Prescription for Compassion

I'm working on several papers at the moment, and one of them has to do with compassion, mindfulness, and the dire need for it in education (and in general life). There is so much tragedy in the news right now, and the UN's latest climate report is quite devastating, and it's all overwhelming, and I wish there were something I could do about it. But there just aren't any ruby slippers for curing the hate and pain in the world. It's got to be a process.

Found on Billboard.com

One of the fundamental elements of yoga is the idea of "ahimsa," which is the principle of nonviolence. There are different interpretations as to how to carry ahimsa into everyday life, but the essence of it (in my opinion) is compassion. Wouldn't a more compassionate world be a brighter, happier, healthier, safer place?

Compassion encourages prosocial behavior (i.e. sympathy in action), promotes well-being, and heals relationships (with ourselves and with others), but we don't give it the attention it deserves. Instead, we place the spotlight on success, independence, uniqueness, entrepreneurship, and determination. Is there anything wrong with that? No. But if success, independence, uniqueness, etc., aren't balanced out with a healthy dose of compassion, then we're just going to end up a world full of really driven people who don't care about each other enough to solve the crises we face. Scary, right?

What's great about compassion is that it can start right here and right now. By being compassionate in your daily life, you can help ease some of the burden of the "compassion deficit" that seems to plague the planet. And compassion is not only between you and those around you. Compassion for yourself is important, too . . . especially in eating disorder recovery. 

I hate to admit this, but one of my not-so-great recovery moments took place at a time when I could've chosen to meditate into the moment but instead allowed the inner demons to come in and start yelling at me. I don't like eating really late at night, but we were at an event that ran much later than expected, and we didn't end up getting home until after 9:00. So dinner at 9:30. That's not that big a deal, right? No, not at all. I'm serious about this--it. is. not. a. big. deal. But for some reason, the nasty little Gollum creature that likes to taunt me crept into my mind and started running on all my worry trails and yelling scary things. No one else could tell I was upset inside, or that I was battling an inner demon, but that didn't matter because I knew that I'd made the mistake of letting Gollum go all "my precious" about the eating hour.

What I'm hoping to get across with this post is that the eating disorder voice is the exact opposite of compassion. It is the anti-ahimsa, and it is something that we need less of in this world. Sometimes, it's easy to put up with the eating disorder voice because we're so used to having judgmental, critical thoughts about ourselves and don't feel "worthy" of self-compassion. But remember that self-compassion can help the planet because it needs more compassionate people right now. So if you can't bring yourself to practice compassion for your sake, do it for someone else's. That's helped me. I try to picture someone I really love and then ask myself how I would want them to treat themselves. Would I want them to get all freaked out inside about when they ate? Or would I want them to just breathe, relax, and let go?  

Found on Pinterest.com (Elephant image at top = also from Pinterest.com)

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