Wisdom in Waves
  • Home
  • Classes
  • Meditations
  • Books
  • Poems
  • Musings
  • About
  • Contact
  • Love

Health Grades: Mindful Self-Compassion as a Doorway to Freedom and Joy

1/18/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Sandbridge, Virginia Beach, United States by Jae Bano

The lipid (cholesterol) and Hbaic (3 month blood sugar average) results are released online by my primary care physician. After a few months of changing the exercise routine due to a chronic piriformis injury, and celebrating Diwali, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with so much food, I know the numbers won’t be good.

Taking a few deep breathes, I click on the lab links. The numbers confirm my apprehension. Shoulders slump, the heart sinks in disappointment.

Judgmental thoughts abound. How could you possibly think hiking and walking would be enough? Can’t you control your food choices and intake? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to offer advice to patients you can’t even follow yourself? The thoughts threaten to submerge the heart even more in the brewing anger, fear, and sadness conjured by them.

Mindfully aware of the thoughts, feelings, and effects they have on the body, I recognize an old pattern based on past causes and conditions. The lab values feel like health grades, a kind of report card defining my wellbeing. If the numbers are outside of a certain range, then I have failed.

Ouch! This hurts. It’s unpleasant. Does it have to be, or am I adding on extra arrows of suffering that don’t need to prick so sharply?

I don’t like the numbers, but like final semester grades, they don’t define what I’ve learned about physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. I wonder what a wise teacher, loved one, or good friend might say to me in this moment to help me remember kindness.

Sweetheart, this is an invitation to the biggest wellbeing party of your life! How does your body want to move, to dance? What do you want to eat at this party that is not only sweet or savory when swallowed, but will last to support deep loving connections with self and others?

Radiant, the heart emerges with more care, communicating with a curious mind to expand a narrowly focused lens on experience. With a panoramic view, I think of my colleagues and other physicians who balance the wellbeing of patients with their own wellbeing every day, sometimes to their own detriment. Ahh, others experience this, too.

Though I work part-time, have so much support at home, and cannot attribute a change in health status to work alone, I know other physicians suffer from exquisite burnout. Burdened by the overwhelming weight of patient care, demanding electronic medical records that threaten the physician-patient relationship, and never-ending administrative duties that seem to proliferate at an alarming rate, mindlessness can feel like the only easy way out.

According to Diana Winston, Director of Mindful Education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), mindfulness is “paying attention to your present moment experience with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is.” For years, I worked with definitions like this in meditation, movement practices, silent retreats, and meetings with a mentor. The “paying attention to present moment experience with openness and curiosity” piece was starting to make sense. The mind got it, but the heart still wasn’t convinced.

When I learned about Kristen Neff and Chris Germer’s research and teachings on self-compassion, and began to integrate them into mindful practices, the heart began to trust the combined capacity of heart-mind to communicate with the body, to be in tune with each other and sense when there was an imbalance of thoughts, feelings, and sensations leading to dis-ease. The capacity to stay with these experiences led to internal freedom and joy independent of external circumstances.

To this day, mindful self-compassion gives me the strength to stay with difficult patients and circumstances, to touch intimacy and vulnerability without overwhelm, to celebrate healing with patients in a larger context than ones limited by disease states and problem lists.
 
Clearing
by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.
 
May we all create a clearing in the dense forest of our lives. May mindful self-compassion bring back the meaning in medicine.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Kaveri Patel, a woman who is always searching for the wisdom in waves.

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014

    Categories

    All
    Anatta
    Body Wisdom
    Burnout
    Communication
    Compassion
    Creativity
    Diwali
    Doubt
    Elements
    Energy
    Equanimity
    Fear
    Forgiveness
    Freedom
    Gratitude
    Guilt
    Habits
    Impermanence
    Joy
    Kindness
    Light
    Middle Way
    Mindfulness
    Motivational Interviewing
    Parenting
    Passion
    Patience
    Peace
    Poetry
    Relationships
    Sacred Feminine
    Self Compassion
    Surrender
    True Nature
    Trust
    Uncertainty
    Wisdom

    Click to set custom HTML

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly