SOOTHE Group
Supporting Ourselves and Others Through Healing and Empowerment
Week 4.3
Estimated time to complete 4.3: 20-25 mins
Compassion from others
Let's explore the first flow of compassion: Compassion from others. We'll do this by stimulating our brain through the power of imagery, to help with our development of compassion.
This phase will help us to discover and explore how we could be open to the helpfulness of others.
The power of imagery
The human brain has the capacity to produce images that effect different parts of our bodies and minds. We use this ability nearly every day, without even realising it.
Consider this example: Imagine hearing the sound of nails scraping on a blackboard (or a fork scraping a plate).
What do you feel?
The imagined sound of this stimulates an area of the brain that sends messages to our body and, as a result, we may start to tense our shoulders, or clench our jaw.
These reactions can happen without the sound actually being there. Our bodies systems are highly responsive to mental images, which means we can also use imagery to activate our soothing system, such as by creating an image of safeness and compassion.
Compassionate colour exercise
Opening up to receiving compassion from others is not always easy. This is often due to our FBRs (fears, blocks, resistances).
Take a look at some possible reasons why receiving compassion might be tricky.
"I don't trust any compassion from others"
"It feels overwhelming if someone shows me compassion"
"I don't deserve compassion"
"I just don't want it"
However, being open to receiving compassion from others can help our bodies and brains become acquainted with this flow so that is no longer activates our threat system (red circle), but rather our soothing system (green circle).
You can try the exercise below where you start by identifying your compassionate colour and letting it move through your body, by tuning your mind and body into the experience of receiving compassion from a colour.
Remember, this exercise is not mandatory. Allow yourself permission to interrupt the practice.
Great work, you've come to the end of Week 4 self-guided materials!
You can come back to these materials at any time throughout the program. You can also find all the handouts and recordings for Week 4 under the Resources tab.
Your group facilitator looks forward to seeing you in Week 5 for the third online group session.
We did not choose our brains, but we can learn to work with them kindly.