Compassion Meditation

Why You Should Try It

Having compassion means that you want others to be free from suffering and you have the urge to help end their suffering. It is not only vital to a kind and just society but also, research suggests, a path to better health and stronger relationships.

Yet cultivating compassion for others—and yourself—can sometimes feel like an emotionally taxing and demanding task. This exercise walks you through a meditation grounded in simple techniques—paying attention to your breath and guided imagery—to help you nurture compassion toward a loved one, yourself, a neutral person, and even an enemy.

Why It Works

This meditation fosters feelings of compassion and concern for others by training people to notice suffering and strive to alleviate it, while at the same time giving people the emotional resources to not feel overwhelmed by the distress caused by that suffering. The researchers who used this compassion meditation in their work argue that the care for others emphasized by the compassion training may have caused participants to see suffering not as a threat to their own well-being but as an opportunity to reap the psychological rewards from achieving an important goal—namely, connecting with someone else and making that person feel better.

By first extending compassion to a loved one and to the self, it becomes easier to extend that same compassion to others, even those you may not like. Extending compassion to people you dislike can help to reduce feelings of hostility and resentment and may lead to improvements in a strained relationship. With practice, this meditation can help bring more peace, joy, and connection to one’s own life and to the lives of others.

Evidence That It Works

Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E., Caldwell, J. Z., Olson, M. C.,Rogers, G. M., and Davidson, R. J. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1171-1180.

Adults in Wisconsin received either a 30 minute version of this compassion meditation training or a training aimed at mitigating negative emotion by helping people think differently about a negative event. Participants who completed two weeks of the compassion training demonstrated more altruism—they gave more money to a victim of unfair treatment. This altruistic behavior is a strong marker of compassion.

What’s more, the people who received the compassion training showed different brain activity in response to pictures of suffering: Their brains showed greater activity in regions known to be involved in understanding the suffering of others, regulating emotions, and experiencing positive feelings in response to a reward or goal. In this case, suggest the researchers, that goal was alleviating the suffering of someone in need.

Who Has Tried the Practice?

While there is no demographic information in Weng’s 2013 study, additional studies explore how this exercise benefits different groups and cultures:

• Portuguese adults who practiced compassion exercises such as Compassion Meditation and Best Possible Self for two weeks felt more positive emotions, experienced less shame and self-criticism, and maintained a more stable heart rate (a marker of reduced stress reactivity) compared to those on a waitlist.
• Adults in Hong Kong, including some with recurring anxiety and depression disorders, practiced Compassion Meditation as part of one- or two-month compassion and mindfulness programs. They increased in well-being and decreased in psychological distress immediately and three months after the programs.
• Asian American college students who engaged in Compassion Meditation as part of an eight-week course called “Using Compassionate Meditation to Heal From Race-Related Stress” exhibited decreases in distress, anxiety, depression, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
• Spanish adults with borderline personality disorder in a three-week loving-kindness/compassion program that included Compassion Meditation reported less borderline personality disorder symptoms and self-criticism and more self-kindness and acceptance than those who engaged in dialectical behavioral therapy.
• Houseless female trauma survivors of interpersonal violence in the American Midwest with mental disorders and substance abuse history who attended a six-week program that included Compassion Meditation experienced reductions in trauma and clinical symptoms.

Compassion Meditation and its variations are included in several Buddhist-inspired programs that aim to improve well-being with various compassion exercises, including Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT, an eight- to ten-week course originally developed by Lobsang Tenzin Negi, using exercises such as Compassion Meditation and Mindful Breathing to foster mindfulness, self-compassion, compassion for others, and other prosocial emotions); Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT, an eight- or nine-week program developed by researchers at Stanford University that focuses on fostering compassion “for oneself, loved ones, difficult people, and all beings”); and Compassionate Mind Training (CMT, a central technique in Paul Gilbert’s Compassion-Focused Therapy designed to improve the mental health of people with high levels of shame and self-criticism). Research suggests that programs like these can benefit different groups and cultures:

• A racially diverse group of American veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder who participated in a 10-week CBCT program experienced more reductions in clinical symptoms than those who used a generic mental health program for veterans.
• Low-income African American adults who had recently attempted suicide attended a CBCT group across six weekly 90-minute sessions. Participants—especially those with high emotional reactivity—reported greater reductions in self-criticism, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation than adults in a support group.
• Breast cancer survivors in Arizona and Spain showed decreases in stress and mental health symptoms that lasted for up to six months after a standard eight-week CBCT program that required daily meditation practice.
• Chilean adults who attended a nine-week CCT program with weekly two-hour classes and 30 minutes of daily practice showed improvements in well-being and satisfaction with life.
• Mental health patients in Iceland who participated in a four-week CMT program with eight two-hour classes and home practice assignments experienced reductions in depression, anxiety, and stress.
• American women (mostly of African and Southeast Asian descent, who were currently, recently, or intending to become pregnant) who completed four CMT exercises that included Compassion Meditation showed larger reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms compared to those who completed cognitive behavioral therapy exercises.
• Persian college students and HIV-positive patients in Iran who attended a four-week CMT program showed increased levels of well-being and healthy emotional processes when compared with control groups.
• Japanese individuals with low self-esteem who engaged in at least 10 minutes of Compassion Meditation daily for a week during a seven-week, CMT-inspired program had beneficial changes in “self-esteem, negative thoughts, negative emotions, anxiety, depression, and shame.”
• Spanish breastfeeding mothers and Iranian mothers of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who took part in at least 30 minutes of Compassion Meditation during six- to eight-week compassion programs experienced reductions in depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms.

More research is needed to explore whether, and how, the impact of this practice extends to other groups and cultures. 

Keep in Mind

Although a great deal of evidence supports the benefits of Compassion Meditation and its related programs, these benefits may be limited for people with certain identities:

• Portuguese chronic illness patients experienced reductions in anxiety and increases in psychological flexibility that lasted up to three months after a four-week Compassion-Focused Therapy program that called for 10-20 minutes of meditation practice per week. However, the benefits for anxiety were lower in participants who had lived with their chronic illness for longer periods of time.
• Female university students in Hong Kong performed either the “Compassion for a Loved One” or “Compassion for a Neutral Person” portions of Compassion Meditation, or a Buddhist appreciative joy meditation. While the women who did appreciative joy meditation for a friend increased in happiness and positive emotions, the women who did Compassion Meditation for a friend increased in sadness and decreased in positive emotions. The researchers believe that empathy for a friend’s suffering in Compassion Meditation may lead to negative emotions, particularly for people in non-Western countries, who have more mixed emotional experiences that are both positive and negative compared to people in Western countries.

Sources

Helen Weng, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco
Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin, Madison

References

Do you bring compassion to your romantic relationship? Take our Compassionate Love quiz to find out: