Understanding Self As Context
Understanding Self As Context
Self as Context
ACBS Montreal 2016
Psychological Flexibility
• Self as Context is
Psychological
• And
• Physiological
“You are the sky
everything else,
• The evolution of mammalian caregiving involving hormones, such as oxytocin, vasopressin, and the
myelinated vagal nerve as part of the ventral parasympathetic system, enables humans to connect,
co-regulate each other’s emotions and create prosociality. Compassion-based interventions draw upon
a number of specific exercises and strategies to stimulate these physiological processes and create
conditions of “interpersonal safeness,” thereby helping people engage with, alleviate, and prevent
suffering. Hence, compassion-based approaches are connected with our evolved caring motivation and
attachment and our general affiliative systems that help regulate distress. Physiologically, they are
connected to activity of the vagus nerve and corresponding adaptive heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is
an important physiological marker for overall health, and the body–mind connection. Therefore, there is
significant value of training compassion to increase HRV and training HRV to facilitate compassion.
Despite the significance of compassion in alleviating and preventing suffering, there remain difficulties in
its precise assessment. HRV offers a useful form of measurement to assess and train compassion. Specific
examples of what exercises can facilitate HRV and how to measure HRV will be described. This paper
argues that the field of compassion science needs to move toward including HRV as a primary outcome
measure in its future assessment and training, due to its connection to vagal regulatory activity, and its
link to overall health and well-being.
• So - unlike being in threat mode - caring and self-compassion requires a choice and
takes PRACTICE