• An exercise inspired by Buddhist teacher, Joan Halifax, that will help you to feel into your strong side and your softer side, to recognize the value of both sides in helping to be able to be truly present in our relationships, and to notice which side you need to cultivate more of to create resilience in your life and your relationships. (1:03)
• What the strong side of compassion brings to our lives and our relationships (it doesn’t tolerate harm, can set boundaries and says no, to name a few.) Why it’s so important and what it makes possible. (2:52)
• What the soft side of compassion brings to our lives and our relationships (it comforts us when we’re suffering, creates connection, validates our feelings and allows us to be seen and to see others, to name a few.) Why it’s so important and what it makes possible. (3:48)
• Easy ways to tell when there’s too much strength and not enough softness in how you are relating to yourself and others. What happens in our lives and our relationships when that imbalance occurs. (4:08)
• Easy ways to tell when there’s too much softness and not enough strength in how you are relating to yourself and others. What happens in our lives and our relationships when that imbalance occurs. (5:18)
• A way to feel into whether you tend more toward strength or vulnerability and which side you need to cultivate more of to create resilience in your life and your relationships. (6:00)
• What Drs. Kristin Neff and Chris Germer of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion teach us about the Yin and Yang sides of compassion. (8:09)
• How the strong back doesn’t tolerate harm, sets limits and boundaries to keep us safe. (9:09)
• How the soft front allows us to be comforted and soothed (11:12)
• The great misconception that compassion is about feeling good (hedonic pleasure), when it’s actually about wellbeing (eudaimonic pleasure). (12:36)
• The best way to discern whether to use your strong back or soft front in any given situation. (13:57)
• The difference between Wise compassion (or true compassion) and Idiot compassion. (14:29)
• The 3 quintessential questions to ask in any given moment so you will know when to offer the strong back or the soft front to yourself or someone you care about. (14:37)

Michelle [00:00:02]

Hi, I’m Michelle Becker. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist, an international compassion teacher. And you’re listening to the Well Connected Relationships podcast. Together, we’ll explore how compassion changes the way you relate to yourself and others. And we’ll give you the tools to change your relationships for good. 

Hi, I’m Michelle Becker and welcome to the Well Connected Relationships Podcast. This podcast is episode three, and today we’re going to explore how compassion has two sides. It has the strong back side and the soft front side. 

So recently I was sitting in meditation led by Roshi Joan Halifax, and as we began to settle in, she instructed us to feel our way into the strong back. You might want to do that now, too, if you can. Perhaps taking a moment and closing your eyes, if that’s appropriate for you, if you’re in the car driving as you’re listening, of course, that’s not such a great idea. But either way, really dropping the attention and the awareness into, the strong back. That we actually have strength in our bodies. There’s a spine and muscles around the spine that keep us upright. That keeps us strong, helps us to get forward, endure. Can you feel that in your body? The strength of the strong back. But even if the back has pain in it or is curved or whatever it might be, likely it’s still holding you upright. So take a moment and feel your way into that. 

And at the same time, we also have a soft front. Can you feel that too, the softness, the vulnerability in the front of your body? As the lungs expand and contract and the belly expands and contracts with the breath. And the heart open and closes. Can you feel that soft front? The way we are open. The way we are vulnerable. The way that, we are impacted, by those around us. We have feelings here. How we take things in. 

Okay. Thank you for feeling into that, and as you felt into that, did you notice both in your body? Did one feel stronger than the other? That strong back makes it possible. Makes it safe for us to have the soft front. The fact that we have strength means we can open to vulnerability. We can show up. We can show people who we are, how we feel, and we can see who they are, and how they feel. We can be impacted by others. That’s important. We can’t be connected without the vulnerability of knowing and showing who we are and receiving who they are. That’s forms the basis for connection. 

So the strong back is really important. It gives us resilience. It allows us to to bear and to endure and to hold ourselves upright, to recover. And the soft front is very important, as I just said, because it allows us to be impacted. It allows us to know how we feel and how other people feel, what they both need each other. There are two faces of compassion, and neither would be okay or complete without the other. If we only had the strong back and we didn’t have the soft front, the strong back would become brittle, unaware of our feelings. Sometimes we use strength to power through and in this effort to sort of get rid of or deny or repress our feelings. And that requires that others don’t have feelings around us either. So there can be a kind of strength like this that’s a bit brittle. You know, it’s as if there were no vertebrae in the back. You know, it’s as if you were a tree. A big, tall, strong tree. But you had no flexibility. You were rigid. And so when the big storm came and the winds of change blew around you, you snapped in half, you broke, rather than bending and flexing like the willow tree does. That has both strength and softness. 

So the strong back requires the soft front to stay supple, to stay resilient. And the soft front needs the strong back too. If we only had the soft front and we didn’t have the strong back, we might become completely overwhelmed by and blown around by our emotions so that when difficulty arises, we may have no way to function. Just maybe just be a puddle on the floor. It’s important. Both of them are important, both strong back and the soft front. Can you feel that in your body, the strong back and the soft front and how each supports the other? 

Take a moment now and feel into the relationship between the strong back and the soft front in your own body. Do you feel your own strength? Do you feel your vulnerability? The warm heartedness, open heartedness. Which one do you need more of? Which one is stronger? What do you need to cultivate in order to have a more balanced way of being in your life? 

So thanks for taking a moment and feeling into that if it was appropriate for you at this moment. I think it’s really important to identify, You know, when I was teaching or leading a workshop, I, I explored this topic a little bit with people and then I had them right in the in the chat because it’s, you know, COVID time. So I was teaching online in the chat. What did they think they needed to cultivate more of? And there was a mix of things. Some people could see that actually they teach to be more vulnerable. They needed more of the soft front. They needed to know their own feelings. They needed to be open and available for the feelings of others, and others could see that they were really more overwhelmed by their feelings and they needed to pause and really feel into the strong back. 

Mindfulness can be a great resource in cultivating that strong back, even practices like soles of the feet where we just stand or walk and we feel the feet, as they contact the the ground, the earth. Feel ourselves being held up. Supported. So this is true also in our relationships that we need both the strong back and the soft front. We may find in our relationships that we are just soft. And when we have the soft front, but not much of a strong back, we may tolerate too much in our relationships. 

Kristen Neff and Chris Germer in the Mindful Self-compassion Program, They’ve begun talking about compassion as having two sides. The what they call the inside, the softer, more, more feminine. Not in terms of gender, but in terms of energy, feminine side that is receptive, that is really about being. And here we feel comforted and soothed and validated and what they call the young side, the more masculine side, again, not in terms of gender, but just in terms of energy, because we we need both inside of us. Each person, regardless of how you identify, needs both the feminine and magical and energy. 

And so this Yang side of compassion is a more active side. It is involved with protecting and providing and motivating, things that help us really go out into the world and take action and accomplish our goals and do what we need to do. So in our relationships, in our compassion practice, we need both. I think of that Yang compassion, that fierce compassion as the strong back. It doesn’t tolerate harm. It can set boundaries. It can set limits. It can say no. And this is important, allowing somebody to harm us, you know, being soft with them when what they’re doing is actually harmful to us isn’t actually kind. It isn’t compassionate. It isn’t kind for us, of course, but it isn’t kind for them either. At some point they will look up and know they caused us harm. And it would have been better for them to have been stopped and it would have been better for us too. 

So this setting limits and boundaries is super important, and that’s part of the strong back, the part that says no. Sharon Salzberg tells a story of traveling to see her teacher and uncharacteristically getting into a rickshaw. There was some traffic and the driver pulled off onto a side street and as they did, the somebody stopped the rickshaw and began to try to pull Sharon out of the rickshaw. And, you know, Sharon said later when she traveled on with her. Yet luckily, Joseph Goldstein, her traveling companion companion, was able to get the attacker off of Sharon. And on they went, eventually making it to the teacher. And when she saw the teacher, she told the story to the teacher and she told the teacher that she had been really trying to be compassionate. And her teacher said, Sharon, that’s not compassionate. What you needed to do was summon up all of the compassion in your heart and whack him with your umbrella, because allowing people to harm us is not compassionate. And of course, harming others is not compassionate. Right. 

So that strong back is concerned with the prevention of harm. It doesn’t allow harm where possible. At the same time, the soft front is really important. That yin energy that Kristin and Chris Germer talk about. You know, the part that comforts us, that soothes us, that validates us. Sometimes we need a soft place to land. We’re suffering and we need a hug. We need someone to see us and to care about us and to comfort us, you know? That part’s true, too. 

I think of the relationship between the strong back in the and the soft front as being a good mom or dad or a grandparent, you know. Sometimes the child falls down, skins their knee, and they need comfort. They need us to say, Oh, there there. I see. Yes. Come on, let’s fix the boo boo. It’s okay. You’ll be okay. I’m here with you. That kind of thing. Right. But they also need the strong back when they say, no, no, no, I don’t want that for breakfast. I want cookies and I want cookies for lunch and I want ice cream for dinner. We have to find in ourselves the strong back, the one that says this isn’t healthy, this isn’t really good for you. Because compassion is not about feeling good. You know? It’s about well-being. What do we really need? What’s in our best interest? 

So it’s a difference between hedonic and eudomonic pleasure. Hedonic is what feels good in the moment and it may feel good in the moment, but it it often causes us problems down the line. Whereas eudemonic is really concerned with our wellbeing. It may or may not feel good in the moment, but in the long run we’re likely going to feel better because it really truly is concerned with our well-being. 

So we need both this strong back, the one that sets limits, the one that takes care of us, the ones that the one that gives us resilience helps us to know we can survive, gives us the confidence to go out in the world and make our dreams come true. And we need the soft front. The one that allows us to be vulnerable, to have feelings, to be seen, to be known. To be impacted by other people and to risk impacting them as well. 

So the strong back and the soft front, that’s what we need for ourselves, but that’s what our partners need from us. That’s what our children need from us too. And one of the ways we can best discern what’s required in any moment is by rooting in our values. And when our values, our core relational values, how do I actually want to be in relationships? And if one of those values is compassion, then we have to really ask, what’s truly compassionate here? You know, if an alcoholic is begging us for alcohol, it isn’t actually compassionate to give that give it to them, even though they may feel better momentarily. Back to the hedonic. That actually would be what we call idiot compassion, giving the person what they want but not what they need. So the quintessential question in compassion, self-compassion, and compassion for others becomes what do I need? What do they need? What do we need? And we can use that along with our values to guide us, to know, Is it time in this moment for the strong back? Is it time in this moment for the soft front? What do I need? What do you need? What do we need? 

Hopefully that helps a little bit in looking at how do we how does compassion actually work for ourselves and in our relationships. It was a pleasure being with you today, and I’m looking forward to being with you again on our next podcast. Thanks for being here. I’ve got much more in store for you and I hope you can join us. Just be sure to subscribe and you won’t miss a thing. And remember to join our free, well connected community on our web site at Y’s compassion dot com. That’s how you’ll get updates about new podcast episodes and exclusive content like monthly compassion building tips that will support you in cultivating a well connected relationship to yourself and others.