Promoting healing through KINDNESS AND COMPASSION

"If we live in our ego, the world is very scarce."-- recent conversation with my friend and colleague, Lori Lipten, Medical Intuitive

Why is it that many healing programs do not make an impact on those who suffer? They may be staffed with renowned professionals, evidenced-based theories, manuals and documentation that appease every agency known to humankind along with research articles produced beyond your wildest dreams. Your patients may have been directed by someone to partake in this healing program, for obvious political reasons. Their rationale speaks from a place of fear. As uncomfortable as it may seem to them on the surface, they trust their head and not their heart.

My yoga teacher reminded our class one morning about the Woodstock concert, which took place in 1969. I don’t believe he was even born then. However, he had a great sense of what went on as if he attended. I was only eight years old, so I have no recollection other than what I learned about as I grew older. My yoga teacher described how nothing about this concert/event was organized. There was no publicity by channel that are available to us now, no plans to feed the anticipated amount of attendees, no back stage organization, no ticket takers, extra security measures…not much of any formal organization. However, Woodstock was an amazing historical event. What made it so powerful?...the compassion and kindness, along with love and trust, that was exuded among the performers and the attendees. It was a higher vibration of consciousness brought together by the energy of those who were present. It was a tremendous amount of “letting go” of old notions and cultivating a vast amount of trust.

What is it that positive healing environments have that transcend the book theory? Or, perhaps these positive healing environments operate based on evidence-based research and adhere to all of the accrediting bodies’ rules? Even with internal guidelines in place, what sets them apart from programs that just go through the motions? Why do their participants leave so transformed? It goes back to the Woodstock example—compassion, kindness, love and trust. Let’s explore:

COMPASSION

Compassion is a profound human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in what manifests in the social context as altruism. It is a deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering along with the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it. A powerful, deep awareness of someone else's suffering, making it so that you want them not to suffer.

Compassion is more than a mere desire to help; it creates a determination, a decision to actually help, even if only in some small way. Compassion puts something of yourself on the line: perhaps your power over someone, or your time, or wealth, or effort, or healing skills. When it's strong, compassion overrides angry or vengeful desires. Compassion differs from mercy in that compassion is about an emotional connection, while mercy is about an action. Compassion can lead to mercy.

The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I'd say that compassion begins with attention. (Daniel Goleman)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. (The Dalai Lama)

Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing -- resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings. (Joanna Macy)

Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and deepest reach in his or her search for self- fulfillment. (Arthur Jersild)

KINDNESS

Kindness is the act or the state of being kind and marked by charitable behaviour, marked by mild disposition, pleasantness, tenderness and concern for others. It is the quality of being warmhearted and considerate and humane and sympathetic.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. (Albert Schweitzer)

No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. (Amelia Earhart)

When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. (The Dalai Lama)

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profundity. Kindness in giving creates love. (LAO-Tse)

Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity, for with sharing and love, one learns. (Marc Estrin)

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. (Mark Twain)

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness. (Seneca)

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. (Leo Buscaglia)

Thank you to Daniela Fila\imon, Dietetic Student at Madonna University, for helping to compile this article.

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About Beverly Price, RD, MA, RYT

Beverly Price is a Registered Dietitian, author, newspaper columnist and public speaker who made a name for herself with her unique approach to nutrition counseling. After 11 years in private practice, she sold Living Better Sensibly -- one of the largest private nutrition practices in the country - to a private nutrition consulting firm, and started Jump Start Consulting specializing in management and marketing strategies for dietitans and other healthcare professionals, along with distance learning products for continuing professional education. Beverly currently operates a private practice, in Royal Oak, Michigan, where she specializes in eating disorder recovery and yoga therapy.

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