Kristin Neff, Ph.D. joins RamDev to discuss the relationship between suffering, stress, mindfulness, and fierce self-compassion.
Kristin Neff, Ph.D. is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on self-compassion, being the first one to operationally define and measure the construct almost twenty years ago. Along with being a Buddhist practitioner, she also recently released a book entitled, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. In addition to her pioneering research into self-compassion, she has developed an eight-week program to teach self-compassion skills in daily life, co-created with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, called Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). For more info, visit Self-Compassion.org
Find out more about RamDev’s work at the Living/Dying Project: livingdying.org
Suffering & Self-Compassion
Welcoming Kristin Neff, Ph.D. to the Healing at the Edge podcast, RamDev invites her to share on the topic of Self-Compassion and dive into themes outlined through her new book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. To begin, they discuss the varying connections between self-compassion, mindfulness, culture, non-duality, embodiment, self, suffering, and spiritual practice.
“There’s a lot of causes of suffering, but if we don’t attend to how we relate to suffering—which is, of course, greatly exacerbated by the illusion of separate self—it’s going to be very hard to let go of it.” – Kristin Neff, Ph.D.
RamDev leads a self-compassion guided practice, on Ep. 26 of Healing at the Edge
Mindfulness & Stress (9:30)
Contemplating the relationship between mindfulness and stress, as well as PTSD and self-compassion, Kristin and RamDev compare studies illuminating how our inner relationship with self and love often play a larger role in our afflictions and healing than even the outside circumstances. From here, Kristin shares about how she found the path of self-compassion.
“There have been recent studies that show stress causes inflammation in the body, but that mindful stress does not cause inflammation in the body in the same way.” – RamDev
“A study of combat veterans found that more important than how much combat experience they had, in terms of predicting PTSD, was how self-compassionate they were toward that stressful experience.” – Kristin Neff, Ph.D.
Explore a tantric approach to stress with RamDev, on Ep. 47 of Healing at the Edge
Women & Fierce Self-Compassion (21:08)
After exploring gender roles and socialization in relation to self-compassion, Kristin and RamDev speak to the nuances between pain, suffering, and resistance. To bring the podcast home, they share how we need to include ourself in our circle of compassion.
“One of the ways self-compassion works is actually by lessening resistance to pain.” – Kristin Neff, Ph.D.
RamDev & Christiane Wolf discuss how pain does not cause suffering, on Ep. 77 of Healing at the Edge
Photo via Davide Angelini