Body Compassion: Cultural Behavior Change via Embodiment of Psychological Flexibility
This 5 minute IGNITE! presentation is from the early development of the academic construct of body compassion. It was given in June 2014 at the World Conference of the Association for Contextual Behavior Science in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The presentation title/focus was specifically tailored to respond to the conference call for a focus on cultural behavior change via psychological flexibility.
ABSTRACT (June 2014): We propose the concept of body compassion as a perspective on the body’s appearance, competence, and health, viewed with mindfulness, kindness and awareness of common humanity. Body compassion bridges two constructs with disparate foundations, body image (Western cognitive model) and self-compassion (Buddhist psychology). Assessing body compassion fills a need for measures to help guide health behavior change interventions and predict outcomes. Body compassion is observable in psychological flexibility, and vice versa. The body is always in the present moment. Making contact with the experience of embodiment from the transcendent sense of self supports defining valued directions and committed action. It is proposed that with an emphasis on developing compassion towards one’s own physical body a ripple effect occurs. The compassionate experience of embodiment (in whatever form that may take) influences behaviors in other domains and the experiences and behavior of others.
*This post is a highlight of one of the presentations found in the research section of this website. Enjoy!