I push myself—hard. I can be relentless and tenacious.

It can come in the form of trying to get over that 90% hump in metrics at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy warehouse. (I picked 495 items on in my 5.5 hour shift tonight.)

It can come in my past fitness challenges (but apparently not in my current battle with stress eating).

It can come with my personal projects and grades and overachiever attitude when it comes to research.

I can go on and on.

When I saw that my friend Fausta and her co-facilitator Vira were hosting a free online seminar on Mindful Self-Compassion, I was very excited to sign up. The seminar was 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. which meant getting up early and potentially rushing out the door at 3 to get to work for my 3:30 shift but I had to do it.

I wasn’t even sure exactly what Mindful Self-Compassion was but based on Fausta’s enthusiasm for it, an educated guess that it involved some meditation, and with Fausta’s background in therapy and being a holistic life coach, I had to do it.

My therapist has been telling me for years to be gentle to myself and this Mindful Self-Compassion stuff sounded perfect for that.

I even requested a late start at work. Now me being me, that made me anxious. Should I start at 4? I might have to eat something. 5? (I never considered 4:30.) What’s the point of starting at 5 p.m. if break is at 5:30? I opted for 6. And it was approved!

And then this week happened—let’s just say teens and animals and an incident with the dog and the hammock and the new fosters and my body hurting and the hormones of a 40-something woman… I didn’t make it to work the night before the seminar. And do you know what? My supervisor told me to “take care of myself.” I felt like I was being treated like a person.

That time— that sick day on Wednesday night— gave me the space to rest, clear my head, and focus on the seminar.

And it was so worth it.

I’m responding to it now from memory and will gladly talk more about specific exercises and lessons if anyone desires. I bet we can ask Fausta for her input too. And my apologies to Fausta if I misrepresent any of the concepts as it is 1:30 a.m. and I am not looking at my notes.

I learned:

• That Mindful Self-Compassion is a way to process emotions that combines meditation exercises and rational analysis to allow yourself to feel the feelings but also try to heal the feelings.
• A big part of the practice is to accept/embrace your own imperfections.
• We explored a Japanese concept of life’s purpose.
• We examined physiological responses to different emotions.
• We designed a personalized loving-kindness metta meditation.
• We developed our individualized core values.
• We grounded ourselves via a soles of the feet meditation. I’m using the word grounding since I’m a witch and that is totally what it felt like to me.
• Meditation reminds me of the prayer practice of centering— and I had forgotten how good I was at that.

I’ll review my notes and write more soon. In the meantime…

My previous post on the seminar is here: https://angelackerman.com/2021/04/02/ironing-out-the-anxieties/