“Self-compassion means being kind towards yourself when encountering pain, perceived personal inadequacies or failures”, said Harmony Curtiss, Director for Healing Hands School of Holistic Health – Laguna Hills. “To be self-compassionate is to hold an unconditional positive regard for yourself, and something our Faculty nurtures in all our students. We believe that the Profession of Massage Therapy is enhanced by Practitioners who are capable of self-compassion. We’ve seen how it overflows to their clients and helps to aid the healing process”, she added. 
Rather than berate yourself with criticism, self-compassion requires recognizing that mistakes, failures, and imperfections don’t define us. All are just parts of the human condition and experience. Being kind to oneself requires a receptive, non-judgmental look at your thoughts, feelings and emotions
Health Benefits of Self-compassion:
When one practices self-compassion, they enjoy greater physical and psychological health. Self-compassion is correlated with an increased sense of happiness, social connection, optimism and life satisfaction. It also increases our willingness to admit personal responsibility and accountability. It is a sign of emotional intelligence and can strengthen our emotional resilience.
Self-compassion also offers all the mental health benefits as self-esteem without the negative drawbacks. These include inaccurate self-perceptions, or social comparison, narcissism and ego-defensive anger. Other benefits include less negative self-talk and reduced anxiety, depression, perfectionism and self-criticism.
Components of Self-compassion:
While there may be many components to self-compassion, one of the most important is self-forgiveness. Self-forgiveness involves letting go of negative feelings about yourself. That doesn’t mean excusing bad behavior, but rather practicing self-compassion while taking full responsibility. Research shows that self-forgiveness increases self-esteem and boosts well-being.
Another very important component of self-compassion is self-acceptance. Self-acceptance means you can accept yourself exactly as you are. Self-acceptance means knowing that you are worthy and lovable despite imperfections, mistakes, weaknesses or the opinions of others.
How Can I Become More Self-Compassionate?
Anyone can become more self-compassionate, all it takes is understanding and practice. Understanding that anxiety, anger and depression are a result of how our brains evolved and not our fault. By practicing compassionate self-talk and compassionate thoughts and behaviors, we over-ride mal-adaptive patterns. For example, changing the thought patterns “I’m such a failure” to a more positive one, such as: “many areas of my life are working well”, can help us move forward toward becoming our best selves!
Would you like to learn more about Holistic Health? Healing Hands School of Holistic Health, offers more than 80 Massage and Holistic Health courses from 3 different locations in SoCal. Learn more at www.HealingHandsSchool.com or call us at (949) 305-2722 in Laguna Hills, (760) 746-9364 in Escondido, or (858) 505-1100 in San Diego. ###