In this 4 minute video from HuffPost Healthy Living, French ex-molecular biologist turned Buddhist monk, confidante of HH The Dalai Lama, and "happiest person in the world" explains the difference between empathy and compassion. 

Whilst empathy required feeling the pain of others, and was not sustainable, compassion activated a different area of his brain under fMRI scanning, and could be practiced for far longer without any distress.

This knowledge is important as we think about how to improve compassionate caregiving, in our Health Service, in caring professions and in society.

We now know that compassion is linked to positive emotions. During the research with Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute, it became clear that the phenomenon we think of as burn out is due to "empathy fatigue", rather than "compassionate fatigue". Matthieu says "In fact, compassion far from leading to distress and discouragement strengthens our fortitude, our inner balance and our courageous determination to help those who suffer. In essence, from our point of view, love and compassion do not wear out. Rather they help to overcome empathic distress.


Click to Link  http://huff.to/19VQupN

In this 27 minute video, Kristin Neff outlines the three components of Self-Compassion (Neff, 2003):

• Notice that you are suffering, with kindness rather than harsh self-judgement
  
• Recognising that suffering is part of common humanity, we are not alone in this experience
• Using Mindfulness to see things clearly, as they are, no more and no less.

Feeling is believing
Before going into the extensive scientific research basis for Self-Compassion, she gets us to try powerful gestures which demonstrate the experience of self compassion and the felt sense in the body. Do try these for yourself as you watch, it's so compelling.

What are some reasons for developing a Self-compassion practice? 
Self-compassion is negatively linked to depression, rumination, anxiety, stress, perfectionism, shame and negative body image. Conversely it's linked to well-being states including happiness, connection, confidence, optimism and life satisfaction.

You can take Kristin's Self-Compassion Test on her website:
http://www.self-compassion.org/test-your-self-compassion-level.html

Laughing, performing an act of kindness, and keeping a gratitude journal all boost happiness and take minimal time.

This article has links to interesting studies that support the claims for happiness boosting activities - enjoy!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/07/boost-happiness_n_4532848.html

Just fifteen minutes of mindfulness meditation can improve your decision making

Christian Jarrett's article for the BPS Research Digest blog discusses research from Andrew Hafenbrack and colleagues  who "claim that just fifteen minutes practice at mindfulness meditation reduces people's vulnerability to the sunk-cost bias - our usual tendency to persist with lost causes because of what we've already invested." 

Read Christian's blog report here http://bit.ly/1f2NsOd

Original article:  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/12/26/1321664111.full.pdf
Data:  http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/12/26/1321664111.DCSupplemental/pnas.201321664SI.pdf

Ok, so we know that emotions are produced in the body, as a result of our thinking brain stimulating hormone production. So it's not surprising that the body has a measurable response. 

What I like about this study is this image of the self-reported sensations that participants experienced in response to the stimuli. Also, they looked at so called 'non-basic' emotions, such as anxiety, love, pride and shame. Love looks like the warmest place to be! And just look at the burning cheek areas of shame and it's deactivated legs, also shared strongly in sadness, depression and anxiety. Such familiar feelings for all of us at some level.

There were 5 experimental conditions and 701 participants were asked to colour two silhouettes of human bodies depending on increases and decreases in their internal bodily activation response to emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. 

The researchers state that "Different emotions were consistently associated with statistically separable bodily sensation maps across experiments." The body mapping results showed concordance across participants from Western Europe and East Asia, suggesting cultural universality of these very human emotional experiences - no surprise there!

All the emotions triggered sensations in the head, which suggests physiological changes such as activation of facial musculature, skin temperature and tear secretion, as well as the changes experienced in the mind. There also appears to be an upward energy to approach-oriented emotions (ie. anger, happiness), and a decrease in activation in the lower limbs is seen in the avoidance-oriented ones (ie. depression, shame). 

It's interesting to speculate how we may perceive emotions in those with whom we are interacting, through facial expression, limb activation, temperature for instance, and how we tend to respond. In their discussion, the researchers wondered whether emotional perception and emotional contagion (when we inadvertently pick up another's feeling state as if it were our own) may involve automatic activation of the body's sensory response to emotion, which is then evaluated cognitively. They considered the idea that sensations may underlie our conscious emotional experience, looking for an answer to the chicken and egg question about whether the sensations cause the emotion or vice versa, and was unable to draw any firm conclusions. 

However, it's clear that somatic sensation and embodied experience are both critical in emotional processing, and this points to the effectiveness of body-centred interventions for regulating affect.

Two big hitters in the world of behavioural neuroscience on why we should be more playful at work, and why this is especially true for leaders!
http://bit.ly/1j8KPgC

Tickets are still available for the Action for Happiness Event -  An Evening with Daniel Goleman 
Thursday, 24 October 2013 from 18:30 to 20:30 at the Camden Centre, Euston Road, London WC1H 9JE