that it's really good, and I hope it works for you. It's very useful to me, even in small doses. ♥

[miss_haitch]

Thank you for sharing this. <3 I often end up being too hard on myself, and kindness meditation has been really soothing at times.

[laurashapiro]

Thanks for posting these!

I use mindfulness every day to help me overcome stress and chronic pain. My #1 resource is Full Catastrophe Living, which is a westernized, non-spiritual approach in an eight-week program. This book changed my life, and I don't say that lightly.

The recordings -- guided meditation and yoga -- are also really useful everyday tools.

[such_heights]

Oh fantastic, thank you very much for sharing that!

[laurashapiro]

My pleasure! (:

[onehundredmoons.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing this. My counselor also works from this approach and it's been really enlightening. She recommends these exercises as well: http://www.mindfulselfcompassion.org/meditations_downloads.php *hugs*

[such_heights]

That looks really useful, thank you!

[lyras]

Thank you. This is something I've been trying to work on, as well - and also gently trying to encourage the boyfriend to consider. I'll be checking out your links. <3

[gorgeousnerd]

Thanks for this. I do some mindfulness practices already, but I could definitely use more.