Thich Nhat Hanh quote

Read by Laura :)

The Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) Program

The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science

How Compassion and Altruism Create Resilience

Lecture by Kelly McGonigal, PhD. CCARE at Stanford University, March 2015

Hack Your Brain’s Default Mode With Meditation

Dan Harris explains the neuroscience behind meditation, but reminds us that the ancient practice isn’t magic and likely won’t send one floating into the cosmic ooze.

A Wandering Mind is a Less Caring Mind

Daily experience sampling during compassion meditation training.

A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives

Thupten Jinpa's book, a classic work in the Compassion Institute's circles

My Work is Loving the World

This is a poem...

Compassion as a Skill

A Comparison of Contemplative and Evolution‑Based Approaches

Six Common Misconception about Meditation

Meditation has been hailed as a way to boost mental health, help chronic pain, reduce stress and build a new appreciation for the world around us. But even with all this interest, misconceptions about what this ancient practice can do for human health and well-being are still circulating.

Journey into the heart of contemplative science

What we know—and don’t know—about compassion has bold implications for how we respond to the needs of our time.

Open Hearts Build Lives

Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources

8 Types of Love

Falling in or out of love is one of the strongest emotions that people can experience. Love can be kind. Love can be cruel. Love is everything. Love has been called “one of the most studied and least understood areas in psychology.”

Enactive Compassion

Roshi Joan Halifax describes enactive compassion as a process that is emergent, unpredictable, and dependent on context...

A heuristic model of enactive compassion

This article is an investigation of the possibility that compassion is not a discrete feature but an emergent and contingent process that is at its base enactive.

Compassion and the true meaning of empathy

TEDTalk: Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax works with people at the last stage of life (in hospice and on death row). She shares what she's learned about compassion in the face of death and dying, and a deep insight into the nature of empathy.

Functional neural plasticity and associated changes in positive affect after compassion training

The development of social emotions such as compassion is crucial for successful social interactions as well as for the maintenance of mental and physical health, especially when confronted with distressing life events. Yet, the neural mechanisms supporting the training of these emotions are poorly understood. To study affective plasticity in healthy adults...

Attachment Theory In Psychology

Attachment theory is a lifespan model of human development emphasizing the central role of caregivers (attachment figures) who provide a sense of safety and security.

Seligman’s PERMA+ Model Explained: A Theory of Wellbeing

This article will outline the PERMA+ model and the theory of wellbeing, and provide practical ways to apply its components in your private practice or personal life.

Your Brain’s 3 Emotion Regulation Systems

Professor Paul Gilbert (who has been knighted Order of the British Empire for his incredible contribution to the field of Psychology) proposed that we have three main kinds of emotion regulation systems, and that adverse early experiences can lead to an unbalance between these systems.

Kristin Neff's web page: self-compassion.org

We're kind and understanding rather than harshly self-critical when we fail, make mistakes ... Tons of research, tests, and videos about self-compassion

Self-compassion and reactions to unpleasant self-relevant events: The implications of treating oneself kindly

Psychologist Mark Leary on self-compassion

Traditionally, psychologists have thought of that in terms of self-esteem. But more recently, in the last 20 years, the topic of self-compassion has become hot. And I just sort of tagged onto it and began to do work with my research team on self-compassion.

Kristin D. Neff - Self-Compassion: Theory,Method, Research, and Intervention:

This review presents my theoretical model of self-compassion as comprised of six different elements: increased self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness as well as reduced self-judgment, isolation, and overidentification. It discusses the methodology of self-compassion research and reviews the increasingly large number of empirical studies that indicate self-compassion is a productive way of approaching distressing thoughts and emotions that engenders mental and physical well-being.

