How Compassion Works

Uncover your innate capacity for love, compassion, and wisdom with ​​mindfulness training adapted from Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary psychology

Everything we care about—our mental and physical well-being, our relationships, our spiritual life, our ability to be useful to others—depends on our ability to access love and compassion within ourselves first. In this clear, step-by-step guide, John Makransky and Paul Condon show us how to tap this innate power through their evidence-based method of Sustainable Compassion Training (SCT).

With practices drawn from Tibetan traditions, attachment theory, and cognitive science, SCT offers a progressive series of meditations designed to foster a sense of love, compassion, worth, and presence in ourselves so we can then turn around and extend these same qualities to others and the world.

Organized into three categories—receptive mode, deepening mode, and inclusive mode—the practices gradually build our capacity for unconditional care from within. Additional meditations develop a capacity for cultivating empathy that helps avoid empathic distress, compassion fatigue, or burnout.

A flexible approach that invites us to bring our personal religious or spiritual beliefs and experiences into the process, SCT provides a reliable framework of practice for anyone who does not want to abandon their identity or affiliations for a purely secular approach to mindfulness.