 Hello everybody and welcome to this breakout session. My name is Lisa Bayliss. I am so grateful that you've chosen to come and learn with me today. And we're going to talk about self compassion and the difference between empathy and compassion. So hopefully you're in the right place. You found your way here and I'm really grateful that you have come to join me. I just want to acknowledge that I am joining you today from the traditional territories of the Liguancan people of the Squimalt Songhees and Wasonic people. And I am just so grateful to be able to be a guest on these lands. When I first started working at the current school that I work at right now, Squimalt High School, I'm a school based counselor there. I had an elder come and teach me a Coast Salish word and the word was Natsumat. Natsumat means coming together. Sort of like how we are all coming together to learn here across this province and to learn about mental health. But when I was taught this word, I was also invited that it's not just a physical coming together. It's also a coming together. It's a connection to our head and our heart. And as educators, many of us spend so much time neck up. We're very busy. We're very busy doers. And sometimes we forget to connect back to our heart. Sometimes this work is so heart centered. It pulls us that it becomes over consuming, all consuming and quite exhausting. So today and where we're going on this invitation around self compassion is to reconnect our head and heart to come from this place of Natsumat. And I hope you'll join me on this learning today. So I'm so grateful you're all here. I also just want to transition just like we did this morning, maybe not quite as long, but a moment to pause. So to arrive, this real intentional practice of moving from whatever we were doing to being present here now. Perhaps this looks again like just putting your pens down, your books down, your tea or your coffee that you got on your break. And sitting back and settling into whatever is holding you, the chair, the ground. Perhaps allowing your eyes to close or just dropping your gaze downward and inviting a really big breath into this moment. A really intentional breath that allows you to move from this practice of doing back into being present. Just inviting again once more this invitation to presence to being here. You may again wish to just offer yourself some warm words of welcome to allow yourself to just arrive and create this practice of intentionality of moving forward with purpose of presence, maybe taking one last breath, letting your shoulders drop down. And then when you're ready to lift your gaze or arrive back here to the screen. I often do that more for me than maybe even for you just to remind myself to be fully present to take a pause. And I try and intentionally model this wherever I go to say I'm leaving whatever I was doing to be fully present with you. So these pauses, whatever they look like, this practice of slowing down can be really important in creating the space of showing up with intention. So my name is Lisa Bayless. As I said, I'm a school based counselor. I'm an author of a book called self compassion for educators. I'm a certified mindful self compassion teacher, but probably my most important role is that of a mom. And I've been talking about the well being of educators for almost a decade now, and it's been really important work to me. And this work for me didn't actually start as an educator as a school based counselor. It started as a mom. And in 2014, those of you who remember who were in our school system that year was the September we didn't go back to school. And I don't know about you, but September is a new year, right? This is a great place to start, have new clothes, sharp pencils. And if you remember 2014, we stayed on the picket line to just see what we could get for class sizes and composition. And I just remember the feeling of going back in 2014, midway through September and walking into my school at the time and feeling a sense of disappointment and sense of defeat. And it was important for me not so much of what was going on in in what was going on with schools, but what was going on in my school because the teachers were tired. This is pre pandemic. This was 2014. And I noticed that the teachers who were feeling really discouraged that year I was seeing more students in in my counseling practice and I don't have any empirical data. I wish I had taken some points, but I really noticed that when when teachers were overwhelmed and tired and feeling discouraged that the students were also noticing this we're feeling the same way. And I said this was important for me as a mom because my son Benji who is now in grade six was about to start kindergarten the next year. And I thought how can I be a part of shaping our system that really puts the well being of educators first. And this process has been really important for me and through this journey one of the things that I've learned to be the most foundational and important practices has been that of self compassion. And so perhaps you're here today to learn more about what this is what is self compassion it's becoming a phrase we're hearing more we're hearing about compassionate systems, but what does it mean to bring compassion back to ourselves. And I'm going to share today a little bit about the difference between empathy and compassion, because it's a really important to understand the difference. And why I think self compassion is probably the most foundational practice to support ourselves first. So then we can show up and be part of the shifting systems that compassionate system that needs to occur that trauma informed lens. But when we are grounded in our own self compassionate practice it makes it easier for us to then share compassion outward. So that's where we're going to go today and I'm so grateful that you are here and that you're going to go on this journey with me. And as I said it's been a challenging couple of years. And I don't know about you, but I've been sharing this work across North America for the last couple years and I often do a word cloud like Maria started with this beautiful word cloud this morning of positive words. But when I've asked educators in the last couple years how are you feeling now the number one word I've heard is overwhelmed. And I have to say that word was coming up before COVID in the last two years we have seen teachers tired teachers overwhelmed teachers feeling exhausted. And we need to find the ways to continue to do this support which is why I'm so grateful and glad we are talking about this now because we know that when we support our educators we're having this great connection. To our kids that when we continue to make them well we make our students well. And this is really important because it's really hard when we're overwhelmed and tired. I love this picture if you've never seen it before don't follow the awkward yeti on any of your socials I invite you to check them out. I love this because what it says is the brain when it's overwhelmed when it's stressed when it's tired it gets these like blinders on my course filters. And it doesn't matter all the good that's going on in the world and you say you can see the little heart here going brain look at all the good look at all these great things. And the brain says not now I'm busy I'm overwhelmed there's too many things I'm noticing the bad. This is what happens with our brain when we're in a stress response and our world now is in sort of a low grade stress response. We know that stress is occurring and around us stress happens we're supposed to come out of our stress. But what's happening is we're kind of staying here in stress our students are staying there and our educators are staying there. So today again this connection of not so much this opening up from both our head and our heart. Today is an invitation to go beyond our blinders and our stress and our overwhelm and to find ways to meet so much of the overwhelming stress that's going on in our world. And I love to start with this beautiful quote by Dr. Naomi Rachel Rehman. She says the expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. And a couple years ago I had this quote up on my in my screen like this and my daughter who is I think she was eight at the time she was 10. She walked in she goes mommy that doesn't make sense if you go in water you're going to get wet. And I said well that's just it baby girl like this is what happens when we feel other people's sadness. You know when when there's other people who are feeling loss and sadness around us we're going to experience it too we're going to feel it. And I think what's happening today is for many of our students for our educators for our whole system. Many people feel like they're in the deep end of the pool. They're tired of treading water and they're getting exhausted and they're feeling like they just can't keep it up and the overwhelm is growing. And we feel like we're kind of drowning amongst the suffering the struggles the stress that it reminds us. So today I want to share a little bit about self compassion as the practice that takes us out of that pool and reminds us that you know we don't have to feel it all we don't have to be in the deep end. Then in fact what we can do is go in slowly through the shallow end and just notice and feel and experience some of the suffering and stress and overwhelm that's happening in our schools and then meet them every single time. This work I'm sharing with you is practices it's ongoing life practices today is not a one and done. I'm going to share this with you and then I'm going to invite you to journey through this and to figure out how to get yourself into the shadow and to touch on it. And maybe eventually even know that you have the tools like a life jacket to help you and you know point yourself amongst the suffering. We're not at a point yet where our system is not going to avoid struggles and suffering in fact it never will because we're in a system that includes humans. One of the things that we know is that we can guarantee that all humans are going to struggle and suffer at some point and we're going to feel that we're going to talk about how that's important. So today I'm hoping that we can maybe give you a life jacket a little bit help you find some buoyancy through these practices of self compassion and I hope you'll continue to explore them as a practice beyond here. So I want to start with the difference between what is empathy and what is compassion. Many of we know this word empathy right we're teaching it in schools we want our children to know it. Empathy is about connection really. Empathy is the opportunity to understand another person's feelings and really put ourselves in their shoes to feel with another human being. When our students come into our classrooms into our offices into our schools and we hear their stories their traumas their struggles. We are going to feel those two if we are empathizing with them. This is really important and what's been really interesting about the studies of empathy and compassion is that they've done brain scans and and help people to understand where do we connect in our brain when we feel empathy and we feel compassion. And so there was some work done and what they discovered is that when people are experiencing empathy we're actually lighting up our limbic brain this