Compassion or Action?

When you or a student or client is struggling with a long-standing, seemingly unchanging, deeply embedded pattern, one that causes harm, neglect, or criticism (with themselves or others), how do you know which course is best: Compassion or Action? 

Through the lens of yoga, a stuck pattern is called Tamas (or tamasic). It means that which is stable, inert, inactive, dull. The word for Action is Rajas. That which is mobile or motivated. More likely to catalyze change.

Ideally, yoga recommends making wise use of Tamas and Rajas to create the opportunities for Sattva: that which is lucid, clear, graceful, and loving. Each of us needs just enough Tamas (stability and structure) and just enough Rajas (motivation and courage) to move toward Sattva. ​

As a mental health therapist, healer, educator, or yoga steward, it's our responsibility (and our honor) to provide the conditions of enough safety, stability, and structure for our client or student to come into a relationship with themselves and with us in which we are able to collaborate on their healing. To be this stable enough lighthouse (as we like to call it), it is profoundly important that our compassionate (sattvic) nature is alive in us.

However, it is important to remember that compassion doesn't mean that we fall into apathy or resignation.
That would deepen tamas. 

We are also in a role where we have the honor of helping a client to choose actions (rajas) in healthy directions for them. (Action without wisdom won't be helpful.  And, swinging back and forth between inertia and compulsive action that lacks wisdom may cause a deepening of the inertia when efforts aren't producing the desired outcome.)

With this in mind, we recommend the following considerations which we  teach to clinicians in our trainings :

• As the lighthouse, maintain your steadiness and non-judgment. Stay aware of your own compassionate nature and acknowledge where you get distracted, impatient, or urgent for the client. This information might hint at how parts of them are also feeling. Or it may also hint at how other people have been responding to them regarding their pattern. Being a stable, present, non-judging presence revives networks in their brain (and gut) for empathy and relationship. It also diminishes the sense of isolation they may live with, internally or in other relationships in their life. (Tamas is a quality of inertia, pessimism, hopelessness or helplessness, and tends to cause withdrawal and social isolation or the retraction of one's authentic self in social settings.)
  
  
• Encourage the client to come into contact with the body-based sensations of tamas (of the stuckness their pattern causes). What do these sensations feel like? Where are they located in the body? Are they a particular size, shape, or color?
  
  
• As you ask them to stay with these sensations in the physical body (even if it seems mysterious or dark in there). Remember that you are inviting a small amount of action (rajas) - to bring attention to a sensation, an experience. Also remember that you are asking them to do this in real time, while they have you in relationship with them and the value of your "lighthouseness". They will not need to inquire any more deeply nor any moment longer than they feel safe. And, they will have your presence (sattva) to help bring them to shore when needed.

 

• As they stay with this, even for a few moments, ask them to notice any way in which the sensations shift when they bring attention to them. How are the sensations themselves responding?
  
  
• This is a hint at the process of change. Attention (rajas) is an active (even when gentle) inquiry. Attention is also the beginning of relationship. As this opens an opportunity in them, in their body and most of all, in the relationship between them and their body, now is an ideal moment to recommend they extend compassionate attention toward that in them which has been held in, burdened, or confused by the tamasic pattern.
• Compassionate (sattva) attention here can take the form of an inner dialogue from them toward their body:
                 "I see you."
                 "It must have been hard to hold that on your own." 
                 *I'm here now." 
  
  
• Regarding the need to apply some action to their life, even a small action that represents their commitment to change, if we request this from their body, not from their habitual mind, we will also be mentoring them in the development of a relationship with their body. We can start by asking them to ask their body:

                          "What's needed now?" (this means in this very moment) 
                          "How can I help?" (them asking this of their body)

• ​As they inquire and you sense the completion of a portion of this inner dialogue, notice your own compassionate nature again. How has it grown, been moved, stayed present, become distracted, fallen into attachment on behalf of the client (wanting this to go a certain way)? Remind yourself that you are their lighthouse - and that you can seek out your personal lighthouse later, too. (such as a friend, supervisor, or colleague)

 

• ​Now you can invite them to come back into relationship with you. You might ask them how was their experience? (Even if they were reporting along the way, when you ask them now, you are also transitioning them into the present moment relational field with you.) As they share their experience,  offer your respect, appreciation, admiration, for real things (not for what you make up in your head about their experience). It is helpful to reflect back to them as closely as you're able (without being a robot).
  
  
• And then we recommend the relational questions: 
                "How is it for you to share this with me?"
                "How has it been to have my presence here with you?"
                "Is there anything you would like me to know about having me here to witness or support you?"
  
  
• These last questions further build the network of your relationship with each other. You may now become the trusted "other" who can ask them about applying wise action in their life. You can ask them (without them feeling pressured or having a sense that they might fail): "As you leave this session, based on what you experienced here today:
               "What wisdom might you apply to the pattern that has been troubling you?
                "How will you apply this wisdom to your pattern?"
                "And, very important, how will you do this in relationship with your body?"
  
  To learn more about our Yoga Psychology Training program, click here.