Roadblocks to Compassion

Please join us in this Pod Room to explore and celebrate the paradigm shift underway in the sciences, a shift that is catching up with what the faith traditions of the world have told us for millennia: Compassion is natural, and it is good for us.

From fields as wide-ranging as cognitive neuroscience, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology, compassion is proving to be essential for human wellbeing – whether for physical health, mental health, relationships, or the whole of society. As with our ability to read or write, the flowering of compassion is possible but not guaranteed. Context and conditions matter. Research suggests that without intentional support and practice we will not reach our full compassionate potential.

In this call, we will get together to explore common impediments to compassion, in particular:

• When mixed with emotional contagion, compassion may lead to exhaustion and burnout.
• Compassion can become narrowly focused on some while excluding others.
• If not balanced by systems intelligence, compassion can accidentally cause harm.

Tim Harrison will offer a guided reflective practices (meditations) to explore research-based contemplative approaches to removing these impediments, as a long-time Director for  Emory's Compassion Center. For nearly 20 years, their  compassion training program has been sharing a set of meditation practices with a wide-range of communities -- from students to doctors to chaplains to the incarcerated – and collaborating with scientists who are showing that the transformational results that can be tracked through brain scans and other evidence.

To join us, please RSVP below and you'll receive an email confirmation as soon as we have a quorum of interest!