Center for Healthy Minds | 625 W. Washington Ave., Madison, WI 53703-2637
Compassion is the feeling of caring for and wanting to help others who are suffering. Compassion meditation is like training the compassion muscle, starting with the lightest weight of a loved one and working up to a heavier weight of a difficult person.
This pro-social behavior has implications for well-being that the Center is actively investigating. In one study, Lead Researcher Helen Weng and colleagues found that practicing compassion meditation for 30 minutes a day for two weeks increased altruistic behavior and changed the brain’s responses to human suffering. Read more about other research on compassion, including a study suggesting that compassion can boost resilience in the face of others' suffering as well as increase prosocial behavior and lessen the tendency to punish others.
The training used in the study is available to use.
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