It was the final session of my Mindful Self Compassion course last week. Our teacher, Paul, has just sent through the links for that final evening. So here, similar to my half-way post, are links to meditations, talks or anything else when I want to. If anyone else finds them useful, then that’s great. But this is primarily for me.

Week 5 - living deeply

Frank Ostaseski talking about Deep listening. We practised compassionate listening during this, and it felt quite unusual to be listened to in this way.

Giving and receiving compassion meditations

Half day retreat

Held at the same place as our weekly session, this consisted of the following practices.

And ended with the song Japanese Bowl by Peter Mayer

Week 6 - Meeting Difficult Emotions

Soften, sooth, allow meditations

A practice for naming/noting emotions and one for feeling emotions in the body

And we also watched a short video from the School of Life about shame

Week 7 - Exploring Challenging Relationships

Compassionate friend meditations

Compassion with Equanimity meditations

And then some links about Working with difficult emotions. An interview with Sharon Salzberg about anger. Mathieu Ricard on caregiver fatigue/empathy fatigue and the academic paper he mentions in the clip. And a dialogue between Brené Brown and Russell Brand in which she talks (starting at 44.20) about how boundaries are essential for compassion to flourish

Week 8 - Embracing your life

Compassion for Self and Others meditation

And some links to Rick Hanson’s TED talk on savouring and a TED talk on gratitude by David Steindl-Rast

Summary

As part of the final session, we were asked to review the practices we’d done and highlight which were our favourites. The three I listed are:

There have been some sessions which made me feel happy, and some which have made me feel sad. But that’s ok. Feeling is ok.