Receiving Care at Hunt Vitality as an Act of Self-Compassion

Compassion is a major focus in my life. It began when I was nineteen years old when the Tibetan monks began staying at my family home each year during their U.S. tours. I would stay up late debating with them about Buddhism — reincarnation, karma, compassion — and asking pointed questions like, “If a high lama can choose their rebirth, why are they only choosing male bodies?”

At twenty-one, I attended my first ten-day Vipassana meditation course, which combines mindfulness with compassion. I went on to complete five of these ten-day courses over five years. Those experiences profoundly shaped how I see and feel in the world, how I relate to others, and how I practice my profession.

This January, Teri (my glorious office manager) and I enrolled in an eight-week compassion training program through Stanford School of Medicine’s CCARE — the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. I wanted to understand compassion through the lens of modern Western research and discourse. What are they teaching? How are they defining it?

The definition they offer is beautifully simple: compassion is recognizing suffering in another and responding to it. That’s it.

In their framework, suffering is defined as anything that is not going your way. When I heard that, I immediately thought of the first Noble Truth in Tibetan Buddhism: there is suffering. It is inherent in being human. Things will not go our way. We will experience discomfort, disappointment, frustration, and grief. That is part of the human condition.

What transforms the experience is our awareness — and how we respond.

What struck me most deeply is that compassion is an action, a doing, it behaves like a verb. It is not passive. It is not just empathy. Compassion is an action — the decision to meet suffering with kindness and care.

Two of our classes have focused on self-compassion, and this is where we can make some of the biggest and most immediate changes. Phuntsho, my Tibetan monk friend of twenty-five years, once told me that the most important place to start with compassion is with yourself. If you do not understand it and experience it firsthand, you cannot truly extend it to others.

Being kind to ourselves — in our thoughts and toward our bodies — does not seem like rocket science, but it can be surprisingly difficult. I have been noticing more clearly where negativity creeps in in my own thoughts, language, and reactions.

Now I catch myself. I hear it in others too, especially in my patients, when they say things like, “My body is failing me,” “I am terrible at taking care of myself,” “I probably did something wrong,” or “I am just lazy, that’s why I don’t work out.”

With this newly crystallized awareness of compassion, I am actively shifting my thoughts, my language, and my actions — and pointing it out for my patients as well. It has been awesome.

Another wonderful realization is how my profession is rooted in compassion. I do what I do because I care. I want to help alleviate suffering. And every single day, I get to be on the side of healing and vitality.

I also love that my “job” gives others an opportunity to practice self-compassion. When you come in to receive care — whether chiropractic, craniosacral therapy, massage, or Functional Medicine — you are practicing an act of self-compassion. It is bigger than "self-care" or "fixing the pain".

When you tend to your physical body and prioritize your vitality, you are recognizing suffering and responding to it with kindness. That is compassion.

When we are kind and compassionate toward ourselves, we strengthen the very force of goodness we want to nourish in our world. 

So, we will see you soon — when you decide to practice an act of self-compassion and book your appointment at Hunt Vitality.

With love,
Heather