This is a partner exercise that can be practiced in the sessions and at home. Similar exercises
have been used in interventions designed within the field of positive psychology
,
and the
form of the exercise resembles the contemplative dyads used in Satori or Enlightenment
Intensive Retreats
In the sessions, participants are paired with a partner and sit in front of each other. While one
partner speaks, the other listens mindfully without reacting verbally or through facial expressions.
One of the partners starts, and first tells the other about a situation of the day that has evoked
difficult emotions
and then about a situation or an event that she is
grateful
for. Then it’s the other
one’s turn. Each partner speaks for 5 minutes, with half of the time devoted to the difficult
situation and emotions and the other half to gratefulness. In the weekly sessions, timing is kept
by the teachers. When practiced during the week, two participants are paired and call each other
via a smartphone app that takes care of the timing through electronic bell sounds. In the weekly
sessions, participants practice with multiple partners. For home practice, two participants are
paired so they can make appointments for the phone calls. Partners are changed on a weekly
basis.
The exercise is designed so that participants can practice the recognition of negative emotions
(as a basis for accepting and being with them), and learn gratefulness, which is a powerful basis
for feelings of warmth, social connectedness and even prosocial motivations
.
Outline of the Training
In the retreat, both core exercises are introduced. Participants also learn a variant of the body
scan, termed the “compassionate body scan” in which they practice turning towards body
sensations and upcoming emotions in a curious and loving way
These skills are elaborated on
in teachings and additional exercises to strengthen participants’ ability of coping with difficult
emotions that may block compassion. They also practice the acknowledgment of difficult emotions
in the dyadic exercise. Here, the continuous interchange with all members of the group about
difficult life situations helps to bring about a sense of interconnectedness through the universality
of human suffering (“common humanity”, see
and
in this volume). To foster
participants’ understanding of compassion, we contrast it with empathy for suffering, which we
understand as pure emotional resonance (see
in this volume). Through guided
meditations, we aim at making the difference available to experience, so that participants can
distinguish helpful (compassionate) ways of turning towards others from potentially harmful (purely
empathic) ones.
In the 13-week course, we successively build up the heart meditation, using objects such as self, a
benefactor, a close friend, a neutral and a difficult person or groups of people, cultivating the
wishes for them to be happy and free of suffering. Throughout the entire course, we pay heed to
the variability of people with regard to the ease with which these wishes can be generated and felt
towards different objects. Although the weekly sessions have dedicated foci (e.g., self, difficult
people), participants are encouraged to understand and work with their individual propensities. For
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Affective Core Exercise 2: Affective Dyad