is the part of our brain it's sort of in the back middle area that we have very little control over. This is the part of our brain also known as our reptilian brain or our cave person brain. It's where our megalo happens it's where our fight flight or freeze you may have heard some of these terms. This is where our sympathetic stress response comes from. So when people come in and they share their stories and we are able to sit with them and listen, which is a really important for connection we need to let people feel seen valued and heard. Empathy allows that connection. But what it does is it says, if you're come to me and say I'm feeling sad, then I feel sadness too. Or if you're feeling stressed, then I am going to experience that stress too. And it's going to light up that part of my brain that creates a cortisol response adrenaline I'm going to feel more stressed. So this is a really important awareness when we are building connection we're sitting in schools and sometimes we're feeling like we're just so heart centered and we're responding to every single one of those little. Beings in front of us and all of our colleagues with empathy. We are actually staying and considering keeping ourselves in that stress response because of our empathetic response. Now this is where it's really interesting to me and this is where my journey towards compassion really grew because compassion is the definition of compassion means I notice you're suffering. I'm aware that you're struggling and suffering and I have a desire to to alleviate it to help you to be with you. It's really empathy plus love and when we add the love when we add this connection this this place what they showed is that people who had learned to respond with compassion. Let up the prefrontal cortex part of their brain so that's the sort of the top part of our brain. You know that if you see the Dan Siegel model of the flip lit if any of you've heard or seen this. That's the front part here it's the part of our brain that's responsible for you know creative thinking and communication and regulating and understanding our emotions is just some of them. And so really important piece to be able to stay present and connected with people. And so when we're experiencing empathetic response or we're empathetically resonating and we do this. What happens is then we add the level of compassion that we're going to share today compassion for self and compassion for others. It allows us to be with hold space be present for others without this feeling of overwhelming exhaustion which is why I think it's so important we start talking more about compassion. We need to share and learn both empathy we need to be able to use for relation but compassion is where we can respond from where we can connect with each other and to create this compassionate system. It's really going to start with us learning how to first off offer self compassion. Many of you may have heard this phrase compassion fatigue you know like feeling on empty and you know you may see this image and you just may like yep that's where I'm at right now it's may it's like. Final report cards and grad ceremonies and awards things and you know all the band concerts and the activity days and whole May and June just so full for us in our schools right now. And wow fatigue is is coming in but I have to share that this term compassion fatigue. I really struggle with and I want to tell you why because remember when we talked about empathy being the place where our stress response come from in our brain. Many of us what we're feeling is empathy fatigue. Not compassion fatigue is compassion is a positive emotion and I have to share a story. I'm so grateful that we're going to hear from Dr. Gabor Maté after this I had the privilege of learning with him pre covid. Back in the days where we could gather in rooms of hundreds and he was here at one of the song he's wellness center which is here in the greater Victoria area and he was doing a. A workshop a weekend workshop with me and not just with me with many of us 300 of us who are what all considered caregivers so teachers counselors therapists nurses doctors social workers. And it was such a privilege to learn him and his compassionate inquiry and I remember sitting in this room of 300 caregivers and he walked in and he said compassion fatigue does not exist. So don't ever show him that I said it like that but that's you know there was this like and you could feel this whole room though. No it does because I'm exhausted I can't I don't know how to keep caring. What he said in that moment after that probably shifted my whole presence and how I keep showing up he said compassion fatigue doesn't exist because we have an innate capacity for compassion it's who we are as humans we show up with care and love. What exists is self compassion fatigue. It's in these moments where we are not truly caring for ourselves in a kind and loving way so that we have the capacity capacity to continue to give compassion outward. And so this is a really important practice and understanding that if we are going to continue to show up we need to be able to give these practices to ourselves. We've all heard you know the metaphor of put your own life mask on first but this really shifted for me in recognizing that my capacity to care also comes back to my capacity to care for myself. And so I share this with you because I think it's really important I want to do an exercise first so you can learn what this feels like a little bit so you're actually going to need a piece of paper and a pen and to play with me here for a few minutes and I want to invite you to think about a time where you had a close friend who was really suffering