Eli Susman was a fairly experienced meditator when he attended a month-long retreat at Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in the south of France in 2017.
The UC Berkeley clinical sciences doctoral candidate had been on other retreats where participants spent most of their time meditating. So he was surprised when he saw that Plum Village's daily retreat program included only 30 minutes of formal sitting meditation a day.
Halfway through the retreat he decided to extend one of his sessions, sitting under a tree for three hours. Later, she met a monk named Brother Tesoro and told him about his practice. The monk's response was not what he expected.
“Three hours?” Susman remembers Brother Treasure telling him with a smile. “How about three breaths? That is all it takes to enter the present moment.”
The words stayed with Susman. This led him to wonder if an abbreviated practice that requires no more than a few breaths can make a difference in someone's life.
Seven years later, he and his colleagues at Berkeley's Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic have evidence that might be the case. At the beginning of this year they published an article online in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy describing how a simple 20-second self-compassion “micropractice” reduced stress levels and improved the mental health of college volunteers who did it every day for a month.
“Two of the biggest obstacles people have to developing the habit of meditation are having the time to do it and developing the habit of doing it regularly,” Susman said. “Micropractices are like small training sessions that build on the most powerful parts of therapeutic practices.”
Below, Susman describes the practice she developed for the study and explains how anyone can use it to try to feel better in less than a minute a day.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
How do you describe the 20-second self-compassion micropractice you studied?
The instructions we gave you were to close your eyes and remember something about yourself that has been bothering you and making you feel unworthy, unloved or not enough and notice what arises in the body.
We then asked people to send each other kindness and warmth by placing one hand on their heart and one on their belly with the energy of giving each other a hug and noticing what is now arising in the body.
Next, we invite you to ask yourself: “How can I be my friend right now?”
Finally we told them to open their eyes when they were ready.
And did doing this for 20 seconds a day really make a difference in the lives of the study participants?
Yes, but it only worked for people who practiced it regularly. In our study we looked at the subset of people who practiced daily and the full sample of people who received the instruction.
More frequent practice was associated with greater increases in self-compassion and greater reductions in stress and mental health problems, such as symptoms of depression or anxiety, compared to a control group.
What are some ways people can send kindness and warmth to themselves?
The key phrase we used in the study was “How can I be my friend right now?” What we mean by this is to imagine that you are seeing a friend or your younger self in a similar situation and that you are really affectionate towards that friend. What would you tell them to do? How would you ask them to go?
You can also imagine receiving unconditional love from someone like a mentor, parent, or close friend. How would they relate to you in this time of suffering? Is there a way you can give that same compassion to yourself?
Does it matter where people do this practice?
We didn't look at that, but it's a great question.
Why is it helpful for people to touch their stomach and chest while doing the exercise?
There has been a lot of work on touch and how beneficial it can be for people to receive it, but it had not been considered as a stand-alone intervention for emotional well-being in terms of people offering themselves self-compassionate touch. I was interested in the synergy between thinking self-compassionate thoughts and performing this embodied form of self-compassionate contact. It offers two potential ways to regulate.
I should also say that we told the participants that they could choose other forms of contact, such as stroking each other's cheeks or giving each other a hug. Most importantly, the touch method helps you feel compassion for yourself.
I was surprised that most of the students who participated in the study said they were too busy to do this 20-second practice every day. What is that about?
I was joking with a friend about this and she said that when people are stressed they can get stuck feeling like they can't take 20 seconds to pause. It may be more of a mindset than a reality, but there is still work to be done to help people feel like those 20 seconds will make a difference in their lives. We wash our hands for 20 seconds. We brush our teeth for two minutes. Why not take 20 seconds to do this?
Do you have any advice on how people can make this practice a habit?
It may be helpful to choose a signal. You can practice after morning coffee in the living room or when you feel stressed if you can do it then. The more specific you are in describing your cue and developing your plan, the more likely you are to turn the practice into a habit.
Does this research suggest that there is no reason for longer practice?
Most of the participants in our study were novice meditators or people who had never meditated before, so we don't know what this would look like with people who have a really dedicated meditation practice or who have a lot of experience meditating. Rigorous research is needed to determine whether shorter internships have advantages over longer internships and for whom those advantages may be most pronounced.
Furthermore, just as brushing your teeth does not replace a visit to the dentist, this micropractice should not replace more intensive mental health care or therapy.
