Physicality and Compassion

For centuries, people of the Western world have been trained to view the mind, body, and spirit separately. Because of this, on an energetic level, these spheres have learned to function separately. Mind, body, and spirit may be seen as aspects of a being, but there is no separation. As this connection is acknowledged, it can soon be noted that strengthening one may increase the capacity of the others within oneself. The premise of this paper is to explore this interconnection between physicality and the potential expression of compassion. That is, by increasing and/or developing one’s physical activities, one can more easily express compassion.

In her talk for a TED convention, journalist Krista Tippett explained how compassion is often mistranslated into terms such as “pity” or “tolerance” or misunderstood as “heroic people you can never be like.” She further explained that “cultural imagination about compassion has been deadened by [such] idealistic images.” Compassion is kind. The breeding ground for compassion is “curiosity without assumptions.” She explained, “Compassion can be synonymous with empathy. It can be joined with the harder work of forgiveness and reconciliation. But it can also express itself in the simple act of presence. It is generosity, hospitality, just being there—just showing up. It is willingness to see beauty in the other, not just what it is about them that might need helping” (Compassion, Beauty and Physicality, 2014). Compassion is rooted within the mysteries of space and time, the flow of flesh and blood, and the complexities of color and life. By developing our understanding of compassion, we can come to realize it isn’t about giving away more than we have in our reserves, but rather it is changing the way we interact with the situations we are already given.

Compassion also does seek physicality. Physical exercise has many well-known medical benefits. As the Mayo Clinic website describes, these benefits include such aspects as improving mood, controlling weight, boosting energy, and combating health conditions and disease. However, physicality goes so much deeper than these medical benefits gained. To illustrate with an example, I recently received bad news from a friend over the phone one night. I didn’t sleep well because my mind was trying to find a solution to be able to salvage the situation. The next day, I let myself become completely absorbed in a cardio dance class which distracted me from the problem entirely. When I was stretching on my own afterward, many pieces of the puzzle suddenly came together and it became clear what I should do. This is a small example, yet it helps exemplify this idea that physicality impacts us in many ways that we can’t predict until we actually experience it. These benefits can include, but are not limited to, clarity of thought, unconditional self-acceptance, and an increased compassion toward others. It all derives from an increased mind-body-spirit connection.

Matthew Sanford beautifully elucidates this idea on his website using an example of how one feels a different connection with his body by merely changing the way he sits. He says, “what I mean by mind-body connection is simple. Sit back in your chair, slouch and let your legs splay out. Notice what you feel in your legs — the dullness, the lack of crispness. Now sit up straight, press gently down through your buttock-bones and heels, and lift your chest. Notice the change in sensation — in how, what and where you feel within your body. This is what I mean by mind-body connection. When we deepen the quality of where and how our minds interact and intersect with our bodies, our consciousness shifts. We get more connected to our lives, to each other and to the planet” (Sanford).

Synthesizing the ideas of compassion and physicality takes time and practice. It can be helpful to begin with oneself. Physicality can enable one to experience a deeper level of self-love and mindfulness as it helps one accept the past, experience the present, and shape the future. The aforementioned Matthew Sanford has come to intimately understand that compassion begins with healing oneself through physicality. Sanford’s past was explained in the PEOPLE Magazine article entitle “OM-AZING!” He was “paralyzed from the chest down at 13, when his spinal cord was severed in a car crash that killed his father and older sister.” This experience could have crushed Sanford, but instead of letting that happen, he turned his life situation into an opportunity to connect with himself and then look outward. After “dragging [his] body around” for twelve years and graduating with a master’s degree in philosophy, a friend suggested that Sanford meet with a yoga teacher she knew. “He did and noticed that despite his limited movement, he felt newly aware of his body.” He explains that “my life’s been hard—that doesn’t change… but as I do yoga poses I didn’t know were possible, my view expands.”

            Sanford’s experience isn’t a unique case, either. As yoga student Susan Orem shares in the yoga book Moving Toward Balance, “during my divorce, the mat became the only place I could cry. As soon as I stepped on the mat in Mountain pose, I wept. It didn’t stop me from practicing, and I didn’t look forward to practice as that specific release. I would be feeling fine. Then boom. As soon as I focused on my body and breath, the gates were opened for grief. My yoga practice offered me help every day. I didn’t have to ask” (Yee and Zolotow, 17).

            I have had a similar experience in a yoga class after the breakup with my first boyfriend. I told myself that I had to be strong, so I wouldn’t let myself cry in front of anyone. Yet as I exhausted myself physically through the yoga poses, I came to feel that I didn’t have to hold myself up by my emotional will power any longer. In the yoga class I gave myself permission to be weak if I needed to. I let myself ride whatever wave of emotion came to me naturally until the final relaxation pose of the class. It was a release and in this process, I began to heal.

      In the course of healing oneself, it soon becomes natural to turn outward in compassion toward others. Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run tells the story of when running coach, Joe Vigil, began to make this connection. “Vigil had become convinced that the next leap forward in human endurance would come from a dimension he dreaded getting into: character. Not the “character” other coaches were always rah-rah-rah-ing about; Vigil wasn’t talking about “grit” or “hunger” or “the size of the fight in the dog.” In fact, he meant the exact opposite. Vigil’s notion of character wasn’t toughness. It was compassion. Kindness. Love. … Perhaps all our troubles—all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can’t overcome—began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way” (McDougall, 91).

