In western culture, during previous decades, meditation was once considered to be a new-age, mystical practice. However, mindfulness has grown in popularity, and meditation has become more mainstream. Over the past ten years, researchers have studied and validated the benefits of mindfulness, and current research now highlights the scientific benefits of compassion meditation as well.
What is Compassion Meditation?
Compassion meditation (sometimes known as loving-kindness meditation) is the process of sitting with self while maintaining a connection to our emotional heart. As we sit with ourselves, we relax into the breath and body and connect and work with emotions as they arise. From this connected state, we set the intention of cultivating compassion and kindness then extend it to self and others.
If self-compassion, or compassion for others, is challenging or uncomfortable for you, know that with practice and intention, you can cultivate these traits.
Research on neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections, has surged over the past few years. A significant finding is that neuroplasticity may occur at any age, not just in childhood as was once thought. Consider the adage, “cells that fire together wire together.”
When applied to compassion meditation, these benefits of intentional focus are profound when we:
- develop a regular practice
- stay consistently heart-centered
- extend compassion and kindness to self and others
So what benefits might we see by cultivating a compassion meditation practice?
1) Enhanced Positive Emotion
Compassion meditation improves positive emotions which in turn helps our well-being and satisfaction with life.
Positive emotions help us broaden our perspective. They help us be more aware of the present moment and allow us to give and receive emotional support more freely.
Intentionally focusing on positive emotion, a byproduct of compassion meditation can even help boost our immune system to more easily ward off the common cold. When we have a positive mindset, we may more effectively meet life’s challenges and turn them into opportunities. Positive emotions, when cultivated through compassion meditation, contribute to our general well-being.
2) Reduced Self-Criticism
Self-criticism and self-doubt are pervasive in our culture, as is the desire to leap over unreachably high bars. However, compassion meditation may significantly reduce self-criticism, self-doubt, and the depressive symptoms that go along with these views of life. Learning tools and techniques to quiet our minds and engage us with our bodies helps move us into a place of acceptance and compassion for self and others and may reduce anxiety, depression, and a sense of social isolation.
3) Increased Empathy
Research also suggests that another scientific benefit of compassion meditation is developing our ability to empathize with others. Through this practice, we begin to expand our awareness outside ourselves and recognize our connection to others. As we sit with and become comfortable with our own emotions, we have an ever-increasing ability to sit with the distress of others and offer help if needed.
4) Decreased Emotional Suppression
Most of us have learned, either through familial patterns or social norms, that suppressing or denying emotions is preferable to expressing those emotions.
However, emotional suppression has been associated with increased stress-related symptoms, negative emotions, depression, and anxiety, as well as with decreased life satisfaction.
Through developing a compassion meditation practice, we begin to become more comfortable acknowledging and sitting with difficult emotions. Eventually, we find the courage to look at difficulties in our lives, embrace them, and then move through them. This process allows us to eventually detach from those parts of life, or habitual patterns, that we find troubling.
5) Increased Ability to Receive Compassion
Often we find it is easier to extend kindness to others than receive compassion for ourselves. Usually, at times we need it most; we are most resistant to receiving compassion from others. Our natural defenses come up when we feel vulnerable. However, as we continue to cultivate our compassion meditation practice, our ability to accept help and kindness from others expands.
6) Strengthened Resilience
Many people, especially those in healthcare fields, freely offer empathy and compassion to others. However, a perpetual presence with the intensity of others’ pain may be a primary cause for empathic distress and may lead to decreased helping behavior. A potential remedy for maintaining peace of mind amid the suffering and discomfort of others may be compassion meditation. Compassion meditation allows us to move beyond empathy to a place of action. Developing a compassion meditation practice is an effective strategy for deepening our personal resources and enhancing personal resilience in times of difficulty.
7) Broadened Social Connection
Western society is shifting toward social isolation. We spend more time commuting in our cars, working on our computers, and focusing on our devices.
In turn, this means we spend less time connecting eye to eye and heart to heart over a meal or on a walk.
When we do interact with others, it is often with people we know and like, as opposed to those we don’t know well, or with whom we have difficulty. As we develop our heart-centered meditation practice, even if for a few minutes a day, we begin to deepen our desire for social engagement.
We cultivate the courage and curiosity to have a more positive and open-hearted outlook toward strangers and people who have ideas and opinions different from ours.
8) Increased Acceptance of Others
Everyone experiences bias toward others. It is part of our human condition. However, we also have a choice about how biased we are. Developing a compassion meditation practice helps us more actively choose acceptance over judgment. Cultivating self-acceptance is one way to help us more fully embrace the acceptance of others, especially those we find to be challenging. Also, recognizing that all people, at one time or another, struggle with challenges, fears, sadness, loneliness helps us remember the common thread of our humanity. When you find yourself particularly challenged by someone else’s behavior, consider saying the following phrase a few times, “Just like me, he/she experiences sadness, fear, loneliness, anger, and frustration. Just like me, she/he wishes to know peace and joy.”
9) Enhanced Well-being and Physical Health
Another benefit of compassion meditation is the development of an upward spiral of good health. Research suggests that positive emotions, positive social connections, and physical health influence one another. Developing a practice of compassion meditation crystalizes our connection to our hearts and bodies. When we acknowledge and embrace our emotions, and as we extend loving-kindness and compassion to ourselves and others, we increasingly have a positive impact on our health.
10) Increased Telomere Length
Now, for one of my favorite, less obvious benefits. Current research suggests another scientific benefit of compassion meditation is elongated telomeres.
Telomeres protect our genetic data and affect how our cells age.
Visualize the little plastic ends on shoelaces. Now imagine that each of your DNA strands is a shoelace and that the telomeres are the little plastic ends.
Each time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter. When they get too short, the cell can no longer divide; it becomes inactive, or it dies. This shortening process is associated with aging, cancer, and a higher risk of death. Another factor that affects telomere length is stress. As stress increases, telomere length decreases.
Not only does compassion meditation reduce stress, but this study also offers the intriguing possibility that women who practice compassion meditation might be able to alter their telomere length positively.
Who wouldn’t want to stave off aging, cancer, and a higher risk of death? It’s as easy as spending a few minutes a day with heart-focused compassion meditation.
Now that you’ve explored some of the scientific benefits of compassion meditation, where do you go from here? Certainly, creating a meditation practice on your own is one option.
Another option is to use apps like Insight Timer, Idanim, or Siddha Meditate; you’ll find my guided meditations on all of them. You could also work directly with a teacher, and if that inspires you, feel free to contact me.
To really deepen your practice and learn how to integrate it into everyday life, join me for an International Spiritual Tour where we’ll spend 10-14 days practicing embodied mindfulness and compassion meditation.
