Kind Mind Compass

Kind Mind began with one practice, the Kind Mind Compass. This evidence-based compassion practice was taught to me at the Applied Compassion Training.  It was the first time I was able to truly touch the trauma I have experienced with strength. I had a guide to help me process what I was feeling. I finally had a tool to help me sit with it, as opposed to my old patterns of distracting myself and ultimately suppressing the pain. I took this powerful practice and created a visual guide for healthy emotional regulation in the classroom, and the full Kind Mind program blossomed from this idea.

Kind Mind Compass 

The Kind Mind Compass taught me how to sit with my most difficult emotional experiences and realize my inner strength. I also realized that the pain was not as scary as my mind made it seem. And therefore my body started to feel relief. I wanted to share this beautiful practice with children everywhere, and in doing so teach them that they are strong enough to face scary things, and when they do they bounce back to feeling like themselves again…they build resilience…they hold onto their inner light. 

So often as children grow, their inner light dims. They internalize messages that some of their emotions are good and others leave them feeling abandoned or wrong. This consistent message leads to emotional suppression and people-pleasing. As we grow into adults and continue to suppress our emotions to please others, we become more detached from ourselves. As we detach from ourselves, it becomes harder to empathize with others. And we lose our authenticity, we lose ourselves. We lack self-awareness, emotional awareness, and the ability to regulate in healthy ways. This can lead to toxic stress and physical and mental health problems. 

We know how critical all of these skills are to not only our individual health, well-being, and success in life, but also to the overall economy in terms of education, substance use, incarceration, housing stability, and employment rates. Because we know the short and long-term impacts on our society as a whole, we are now prioritizing this as a critical part of what children and teachers need to access in school. 

You can see why compassion is the framework of Kind Mind and for us the foundation for all social and emotional learning. Compassion teaches us self-awareness, emotional awareness, how to relate to and accept others, how to navigate challenges, and how to lead with love. 

This week, practice noticing when you have an emotional disturbance big or small. The first step of the Kind Mind Compass practice is noticing the moment you lose yourself in response to a difficult emotion. Go one step further and instead of ignoring, distracting, or suppressing, just sit with it and find your heartbeat for a few minutes.