In this guided video, Bridgeen Rea‑Kaya from Immeasurable Minds introduces a concise, three‑step self‑compassion practice that she teaches in her workshops and an 8‑week self‑compassion course. She explains that the practice is based on the work of Chris Germer and Kristin Neff, who originally formulated the "self‑compassion break." The video walks through each of the three components: (1) Mindful awareness of personal suffering – recognizing and naming the difficulty you are experiencing in body, mind, or emotions; (2) Common humanity – reminding yourself that suffering is a universal human experience, which expands perspective and reduces isolation; (3) Self‑kindness – responding to that suffering with gentle, supportive language and actions, such as saying “May I be kind to myself” or taking caring steps like calling a friend or making tea. Bridgeen offers practical examples, encourages viewers to try the practice, and invites them to attend her live workshops in 2020 for deeper group work. The tone is warm, instructional, and encouraging, aiming to make the practice accessible even to beginners.
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Hi, it's Bridgeen here from Immeasurable Minds. I'm sitting in my little meditation space, and I thought it might be nice to share a really helpful self-compassion practice with you. It's a really simple practice that I teach on my self-compassion workshops and as part of the 8-week course on self-compassion. There's actually 24 meditations in that 8-week course, and this is one I like to share a lot because It's very simple, and even if you don't do this practice, just to know these 3 elements of self-compassion can be really helpful. So I didn't make this up myself. It comes from 2 wonderful teachers, researchers, the people who've written the books on self-compassion, both of whom I've met and studied with, Chris Germer and Kristin Neff. And they devised this self-compassion break. It's very 3 steps, and the 3 steps also compose the components of self-compassion. So really, to do this, first of all, the first thing you need to know is that there is some suffering in your life, some difficulty or something you're struggling with. So we don't give ourselves compassion to feel better. We give ourselves compassion because— We need it. We suffer. And so the first step of the mindful self-compassion break is to recognize some suffering. So if you're watching this right now, maybe there's something in your life that's annoying you, or you're a bit upset about something, or you're feeling a wee bit out of sorts. Or maybe you can think about something that happened recently, not the worst thing ever. This is not a cure for all your ills. It's just some helpful mindful practice. So the first step is to recognize that suffering exists and that, you know, not everything is always going the way we want it. So you can say, ouch, this hurts. I had a sore back recently. Maybe you have a sore back. You can say, I don't like this. I don't want this. You know, it's kind of like acknowledging, even see if you can notice where you feel it. In the body. You know, it could be emotion that you're feeling in your head, sadness in your heart, maybe sick feeling in your stomach. However it is, let's just pause for a moment and notice that. Pay attention and realize that there's, there's something here that you don't want to be here. So this is the first step of the self-compassion break, is mindfulness awareness of difficulty. Step 2 is to realize that you're not alone, that everybody suffers. Nobody gets through life without difficulty, without hardship, without grief, without things going wrong, things they don't like. So because of that, it's actually the thing that unites us, the thing that really brings us into contact with other people is our suffering. Because everybody suffers, we have what's called common humanity. So it— and it doesn't take away your grief. Say, for example, you are grieving or you have something really upsetting and you look around and you realize, well, lots of people feel like this or have felt like this or are experiencing this right now. It doesn't make it better. But it does give you a kind of perspective so that you don't, you know, sort of tunnel down and feel like it's just me, it's only me, and these things only ever happen in my life. No, actually, other people feel this too. So to know that, to have that experience, it just gives you a little bit of perspective, just to sort of widen the perspective that you're not alone and other people also feel like this. So So that's step 2, it's our common humanity. The 3rd step then is called kindness, and kindness is always, always the appropriate response to suffering. So if we were somewhere and someone fell down, we would go and help them because that's just what you do. You respond to difficulty, suffering, pain in another being by trying to help. Yet when we experience pain, suffering, difficulty, things we don't like, we have a tendency to not respond with kindness. We have a tendency to respond with criticism, with harsh words, with just ignoring it and pretending like it's not there. All those kind of things that we do, and that's okay. These are defense mechanisms. That's how we just get on with things. Um, but we want to do this practice. We want to Have an awareness that actually, you know, if I am a kind person and I want to be kind to other people, I need to start with myself. I need to give myself kindness. So the most basic way is to respond to your own suffering by saying something nice to yourself, which can be really hard, I know. So you think of, um, what would I say to a friend? What would I say to someone I love? Who has this feeling, has this experience, has this pain, has this difficulty. So that's a way to think about it. And, um, you know, the way we do the practice, we say things like, you know, may I be kind to myself? Or even just as simple as, may I learn how to be kind to myself? And if kindness is not going with you, you can just say, may I learn how to support myself? And then you can take some action to support yourself. Maybe you're going to phone someone, phone a friend. You can make yourself a nice cup of tea. You can take some time out, pause, do something mindful, sign up to a mindfulness course. You can take some time to be kind to yourself. So that's the 3 steps. And that's the practice I'm offering you tonight, the Self-Compassion Break by Chris Germer and Kristin Neff. And the first step is mindfulness, to recognize and acknowledge the Your own suffering in your own body, emotional, physical. The second step is to realize that you're not alone. Everybody suffers. Everybody experiences pain, suffering, and difficulty. This is part of life. It's part of being human. And the third step then is to respond with kindness to that suffering, to that difficulty. So that's why we practice for you tonight. I hope this is helpful. Let me know if it is. I'll make more videos like this. Thanks very much for watching. Feel free to share and pass it on and all that stuff. And if you'd like to meet me in real life and do this with a group of people, it's much easier and better and more fun, then come along to one of my workshops in 2020. Thank you. Thank you.
