Through insight, compassion and understanding we can dismantle the negative patterns and false beliefs that stifle our sense of aliveness and joy. Explore the strengths that help you heal and experience powerful meditations that help you feel your body, heart, and mind in a different way!
When we develop understanding and compassion for ourselves, then naturally we will feel genuine compassion for others as well. Here you will find some input in short video excerpts from Christine Longaker’s course materials.
Clip 1
How we can meet challenges with compassion – a guided practice
Clip 2
Moments of positive resonance
Rumi said, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to find and remove the barriers you have built against it.”
But how can this work? Christine gives us an overview of methods for developing love, and the research behind them, from world-renowned scientists like Richard Davidson, Barbara Fredrickson and Kirsten Neff. Can we change how we respond emotionally to things? Why are some people resilient and others seem to struggle in the midst of difficulties?
Clip 3
Creating new neural pathways
Practical input: How can we really take meditation into our everyday life? What little tips allow us to bring the inspiration from our meditation into our life?
Clip 4
What is compassion anyway?
Christine Longaker defines Self-compassion on three levels. This first level is that self-compassion is the opposite of self-hatred. Instead of judging ourselves when we go through difficulties, we are respond to ourselves with kindness, just like we would a good friend.
An emergency on the spot method of self-compassion by Kirsten Neff:
This method has three aspects: Mindfulness, Common Humanity and Self-Kindness. There is a matching phrase for each aspect.
Mindfulness: being present and receptive to everything in our experience, free from judgment – even towards difficult feelings.
The phrase that goes with Mindfulness is, „This is a moment of suffering.“
Common Humanity means when we find we’re struggling, we remember suffering is part of life, part of the human condition.
The phrase that goes with Common Humanity is: „Struggle is part of life.“
Self-Kindness: means we accept and reassure ourselves, responding to our own anguish as we would to a good friend, with warmth and understanding.
The phrase that goes with Self-Kindness is: „Because it’s hard, may I be kind to myself and give myself the compassion that I need“.
Clip 5
Feeling worthy of love – a guided practice
Our body is the messenger of compassion. Why? Because our mind is constantly communicating with our body. But are these mental messages kind and life enriching or negative and fearful? So here in this meditation we’re learning to communicate with our body with kindness and love, and this will dismantle old habits and beliefs. This is how we create new neural pathways. By doing this meditation we’re dissolving the barriers to love, and reconnecting with essence love, the source of love inside of us all. Essence love is a fundamental knowing that we’re loved, no matter what. So in this meditation we generate a stream of messages that we’re loved, together with a feeling of loving warmth, which radiates from the earth into our whole being. This heart to heart communication from our thinking mind to our feelings and our body brings the understanding, that we are worthy of love.
Clip 6
Dedication – connecting our practice
In Buddhist practices, it is common to connect with others in our intention, as well as our dedication where we offer the benefit and blessings of whatever we’ve done to others. An important part of the practice is the realization that we are connected to other beings, so that through our suffering we gain understanding of the suffering of others, and the wish to alleviate it. This is how we can align our practice and our efforts, and formulate positive noble intentions for the benefit of this world, the people on it, and our own path.
Watch the video to listen to Christine’s dedication:
Our heart is full of compassion and the deep wish that we can fully alleviate our suffering and the suffering of all beings, as well as its causes.
May the power and blessings of this practice bring happiness and good circumstances, healing and well-being. May all beings experience the feeling of being completely safe and loved.
And may all those we have thought of come to dwell in the vast openness and radiant goodness of their true nature, which is completely free of suffering. Let your heart and mind truly connect with all beings, and become as vast as possible to include an infinite number of beings throughout the universe in this blessing.
Clip 7
Reminder: Download AND install the practice
When we practice there are some tricks to learning how to really anchor the practice in our being and through small exercises learn to take it with us into our everyday life.
