Therapeutic Presence Part 3: Embodied Compassion

In the last two posts, I talked about interpersonal neurobiology and mindfulness. Now I would like to share a practice I teach students. This builds compassion in the therapeutic relationship and anywhere else you might be relating with people.

Compassion Meditation: Coming into a deeper relationship with your heart

Step 1: A Brief Body Scan

Situate yourself in a comfortable position, a place where you can scan your body; this is an internalized check-in, not a visual perusal of your arms and legs but an intimate feeling as you notice the total surface of your skin starting at your feet and legs, sensing their covering in this moment, perhaps sensing your clothes resting on your skin. Next sense your pelvis. Moving up into the trunk, notice the clothes on your abdomen and rib cage, notice your breath, sense your shoulders, sometimes you feel the rise and fall of your shoulders as your breath moves in and out with your skin sliding against your clothes. Now you are sensing your arms, sensing the skin on your arms all the way down to your fingertips; sense the skin of your neck, your face, around your ears, your scalp. What does the air against your face feel like? It’s always important to do a brief body scan to get a sense of the whole body at the level of the skin. It’s okay if you can’t feel the whole body; it’s okay if you have gaps say between your knees and pelvis; gaps are part of the whole, include the gaps, include the fragments as part of the whole body like islands in the middle of the stream.

Step 2: Tuning into your respiratory diaphragm

Next tune into the movement of the muscle helping your breathing. You’re noticing the movement of the respiratory diaphragm, sensing the entire circumference of where it is attached to the costal arch in front around to the floating ribs in your mid to lower back. Noticing this movement in the front of your trunk, the back of your trunk and the sides of your trunk. Without any focus on breathing air remain aware of the movement of the diaphragm. Sense your diaphragm as it moves up and down inside you; it is intimately connected to your heart.

Step 3: Tuning into your heart

Now simply feel the movement and activity of your heart. If you feel comfortable, close your eyes to give yourself a little more focus on the area in the center of your chest, right in back of the sternum, right on top of the diaphragm. There should be a pulsation there. Perhaps a pumping motion. Perhaps the beating of a drum. Perhaps a surging of our life giving waters in the blood of life. Perhaps just a thump, thump, thump. Nonetheless, with no thought, images, or ideas, this simple act of sensing the movement of your heart can have a profound impact on brain states.

If you can’t feel your heart, tune into the pulse on your wrist. Perhaps you can try feeling the heart beat when you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, often times it is pounding, then that’s the time to start this practice. Lay in bed and feel your heart moving, beating. And, if you have learned a prayer or poem by heart, repeat it nonverbally to the rhythm of your heartbeat. Gradually over time it will reduce the anxiety and fear that you are used to living with in your life.

This information and process is the foundation of a three day course I am teaching on the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy: Working Heart to Heart in North Carolina on August 20-22. Click here for more information: http://bti.edu/continuing-education/craniosacral-therapy/ or visit my website at www.michaelsheateaching.com