or struggling in some way could be a colleague or a dear friend. And you feeling kind of okay on this day and this friend comes to you and they say just really having a really hard time maybe they've failed at something or they're feeling inadequate. Perhaps they're having a health concern or you know struggles in a relationship and they're just telling you a lot about what's going on. How do you respond to your friend I invite you to write it down what are the words you offer what are the words you would say to your friend in this moment. When they're struggling words or phrases and also think about what is your tone of voice like when you meet this dear one who is having such a hard time. What's your body language like what's the sense of feeling that you offer you're not going to share this this is just for you. There's no right or wrong answer here either. And I invite you to take a moment and just write down how do you meet a friend when your friend is struggling. What are the words or phrases you offer. And then I invite you to think about a time when actually perhaps it is you that is the one who's suffering just like your friend maybe you are the one who has failed at something or feels inadequate or you're struggling with health concern or in a relationship or something at school. When you are the one who is struggling or suffering what do you say to yourself in those moments and I invite you to write it down right beside what you would say to a friend. What are the ways what are the words the phrases the offerings you say to yourself in these moments when you are the one who's suffering you're the one who's struggling. Also pay attention to what's your tone of voice like what's your body language what's the felt sense that you offer yourself again you're not having to share this and there's no right or wrong answer. There's no wrong here just an invitation to reflect. And then I don't know if it's available but I'd love to see if any of you could tell me in the chat what did you notice about how you respond to a friend and how you respond to yourself. Perhaps you can bring this up in the chat and just let me know did you see that there was similarities or differences. I'd like to respond to a friend when they're suffering and what would it be like to respond to yourself and I would just love to hear from one or two of you to know what's it like when when we're responding and connecting with people who are struggling. And I think I can see the chat and I'm going to invite somebody to just offer this what do you notice so I can see and if not then we'll just move on but I'm hoping we can get a chance to see. And maybe I can't see the chat but maybe you're responding in the screens that you're in. And that's too bad but that's okay. Perhaps many of you found it much easier to respond with kindness and care to a friend than you do to yourself. And if that's the case, you're not alone. Most of the research that we have found and I love this. This data is a little old now I'm noticing you know it's a little bit older and this work's been really prolific in the last few years so you know but nearly 80% of people when they first asked and did this exercise found it much easier to be kind and compassionate and caring to those people around them that the students their their friends their colleagues who are struggling. There's a very small percentage of people who actually find it much easier to be kind to themselves and struggle to offer it out. And then there's about 16% who realize that when we offer ourselves compassion kindness, then it's easier to also give it out. And I'd like to say that I hope that percentage is growing as we continue to do this work and and much of the work that I'm going to share with you today is done by the work and research of by Dr. Chris Germer, both who are my teachers and both who have had the privilege of actually working with. And I think that as we're continue to see self compassion growing in the world, we start to realize that we have the capacity to hold the people who are struggling and suffering around us, and we can give it back to ourselves and in fact, the more we learn to offer it back to ourselves the more capacity we have to continue to offer it outwards. And so just this opportunity to check in the general definition of self compassion is can I talk to myself the way I would talk to a dear friend. Can I can I meet myself with the same kindness that I would meet my students, my colleagues, my children. And this work really shifted for me when I started realizing a couple years ago my daughter was starting to have this critical voice within her. She was starting to struggle a little bit and I was hearing some unkind things come out of her own heart like like I'm not very good at this or nobody you know nobody's going to want me to be on their team. These heartbreaking things we hear from children sometimes. And of course the words I offer her very different. You are strong, you are beautiful, you are wonderful. You know, you're brave, you are courageous. And I realized that I would say these things to her and then my own inward voice was saying the same thing she was saying like you're not good enough. No one's going to like you. You're never going to be good at what you do. And I thought I started to get curious to my own internal voice. So I started practicing or trying to shift my practice around if I wouldn't say it out loud to anyone else, especially my daughter, then I'm not allowed to say it to myself. And this has begun my journey around how I can start to meet myself with compassion. And I think that this is the beginning of the journey that I invite you to go on and we're going to talk about