During our recent training on Compassion-Based Approaches for Working with Shame, Kristin Neff, PhD, and Chris Germer, PhD, each shared a guided practice during their opening keynote that the community found incredibly helpful.

As many people requested recordings for these practices — Chris’s “Radical Homecoming” and Kristin’s “Self-Compassion Break for Shame” — we’re happy to be offering those here today! And, for those who may find it helpful, we’re including a script for the Radical Homecoming practice as well.

NOTE:
These practices have been excerpted from a complete training on
Compassion-Based Approaches for Working With Shame.
The Full Recording Package is Available Here >>

Self-Compassion Break for Shame with Kristin Neff, PhD

Radical Homecoming with Chris Germer, PhD

Radical Homecoming Practice Script

• Welcome home…
• Welcome home to this moment, the only moment of time that we really have. 
• Welcome home to your body, and no other body, without which you would not be here today 
• And welcome home to the many parts of your body, all of which are trying their best to promote your wishes and aspirations. 
• Welcome home to your emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, all of which are constantly trying to teach you something you need to know. 
• Welcome home to the emotion of shame, the most difficult human emotion which is also a pure expression of the human wish to be loved. 
• Welcome home to your wish to be loved—the invisible thread that makes sure you stay connected even when everything else falls apart. 
• Welcome home to your vulnerability—which is an essential truth of human experience, even when it scares you. 
• Welcome home to woundedness—personal and cultural, across time and space, the invisible substrate upon which every human life unfolds. 
• Welcome home to your fierceness—the strong arm that protects you from harm and, when necessary, demands equality and fairness. 
• Welcome home to forgiveness and mercy—the ultimate medicine for human ignorance and human frailty, always available when you’re ready to forgive. 
• Welcome home to self-forgiveness and self-mercy, because the misdeeds of others have also taken residence within us since birth. 
• Welcome home to your many identities, including those that have been overlooked or devalued by others. They are all precious and worthy of celebration. 
• Welcome home to your hidden identities, your hidden parts, who yearn to be loved, and to be set free.
• Welcome home to your journey to freedom, and to this particular moment, as unfinished as it is. 
• Welcome to your yearning to be free, to the ache of feeling unfinished, of being incomplete. 
• And welcome home to compassion, the power that surrounds us all, and has the capacity to transform all that hurts and all that we are. 

About Chris Germer, PhD

Chris Germer, PhD is a clinical psychologist and lecturer on psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical School. He co-developed the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program with Kristin Neff in 2010 and MSC has since been taught to over 100,000 people worldwide. They co-authored two books on MSC, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program.

Chris spends most of his time lecturing and leading workshops around the world on mindfulness and self-compassion. He is also the author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion; he co-edited two influential volumes on therapy, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, and Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy; and he maintains a small private practice in Arlington, Massachusetts, USA.

About Kristin Neff

Kristin Neff, PhD received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, studying moral development. She did two years of postdoctoral study at the University of Denver studying self-concept development. She is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

During Kristin’s last year of graduate school she became interested in Buddhism and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. Kristin is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct over fifteen years ago. In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, released by William Morrow.

In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. They co-authored The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook as well as Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals, both published by Guilford. She is also co-founder and board president of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion.