Mindfulness and Compassion: Self-Care Tools for Clinicians Three Deeper Breaths: Center and arrive here more fully by taking three deeper breaths. Take a full, deep breath in, deeper than your usual breath. Then slowly breathe out. Take a second deep breath in and let the breath out slowly so that you can feel your body sensations of letting go. Take a third deep in breath as if the breath could go all the way to the hips, and then a slowly breathe out, feeling the body release and soften. Then let the breath resume its natural rhythm. Notice: are you a bit more present, more awake now? Mindful Movement: Standing, seated or lying down, bring your attention to feel your body sensations from the inside as you begin to invite gentle movements. Experience the body sensations with “beginner’s mind”, as if you are feeling them for the first time, with curiosity. Inhale and slowly raise arms over head, exhale and slowly lower your arms, awareness within. Repeat, 4-6 times. Raise arms overhead and tilt torso to the right, straighten spine and come back to center, then tilt left and come back to center. Roll shoulders up, back and down, then up, forward and back, 4-6 times 4-6 times. Bend knees and circle hips in a “hula-like” motion, clockwise and counter clockwise, feeling sensations within the engaged thighs, calves, abdomen and back. Circle ankles and feet, one at a time, then wrists of both hands, feeling the aliveness within. Breath Awareness and Listening Meditation: Sit comfortably, aware of your posture. Take a few moments to simply be as you are. Notice whatever is happening in your experience right now; thoughts, physical sensations, emotions. Allowing your experience to just be as it is in this moment. Now, take your attention to your breath. Just feel the natural rhythm of your breath from the inside. Notice how it feels as the breath enters the body and leaves the body. Feel the full cycle of the inhale and the exhale. Feel all the details of breathing. Notice how the body expands as you inhale and softens and contracts as you exhale. Notice the feeling at the tip of the nostrils as you inhale and exhale. Notice how the body receives the breath. Then, allowing the perception of the movement of the breath to move to the background of your awareness and notice sounds. Can your sense of hearing receive the sounds that are here right now. Notice the details of the sounds, how sounds arise, change moment to moment, and fall away. When your mind gets distracted from this focus and takes off on a train of thought, that is ok, naturally what minds do. See if it is possible to gently open to feeling the breath and hearing sounds that are here right now, open to present moment experience. This is the “mindful moment”, the opportunity to choose to be present, the practice of meditation.

Affectionate Breathing, Kristin Neff: Find a comfortable sitting position. Take a few slow, easy breaths to release tension. Place a hand over your heart or wherever it is most soothing, as a reminder to bring affectionate awareness to your breath. Now, find the feeling of your breath, wherever it is most noticeable to you. Let yourself lean in to feeling your breath as you might incline toward a beloved child or friend or pet, with curiosity, tenderness, and kindness. Notice how your breath nourishes you all by itself. Feel your whole body breathe, rocked, caressed by the breath. Then releasing awareness of the breath and open to awareness of your whole experience, letting it be as it is for now. Self-Compassion Break, Kristin Neff: Inviting attention to move within, close eyes or lower gaze, three deeper breaths, and feel sensation of sitting. Recall a recent experience that was upsetting or hurtful to you. Feel what it felt like at the time, emotions, body sensations, thoughts. Place your hand on the body where you felt sensation to comfort there with touch and offer this phrase to yourself: “This was just a moment of suffering. All people suffer. This was a moment of suffering.” Offer soothing and compassion to yourself. Letting go of attending to that experience and coming back to breath and body sensations now. Inquiry: What did you notice? How is this different than regular experience? How might you take what you’ve learned in this experience into your daily life? Mindful Self-Compassion for the Caregiver, Kristin Neff: 1.Place your hand on your heart, Recall a recent experience of caregiving, a troubling helped person, an experience that was challenging for you but not overwhelming. Feel it in the body. Tune in to remembered body sensations that accompanied the experience. Was there tension? Constriction? Where? 4.Offer compassion to yourself. Feel the spaciousness. 5.Begin to breathe, taking a breath alternately for yourself and for the one you give care to, mentally noting: “One breath for me, one for you”. Or, if you feel that you need more nurturing that day, “Two breaths for me, one for you”, as you need. 6.Repeat silently to yourself: “Everyone is on his/her own life journey, including me.” llowing the experience of the breath to be like a massage. Allow your mind to let go of that specific, remembered experience of caregiving and breathe, feel yourself sitting here and now. Inquiry: What do you notice? How is this different from ordinary processing of work experience? How might you take this into your life at work or wherever you might find yourself in a caregiving role?