today because self compassion has really shown in the research to have huge impact on well being and on the purpose around really sustaining ourselves. Research shows that the more we practice self compassion the more we are able to practice optimism, gratitude and be in better relationships. When we learn that we can be kind to ourselves, we learn to offer kindness and compassion out to others. We have a little more capacity to be gentle and kind with people around us. And like Shirley was saying, we can step out a little bit and actually have compassion for where people are coming from. Recognize that we're all human beings. The more we practice self compassion, we're actually get give ourselves that beautiful permission of just being human that we realize things are going to go wrong. That setbacks will occur and that, you know, being a human being is sometimes just messy and things go wrong, but we have the capacity to have the courage and strength to go from it. And that one of the most important things that self compassion has shown me and that I see with many educators is that powerful antidote for, you know, the antidote to inner criticism, to perfectionist thinking, to expecting ourselves to be a certain way. And when we realize that we get to be perfectly imperfect human beings, we actually realize that we decrease our stress and we can be more present in just showing up and being. So these practices have been empirically researched to show that they can sustain our long term wellness over a really, you know, as we practice it for a really long time. So you might be asking, well, like, what does this all mean? This is, you know, this is great. I hear the research, but what does it mean to actually practice self compassion? And I want to share with you what, you know, the research shows in Dr. Kristinef's work has really shown that three components are foundational to practice self compassion. So if you are thinking, yeah, this is what I want to bring in. I'm recognizing I'm, you know, empathetically resonating with all my kids. It's cool. I'm feeling really exhausted. Self compassion is a practice I want to start engaging in. Then I invite you to start to be aware of these three components and the first component is mindfulness. And I know that you've heard this word because I don't think you can go anywhere these days without being told to be mindful of eating or mindful of walking. And, and as a mindfulness teacher, I'm really glad for this. But the reason mindfulness is so important and part of practicing self compassion is remember, I said compassion means to notice suffering and have a desire to alleviate it or decrease our stress. Well, self compassion says this one too is suffering. This one too is struggling or, you know, going through something challenging. How many times have we come home from a long day at work and our shoulders are ears and we're, you know, for me, I'm pounding through trying to make dinner for my kids and they're coming in and I'm a little snippy and I go, oh, something's going on. Maybe I'm, maybe, maybe I'm stressed. Oh, right. I'm today was a hard day. Oh, right. And I haven't been mindful. I've just been doing and when I pause and I recognize that this is hard. This is challenging and experiencing something difficult. You know, as Dan Siegel says, we name it to tame it. We start to pay attention. Mindfulness is the beginning of allowing ourselves to get connected. And then what we can do is we can allow ourselves to meet whatever we're feeling with a bit of support and understanding with kindness, loving kindness. And this is really the journey to saying, Okay, now I'm stressed. Can I, can I meet myself the way I might meet a dear friend? Can I talk to myself? Can I be gentle with myself? Instead of being critical, instead of shooting on myself and pushing, which we're all really good at doing. Instead, we offer ourselves a little bit of kindness. And this kindness may be tender. It may be attending and gently meeting ourselves or maybe more of a fierce kindness, right? A fierce compassion, which sets some boundaries and is powerful and is protective around ourselves. Both are a practice of loving kindness. And then we integrate the third component, which is probably my favorite. And this is the component of common humanity. This practice that we're all humans. And I like to think of common humanity along a continuum and somewhere in the middle is this messiness of just like I exist as a human being. And often what happens is we get polarized on this continuum and one side way over here, we struggle or suffer. And we feel like no one understands us. We feel really alone. I see this a lot with teens. And if you work with teens, you may notice this experience too. But it's like nobody gets me. I'm very, very alone in my suffering and my grief. And often it's this beautiful reminder that, yeah, your experience is unique to you, but your feelings are universal, right? This feeling that you're going through is a human experience. And we invite them to come back to this messy middle. Or you might be over on the other end of the continuum where I see a lot of educators and I wish I could see all your hands waved through this one. But you feel a stress or a struggle and you go, yeah, it's hard, but you know what? Other people's lives are way worse than mine. So I'm just not even going to feel this right now. It's just like, you know, other people have it worse. So I'm just going to stick my stress or suffering in my back pocket and ignore that it exists. And I'm just going to keep on going because that's my job. But what happens is that suffering or stress, that comparative suffering that we're experiencing, it just bubbles up and we don't want it to. And then we start to experience it again. And a lot of what we realize is that this opportunity to attend to this stress or struggle when it happens can alleviate so much of the overwhelming stress we feel. Someone once asked the late techno Han Vietnamese monk, how much suffering do we need to experience to really attend to it? Like how much do we have? How deeply do we need to get into it? And he just simply said, not much. And this is that idea of being in the deep end of the pool, right? We don't need to sit and feel like we're drowning in our struggles and our suffering. In fact, even just getting our feet wet, even just noticing a little bit of suffering and then very quickly attending to it. Attending to the recognition, this is hard, but I'm not alone. Other people feel like me and can I meet myself with some kindness can have a huge impact on how we do this. And I share this image with you, this next one, because it's my absolute favorite. Oh, maybe, maybe. Oh, there we go. Sorry, a little skibby to jump there. Because I think sometimes this common humanity piece gets lost and we forget to experience this being human. I have this post drop in my office and the little dude on the left says in my office, it actually says, what the hell is that? And kids come in all the time and they're like, Miss Bayless. I think I'm like that guy on the right. I look at them. I go, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, they're like, yeah, it's really hard. I said, yeah, I'm really sorry. You're human. Like this is a human experience. This is what it's like to exist with all feelings and all thoughts. The thing is, is that the practice doesn't mean to just be in all of it all the time. The invitation is to pull one beautiful strand down at a time and say, and this is what's existing in this moment. We can't do all things. We can't be all, you know, all things for all people, but we can go slow and exist very gently one thing at a time. And when we give ourselves that permission to be human, it sure allows us to be able to show up and do the work that we're doing. And I know that surely, you know, responded to sharing this a little bit about creating that space and how we respond. You know, this quote was once quoted to Victor Frankel. I don't know that it's ever actually him that said it, but I think the essence is really, really important here. And it says that between stimulus and response is a space. It's that space that we have our power to choose our response. And it's in our response that we have that growth in our freedom. What mindfulness and self compassion do is that they create the pause. They remind us to slow down. They don't take away the pain. They don't take away our experience. They give us the invitation to be in it and to not be reactive and to meet whatever is existing with warmth and to welcome it with some kindness. And so as we go through, you know, the world in our schools and stuff, when we get to invite some kindness and compassion to ourselves, it gives us the capacity to then be able to be present with the people around us. One of the most powerful ways that we can do this simply is a practice called soothing and supportive touch. And it sounds a little cheesy and I have to admit this because when I first heard this, I was like, yeah, this is weird. It's a little woo-woo for me. And I'm pretty like, I do a lot of yoga and mindfulness and I love to really be present in these practices, but I wasn't sure about this one. So if you're kind of like, you're getting a little bit out there, Bayless, then I get it. I'm with you. But I have to say it is probably the one practice I use more than any other self-compassion practice. And the practice is simply meeting yourself with a little bit of warmth. And I'm going to guide you through a practice in a moment. And I'm going to invite you to play and be curious with it. I'll tell you a story. This practice, for me, often I just put a hand on my heart. Whenever I feel a bit of suffering come up, when I'm mindfully aware that I'm struggling or I'm hearing someone else's story. And, you know, when Phyllis was sharing today, I felt my hands on my heart just holding her story and holding my own experience with it. And this happens for many of us is that we get so caught up in our own experience of how we're feeling. We jump into fix or changer and we don't actually just are able to be with people. So when I practice this all the time, and I'm going to share a story with you. And remember September 2020 when we all went back to school? I don't know about you, but I had spent my summer in a pretty little tiny bubble. We had learned COVID and we had sort of had a little bit back in June. And then September when schools were open and it was awesome and we get to go back. But I remember this huge feeling of overwhelm coming over me. Maybe you were in the same boat, you had to go back to schools, you get to go back to schools. And I remember those first, we had those, we were gifted those beautiful first two days to just like learn about how are we going to, how are we going to bring our kids safely back to school. And I walked into the theater of my school and at the time my administration was sitting at the front of the stage and they were bouncing. They were so excited and I was in a theater with my, you know, 50 or 60 staff. And I was feeling this sense of great overwhelm. And I sat down in my chair and we weren't quite masked yet. And I wasn't quite sure what this was going to look like. And I could feel panic growing in my body. And I could, excuse me, feel a panic attack coming. And not like many educators can tend to be a little bit anxious at