Yin & Yang Of Self-Compassion

When to “push” ourself?

This topic has been coming up a lot lately.  When do we “push” ourselves?  This will sound controversial coming from me, but it’s not always healthy to give into how we feel or always take rest.  There are times when we need to “push” ourselves.

You might be saying “I knew it!  We have to push ourselves to accomplish goals.”  

Or could it mean encouraging instead of “pushing”.  This changes the energy behind the action from ‘cracking the whip’ to self-compassion. 

The question my friend asked was “If I’m tired, or feeling unmotivated to cook myself dinner, is not making myself dinner being gentle on myself then?”

Or 

“I know I need to have more fun in my life and play more but I’m so tired.  I don’t think giving into my tiredness is always good for me.”

Gentleness doesn’t mean we don’t do hard things. It doesn’t mean we give into every desire, thought or feeling. It means we can do something that feels hard or challenging from a space of care and kindness (instead of mentally kicking our ass). 

Enter the Yang of Self Compassion.

In Yoga there is a quality we nurture within us, called Tapas, which I’ll save for another blog, but it is very similar to this idea of the Yin and Yang of Self-Compassion.

When people think of self-compassion, they might associate it with being gentle on themselves, comforting and soothing themselves.  And that is part of it - Yin.  However there’s more, there’s an action-oriented energy to it, and that’s the Yang of Self-Compassion.

The yin of self-compassion has the attributes of comforting, soothing and validating ourselves.

The yang of self compassion focuses on actions, protecting, providing and motivating ourselves.

The commonality is practicing  a friendly and caring attitude towards ourselves. 

“Sometimes self-compassion takes the form of solace and a soft leaning in to difficult emotions (comforting- yin), sometimes it involves a stern “no!” and turning away from danger (protecting-yang).” Kristin Neff.

Sometimes it involves a warm touch to let our bodies know it’s ok in times of fear or sadness (soothing-yin), sometimes it means turning towards our needs and acting on them (providing-yang). 

Self-compassion is accepting and honouring all our feelings, even the hard ones, (validating-yin) and sometimes it means we need to get up and do something about it (motivating - yang).

“What do I need, right now?” is a great question to ask yourself to practice self-compassion, even if you don’t know the answer or you can’t meet that need in the moment, knowing that you are attending to yourself is a Mindful Self-Compassion practice in itself.

Concept from the work of Kristin Neff