Vinny Ferraro: Healing Our Pain with Loving-Kindness

Our guest this week is Vinny Ferraro. He brings us a guided meditation to help us learn how to meet our struggle and suffering with a kind and friendly presence. This practice is designed to help you:

Notice where you tend to contract against discomfort

Identify the ways you opt out of caring for yourself—where you see yourself as an inconvenience or you judge yourself harshly when you're suffering

Widen your circle of curiosity and care to include yourself

Vinny Ferraro has been a practitioner of insight meditation (vipassanā) since the early 1990s. He is a co-Founder of the Dharma Punx and co-Guiding Teacher of Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. He is also a nationally recognized leader in designing and implementing interventions for at-risk adolescents and is currently Senior Trainer for Mindful Schools.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

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Show Notes

Find more from Vinny Ferraro here.

Go Deeper

Self-compassion can be tricky to navigate, especially in extremely individualistic cultures that reward self-sufficiency, mastery, and "success." To learn more about what self-compassion is (and isn't) and how to develop a more honest and kind relationship with yourself, check out these resources from Mindful.org:

It's Selfish, It's Hokey, and I'll Lose My Edge: 3 Half-Truths About Self-Compassion