Fredrickson's Study

Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources

Living Well: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Eudaimonia

This article distinguishes between hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to wellness, with the former focusing on the outcome of happiness or pleasure and the latter focusing not so much on outcomes as on the process of living well. We present a model of eudaimonia that is based in self-determination theory, arguing that eudaimonic living can be characterized in termsof four motivational concepts: (1) pursuing intrinsic goals and values for their own sake, including personal growth, relationships, community, and health, rather than extrinsic goals and values, such as wealth, fame, image, and power; (2) behaving in autonomous, volitional, or consensual ways, rather than heteronomous or controlled ways; (3) being mindful and acting with a sense of awareness; and (4) behaving in ways that satisfy basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

Optimal Self-esteem is Contingent: Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic and Upward Versus Downward Contingencies

We argue that noncontingent, unconditional self-esteem is not optimal but defensive. We introduce the concept of intrinsic contingency, where self-esteem is affected by whether one’s actions are self-congruent and conducive to personal growth. Whereas external contingencies, especially social and appearance, were negatively correlated with authenticity, self-compassion, and personal well-being, intrinsic contingencies were positively correlated with these measures, and uncorrelated with aggression and self-esteem instability.

Love 2.0: Creating Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection

Even more than happiness and optimism, love holds the key to improving our mental and physical health as well as lengthening our lives. Using research from her own lab, Barbara L. Fredrickson redefines love not as a stable behemoth, but as micro-moments of connection between people—even strangers. She demonstrates that our capacity for experiencing love can be measured and strengthened in ways that improve our health and longevity. Finally, she introduces us to informal and formal practices to unlock love in our lives, generate compassion, and even self-soothe. Rare in its scope and ambitious in its message, Love 2.0 will reinvent how you look at and experience our most powerful emotion.

The Neural Basis of Empathy

Empathy—the ability to share the feelings of others—is fundamental to our emotional and social lives. Previous human imaging studies focusing on empathy for others’ pain have consistently shown activations in regions also involved in the direct pain experience, particularly the anterior insula and anterior midcingulate cortex. These findings suggest that empathy is, in part, based on shared representations of firsthand and vicarious experiences of affective states.

From Dehumanization and Objectification to Rehumanization

This article distinguishes between hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to wellness, with the former focusing on the outcome of happiness or pleasure and the latter focusing not so much on outcomes as on the process of living well. We present a model of eudaimonia that is based in self-determination theory, arguing that eudaimonic living can be characterized in termsof four motivational concepts: (1) pursuing intrinsic goals and values for their own sake, including personal growth, relationships, community, and health, rather than extrinsic goals and values, such as wealth, fame, image, and power; (2) behaving in autonomous, volitional, or consensual ways, rather than heteronomous or controlled ways; (3) being mindful and acting with a sense of awareness; and (4) behaving in ways that satisfy basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow From Perceived Status and Competition

Stereotype research emphasizes systematic processes over seemingly arbitrary contents, but content also may prove systematic. On the basis of stereotypes’ intergroup functions, the stereotype content model hypothesizes that (a) 2 primary dimensions are competence and warmth, (b) frequent mixed clusters combine high warmth with low competence (paternalistic) or high competence with low warmth (envious), and (c) distinct emotions (pity, envy, admiration, contempt) differentiate the 4 competence– warmth combinations. Stereotypically, (d) status predicts high competence, and competition predicts low warmth.

Compassion fatigue: A meta-narrative review of the healthcareliterature

Background: Compassion fatigue describes a work-related stress response in healthcare providers that is considered a ‘cost of caring’ and a key contributor to the loss of compassion in healthcare. Objective: The purpose of this review was to critically examine the construct of compassion fatigue and to determine if it is an accurate descriptor of work-related stress in healthcare providers and a valid target variable for intervention.

Sympathy, empathy, and compassion: A grounded theory study of palliative care patients’ understandings, experiences, and preferences

Background: Compassion is considered an essential element in quality patient care. One of the conceptual challenges in healthcare literature is that compassion is often confused with sympathy and empathy. Studies comparing and contrasting patients’ perspectives of sympathy, empathy, and compassion are largely absent. Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate advanced cancer patients’ understandings, experiences, and preferences of “sympathy,” “empathy,” and “compassion” in order to develop conceptual clarity for future research and to inform clinical practice.

Fears of compassion: Development of threeself-report measures

There is increasing evidence that helping people develop compassion for themselves and others has powerful impacts on negative affect and promotes positive affect. However, clinical observations suggest that some individuals, particularly those high in self-criticism, can find self-compassion and receiving compassion difficult and can be fearful of it.

Compassion, Pride, and Social Intuitions of Self-Other Similarity

Compassion and pride play contrasting roles within human societies. Compassion promotes attention to the needs of weak or suffering others, often motivating actions costly to the self for the benefit of others. Pride, in contrast, helps establish and maintain social hierarchies, allowing certain individuals to signal positions of strength. In the present research, we examined the social cognitive mechanisms of compassion and pride by assessing their influences on judgments of self-other similarity.

What is The Polyvagal Theory?

Polyvagal Theory emphasizes the role the autonomic nervous system - especially the vagus nerve - plays in regulating our health and behavior. Created and developed by Stephen Porges, PhD, the theory describes the physiological/psychological states which underlie our daily behavior as well as challenges related to our wellness and mental health.

The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation

This book compiles, for the first time, Stephen W. Porges’s decades of research. A leading expert in developmental psychophysiology and developmental behavioral neuroscience, Porges is the mind behind the groundbreaking Polyvagal Theory, which has startling implications for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and autism. Adopted by clinicians around the world, the Polyvagal Theory has provided exciting new insights into the way our autonomic nervous system unconsciously mediates social engagement, trust, and intimacy.

Toward a comprehensive, theoretical model of compassion fatigue: An integrative literature review

This study was an integrative literature review in relation to compassion fatigue models, appraising these models, and developing a comprehensive theoretical model of compassion fatigue.

Is moral elevation an approach-oriented emotion?

Two studies were designed to test whether moral elevation should be conceptualized as an approach-oriented emotion. The studies examined the relationship between moral elevation and the behavioral activation and inhibition systems.

Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources

B. L. Fredrickson’s (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people’s daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n   139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation. Results showed that this meditation practice produced increases over time in daily experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect.

In search of durable positive psychology interventions: Predictors and consequences of long-term positive behavior change

A number of positive psychology interventions have successfully helped people learn skills for improving mood and building personal resources (e.g., psychological resilience and social support). However, little is known about whether intervention activities remain effective in the long term, or whether new resources are maintained after the intervention ends. We address these issues in a 15-month follow-up survey of participants from a lovingkindness meditation intervention. Many participants continued to practice meditation, and they reported more positive emotions (PEs) than those who had stopped meditating or had never meditated. All participants maintained gains in resources made during the initial intervention, whether or not they continued meditating. Continuing meditators did not differ on resources at baseline, but they did show more PE and a more rapid PE response to the intervention. Overall, our results suggest that positive psychology interventions are not just efficacious but of significant value in participants’ real lives.

Meditation affects brain networks differently in long-term meditators and novices

“Overall these findings are important because they show that alterations in key brain circuits associated with emotion regulation can be produced by mindfulness meditation,” says Richard Davidson, William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UW–Madison, who led the work. “Some changes can occur in a relatively short time while other changes require much more practice.”

Impact of short- and long-term mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli

Meditation training can improve mood and emotion regulation, yet the neural mechanisms of these affective changes have yet to be fully elucidated. We evaluated the impact of long- and short-term mindfulness meditation training on the amygdala response to emotional pictures in a healthy, non-clinical population of adults using blood-oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Long-term meditators (N=30, 16 female) had 9,081 hours of lifetime practice on average, primarily in mindfulness meditation. Short-term training consisted of an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course (N=32, 22 female), which was compared to an active control condition (N=35, 19 female) in a randomized controlled trial. Meditation training was associated with less amygdala reactivity to positive pictures relative to controls, but there were no group differences in response to negative pictures. Reductions in reactivity to negative stimuli may require more practice experience or concentrated practice, as hours of retreat practice in long-term meditators was associated with lower amygdala reactivity to negative pictures – yet we did not see this relationship for practice time with MBSR.