You’ve spent time learning to sit quietly, observing your inner experience with gentle curiosity. But now, the next step invites you to venture deeper—not just to observe, but to embrace every part of yourself with tenderness and discover how in doing so we can nourish the heart of compassion in ourselves. This is the essence of the Mindfulness Association’s Level 2 Compassion Training where we learn self-compassion as the ground for compassion for others.
The Courage to Turn Towards Ourselves
Building on your mindfulness skills you will be introduced to a self-compassion practice which is grounded in our familiar mindfulness sitting practice. In ‘Soften, Soothe, Allow’ (Chris Germer), many participants are surprised to find that they watch their inner experience shift towards warmth and gentleness, like there’s a honey-coloured light warming them from the inside. This is empowering when you’ve always relied on external factors to manage your feelings. It brings a new sense of agency and resilience – you feel more confident that you can take care of yourself whatever the internal weather throws at you.
The training feels like learning to turn towards yourself as you would a dear friend. It’s not always easy—we’re often our harshest critics. But through practices like Compassionate Colour, Compassionate Being and Mandala of Compassion, we slowly begin to soften. We realise we can meet the parts of ourselves we usually shy away from: the anxious, the angry, the grieving, the tired. Now, rather than existing in conflict or tension with these parts, we find ourselves able to ‘hold our seat’; to sit in the centre of our inner mandala and relate to the parts from our compassionate core.
In the Compassionate Being practice we imagine a being who embodies pure, unconditional love and care. Over time the image can begin to take root and we start to discover that compassion doesn’t just live outside of us—it’s something we can cultivate from within. We realise that there’s a reservoir of compassion built into us and that when we know how to tap into it, it grows and nourishes us, and by extension it reaches those around us too.
Opening the Heart to Others
As our capacity for self-kindness grows, the training gently encourages us to extend that warmth outward. It’s not about forcing ourselves to love everyone all the time—it’s more subtle and profound than that. We begin by acknowledging the common humanity we all share: the fact that every single person experiences joy and sorrow, hope and despair. We find out how to enable compassion to arise naturally, less by a force of will and more through kind nurturing.
Through practices of loving-kindness and compassion for others, we explore what it means to hold people in your heart—not in a way that drains you, but in a way that connects you. In this way we start to sense that compassion isn’t a finite resource. In fact, the more you cultivate it, the more expansive it becomes.