      Deena Kastor (then Drossin) was taken under the wings of Coach Vigil. It was explained that “posted on the wall of Vigil’s office was the magic formula for fast running that, as far as Deena could tell, had absolutely nothing to do with running: it was stuff like “Practice abundance by giving back,” and “Improve personal relationships,” and “Show integrity to your value system.”…Deena got it, and couldn’t wait to start. Coach Vigil believed you had to become a strong person before you could become a strong runner.... within a year, the aspiring baker was on her way to becoming one of the greatest distance runners in American history.”

It continues, “She crushed the field to win the national cross-country championships, and went on to break the U.S. record in distances from three miles to the marathon. At the 2004 Athens Games, Deena out lasted the world-record holder, Paula Radcliffe, to win the bronze, the first Olympic medal for an American marathoner in twenty years. Ask Joe Vigil about Deena’s accomplishments, though, and near the top of the list will always be the Humanitarian Athlete of the Year award she won in 2002” (McDougall, 119).

            In the same book, another story is told of a Czech soldier, “a gawky dweeb who ran with such horrendous form that he looked “as if he’d just been stabbed through the heart, “ as one sportswriter put it. But Emil Zatopek loved running so much that even when he was still a grunt in army boot camp, he used to grab a flashlight and go off on twenty-mile runs through the woods at night… In his combat boots… In winter.” In the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Zatopek won two gold medals and decided to do an additional competition of the marathon even though he had never run one before. A hilarious story was told of how Zatopek ran up to the person running first place in this marathon, Jim Peters, who was then the world-record holder and running ten minutes under his own world-record pace. Zatopek asked him, “Excuse me, this is my first marathon. Are we going too fast?” Peters sarcastically replied, “No, too slow,” thinking that “if he was dumb enough to ask, he was dumb enough to deserve any answer he got.” Zatopek took Peters at his word and took off.

The most amazing part of this race is that “when he burst out of the tunnel and into the stadium, he was met with a roar: not only from the fans, but from athletes of every nation who thronged the track to cheer him in. Zatopek snapped the tape with his third Olympic record, but when his teammates charged over to congratulate him, they were too late: the Jamaican sprinters had already hoisted him on their shoulders and were parading him around the infield. “Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry,” Mark Twain used to say. Zatopek found a way to run so that when he won, even the other teams were delighted” (McDougall, 95).

            Similarly, I was a part of a dance performance entitled Phalanx, choreographed by a graduating senior, Aaron Hooper, for his senior honors project in the dance department in 2012. In one particular section, my choreography was a simple repeated sequence and with each subsequent repetition an additional movement was added. In order to make this movement interesting for viewers, he asked me to look inside myself and find a story that this sequence represented. Soon, to me this pattern came to represent the story of a friend who, at the time, was considering suicide. In dancing his story, each repetition represented a day in his life and after not too long, the movements took on the heavy quality of the deep conversations we had been having. I came to feel the weight that he carried within him. This physical experience helped me be able to express more compassion toward him.

      In the modern world, there is a phenomenon which can be called “compassion fatigue.” The presence of this negatively impacts all areas of our society from students’ learning in schools to patients’ treatment in hospitals to seniors in assisted living homes to customers in a grocery store. In Aycock and Boyle (2009), some interventions for “compassion fatigue” are discussed including pastoral care, retreats, emotional expression, and peer support. Each of these could potentially help, but they tend to be aimed at controlling the symptoms. The emotional energy required at work can be compared to a battery. These treatments are much like recharging a battery as it drains. However, a better solution could be to not only recharge the battery, but to also replace the battery with one which has a larger reserve. Increasing the quantity and quality of physical activities is like increasing the size of the battery while simultaneously recharging it. Of course that isn’t to suggest that there will be less stress on the job. However, physicality does give one a tool to get away from the situation, release the stress that builds up, and to begin gaining a greater compassion for self and others. For the human race which is only growing greater in number and diversity, there is an enormous need for an increase in compassion. Perhaps this compassion really is as simple to develop as making a habit of taking walks, enrolling in a dance class, trying out yoga, or any of hundreds of other physical possibilities.

Literature Cited

Aycock, Nancy, and Deborah Boyle. "Interventions to Manage Compassion Fatigue in Oncology Nursing." Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing 13.2 (2009): 183-91. UNM Electronic Reserves. Web. 7 May 2014.

Compassion, Beauty and Physicality. Perf. Krista Tippett. TED. Meus Blog, 16 Feb. 2014. Web. 7 May 2014.

Mayo Clinic Staff. "Exercise: 7 Benefits of Regular Physical Activity." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, n.d. Web. 7 May 2014.

McDougall, Christopher. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Print.

"OM-AZING!" PEOPLE 26 Feb. 2007: 131. Matthewsanford.com. Web. 7 May 2014.

Sanford, Matthew. "Matthew's Vision." Matthews Vision. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://www.matthewsanford.com/content/matthews-vision>.

Yee, Rodney, and Nina Zolotow. Moving toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2004. Print.