How to Open a Closed Heart with Mindfulness & Compassion

Speaker 1 · 0:00How do we teach mindfulness and meditation to people whose hearts are feeling closed, or if the energy in the room is feeling a little bit dark or down? How do we help people to be present in the midst of these energies? How can we be impactful in a way that's caring but also effective? A lot of new mindfulness and meditation teachers have this challenge. How to meet these energies of closed hearts and down energies, especially in our world today, where there's a lot of things going on in a world that can lead to stress and overwhelm, depression, trauma, addiction. How do we meet these energies in a way that's going to be helpful? I've been helping thousands of new mindfulness and meditation teachers face this challenge through our mindfulness teacher certification program. I a former Buddhist monk of two years. I'm a mindfulness teacher for the program born at Google, and I've been working with a lot of therapists, counselors, yoga teachers, coaches around the world for the last 10 years. And this question is coming up more and more. In fact, I want to show you a video of an interaction that I had with someone last week. Um, someone who wants to teach mindfulness and meditation, but um had this concern that I'm talking about now. And um I want to share this video with you to help you to be able to teach meditation and mindfulness in a way that's not going to be resistant to what people bring, um, to not be judgmental of however people are feeling, but rather to embrace the energies that they're bringing and to help them to navigate those energies in a way that's going to be sensitive to the possibility of trauma and to the sensitivity of however they're feeling in that moment, uh, so that we're not harsh or pushing our agenda. Um, so I hope that you get a lot of value from this video that I want to play for you. Um, I'd love to hear what you think and how you navigate these challenges of um helping people be present in the midst of their pain and suffering. So um be honored to support you on your path in the future. If you'd like some uh further support or training or certifications, we have links uh down below. And I hope you like this video. Thank you.

Speaker 2 · 2:49Have you ever been in a room with a group that you've really felt the energy of a closed heart where you had to pivot what you were doing to address that energy in the room?

Speaker 1 · 3:01All the time. The pivot is not one of resistance, but rather compassion. We're also busy, we're trying to do our best in a busy world. Most people are living with a lot of fear to different degrees. Like most of our hearts are at least partially closed, a little bit. Most of us are not completely free of judgment. At the end of a meditation session or a mindfulness workshop or a wonderful, you know, mindful gathering, hearts are more open than they were, usually. But you know, in a space of five plus people, someone's heart's going to be quite closed, usually, if not most people's in the beginning. May not be filled with hate or rage, but may not be fully open either. And there's for me kind of a bias towards self-compassion, which for me, there's kind of this underlying assumption that most people are suffering in some way during the practice. And so that's why I bring out you know self-compassion practice. It's becoming more and more clear to me, too, that over the last few years I myself was maybe suffering a little bit more than I thought. And I was kind of meeting myself with self-compassion during the practice, during the guidance. Um, and now I feel like I'm sort of in a place in my life where I'm saying suffering less. And so now there's a bit more of a lightness and a joy and uh ease. And so it'll be interesting to see how that influences our guided meditations here and elsewhere, um, in terms of um cultivating other heart qualities or meeting a moment with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, love, etc. Yeah, maybe this is a long-winded way of saying that, yeah, most a lot of hearts are closed during practice to different degrees. And so, as guides, as teachers, you know, may we meet that with compassion, not to like force it to be different, but to honor the closed heart because it's it's usually a way of coping. They meet that with presence, with say curiosity as to what a closed heart feels like to allow it to be closed and just kind of stay with it, like a like a really good friend. It's okay. And I'll just kind of sit with you for a while, closed heart, a very gentle tenderness. And usually that's a recipe for healing, maybe always a recipe for healing.