times. And I wasn't sure how he was going to deal with this. So I took a deep breath and I kind of just like, whoa, girl, you're feeling a little overwhelmed. And I put my hand on my heart and I just recognized the warmth that it offered me. And what we know is that, you know, when we offer warmth and a physiological response that it actually helps us remove out of our sympathetic stress system. When we are holding our babies, when they're crying and they're, you know, stress, we rock and we hold them, we support them. But somewhere along the way, we forgot to bring that to ourselves. So in this moment when I was in this theater and with my staff, it didn't take my anxiety away. It didn't fix the solution, but it slowed my whole system down. And then I put my second hand on my heart and I just took a deep breath. And I managed to set through that whole two hour of health and safety that we had to go through and where most of the fibers in my being wanted to run away. And it was able to stay present. And it was simply because of this practice of soothing touch, of calming my own nervous system in a moment that felt really, really overwhelming. Now, that wasn't the last time I felt overwhelmed and, you know, I can guarantee that everyone here listening has moments of overwhelm and worry and anxiety and stress throughout the day, all kinds of feelings. And this practice can be available to you at any point in or out of the classroom. And it's a beautiful one to share with our students. So I'm going to guide you through this practice. And then after we sort of play a little bit with what it's like to be in a self-compassion soothing practice, I'm going to invite you to come into the next stage, which is called a self-compassion break, where we're going to go through the three components of self-compassion in a mindful practice. So I invite you to try, be curious, be open, recognize and see how can you use these in your day-to-day life experience. We'll probably sit for about six or seven minutes and just going through this, and then we'll have an opportunity to reflect and open up after. So if you feel like you are willing and able, I'm going to invite you just to find a really comfortable position around your space. If you would like to close your eyes, you're welcome to close your eyes and just drop back, settle into your chair. Maybe just let your hands fall on your lap. Just holding your own hand for a moment. In fact, hold your hand like it's the hand of somebody that you truly love. Maybe even just give it a squeeze and feel the warmth or the coolness of your hand and see if you can warm up your hands by just squeezing and stroking and holding your own hands. Like it's this dear hand that you just love to hold. Notice what that's like. Then I invite you to bring one of those hands and just place it so gently on your heart and notice the warmth that that occurs when we place our hand on our heart. You may even choose to place both hands on your heart and just offer a little bit of pressure as if you're giving your heart a little hug or just holding it so gently and saying like, this one, this one matters. This one right now. You may leave one hand on your heart to move another one down to your abdomen and just hold your whole torso. Just noticing what it's like to hold this body, this one too. You might drop both hands down to your torso and maybe even just give your whole being a squeeze. Just gently holding your torso, your abdomen. You might bring one hand up and just let your cheek fall into your hand. Just getting curious and noticing what's it like to hold the cheek of this loved one. Like you haven't seen them in so long. Hello, dear one. Just feeling what it's like to let your cheek rest in this hand or perhaps bringing both hands up and just cupping your chin as if you've just seen someone you haven't seen forever and you hold their face with affection and kindness and love. Just letting this all wrap in. And then lastly letting your hands just squeeze your arms as if you're giving yourself a hug. And then letting your arms fall. Just taking a moment to pause and to think, did any place feel comfortable or easy? Was there a sense of warmth or tenderness that came with that? I'm going to guide you through a practice called the self-compassion break. And to do this, I'm going to invite you to think about something you're struggling with right now in your life. It might be a problem at school or at work. But to do this, we have to create a little bit of discomfort because compassion does not arise without discomfort. I also invite you not to choose the 9 out of 10 stressor in your life right now. We don't need to be an over one. We don't need to be in that deep end of the pool right now. Choose something that's a 4 out of 5. It could be something you're struggling with at work or a health concern. But allow yourself to really settle into it. So what's happening? What might happen? Who's there? What might be said? What was said? To the point where you feel a little discomfort in your body even. Just allowing yourself to maybe notice that discomfort. I'm going to invite you to offer yourself these words in just a kind and gentle way. Back to yourself and just say, this is a moment of difficulty. Or this is stressful. It might even just be like, ouch, this is hard. And what we're doing is we're simply bringing in a bit of a mindful awareness to a situation that's difficult. This is a moment of difficulty. And then that same tender and gentle voice offer yourself the words. But difficulties are a part of life. Difficulties are a part of life. You might think of words like, I'm not alone or other people would feel just like me. Or inviting just a little bit of that common humanity into your awareness. This is where you might want to just offer that soothing touch to this one who's struggling a little bit. A hand to your heart. Can you offer yourself the words? May I be kind to myself? May I offer myself some compassion? It might be words like, you're not alone or you've got this. You're perfect just the way you are. And if you're not quite sure what words need to be said right now, think about if your best friend was struggling the same way you are. What words would you want them to feel right in their heart? And can you so gently bring these words back to your own heart? Can you hold your own self with these kind and compassionate words? And then let these phrases run through your heart and your head. This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is a part of life. May I be kind to myself? May I offer myself the compassion I need? And then with as much ease as you brought to that practice, perhaps lifting your gaze, just coming on back and just checking in and noticing how you're feeling, just letting yourself be exactly as you are in this moment. This practice, as I led you through, is called a self-compassion break. You can hear me guide it. It's free on my website or if you're on the app, Insight Timer, you can also see me guide it there or hear me guide it there. But it's also one that I invite you to recognize you can do informally through your day as you're going between your classes, just before a meeting, just before you sit down with some parents. This is a hard, came not alone. What do I need? This quintessential self-compassion question that says, how do I meet the self with kindness? How can I treat myself as I would treat my dear friend, my students? Because Jack Hornfield says that if our compassion does not include our self, it is incomplete. And I think that this is one of the most foundational practices we need to remember as we continue to grow compassionate systems, compassionate relationships amongst other people that first of all, we need to bring this practice to ourselves. And then again, this is a lifelong practice, just as we practice mindfulness, just as we strengthen our biceps, compassion is a practice that we need to include for ourselves. And so I hope that soothing touch or that self-compassion break may be something you can take with you. And I'm going to invite, I've got a couple of minutes, if anybody has any thoughts or questions, I'm happy to answer them. If you'd like to stay in touch, please stay in touch. If there's something that resonated with you and you'd like to hear more about it, I'd love to be more connected to how you are working with this. And I don't know, Maria, I won't be able to see any questions, but I don't know if there are any. Hi, Lisa, I think I'm going to be joining you. Can you hear me? I can, yeah. Can you see me? I can see you. Oh, good. I can't see that you can see me. Do you, do you want to leave the slide up, Lisa? Or do you want just the two of us to be on the screen? I'm going to stop sharing and people can find me later. And then it can be sunny. Sunny, I just see Lisa. Am I on the screen with Lisa? Joe. Oh, there. Now it's just me. It's the second gallery. There we are. Perfect. All the work that I was, I was following along and doing all of the activities along with you. And it really makes a difference. It's especially that touch one. I don't know. Is that true for everyone? My experience is that sometimes people feel it really awkward at times. And the thing to remember with the touch one is that we use it when we're struggling. So if we're doing it right now and there's not a sense of discomfort or ease, it just might feel awkward. But when something comes up that's hard in our world, in front of our students, it's such a subtle practice of just offering ourselves a bit of warmth in a moment when we're noticing our own discomfort. And it can be a really, really powerful practice. There's probably research about what happens. Yeah, there is. Yeah, there's actually research that it actually, you know, takes us out of that limbic response of out of our stress response and actually changes and moves us into our, our caregiving response, which is, you know, the, that response to do around more of, you know, bringing ease that increases the oxytocin that we have through our body in those moments. And it actually allows us to decrease our stress in just, just a subtle touch. If we, there's an intention that goes with it, right? And so there's a warmth that comes with it. If we're just putting our hand on our heart, but we're not recognizing the warmth that we're offering ourselves in that moment will really notice the difference. I do. And that question that you asked people about what, what did they say to themselves when they fail? It wasn't that there was no answer at that time. The chat wasn't open. It turned out. So just so you know, people were definitely probably trying to reach you and, and saying it's really hard when we find ourselves. So the person who didn't open the chat room is busy forgiving or giving herself self-compassion. Please, please. That's just in the moment. We all make mistakes and it's all good. We continue on. And I think, you know, the one leaving question or one thing I would invite people to take away that exit slip out the door, there's a really important question we can ask ourselves. And that's, what do I need right now? And we so rarely forget to ask that, you know, we're so good at doing. And when we want to reconnect our head and our heart, that beautiful question, what do I like? What do I really need right now to be able to be present and connected and can really make a difference.