As an example, let’s say an integrative healthcare practitioner is interacting with someone who has a moderately severe food addiction. During the consultation, the patient brings up the food addiction, an issue they’ve been dealing with for years. They’ve had a fitness coach impose a strict diet on them, but with little results. This led to a build-up of shame, even as they continued to seek other avenues for help.
The practitioner, who has been cultivating sincere compassion through their integrative training over the years, simply hears the client’s presentation of the issue. Without much prompting, the client finds themselves going further and further back in time to when the addiction first emerged.
The practitioner maintains a kind gaze on the patient, spontaneously sympathizing and understanding how and why the addiction might have formed. The practitioner finds themselves experiencing waves of compassion, love, and informed awareness around the issue. The patient, used to having their fitness coach interjecting regularly with advice, assessments, and unsolicited inspiration, finds their shame softening and melting.
Because of this, the compassionate state of being on the part of a practitioner is actually also a medicine. In Ayurvedic literature, a true physician is described as one who the sight of which alone brings a great healing influence. In more modern terms, this describes a physician with such a deep and heartfelt compassion that simply being in their presence has a healing effect. This is not lofty mood-making, but a technical and structural phenomenon.
A deeply compassionate posture has an energetic form and frequency to it. The atmosphere around a compassionate being is palpably loving, softening, and healing. Just being around the frequency of compassion creates powerful waves of purification and empowerment.
