Karuna: [00:03:39] [00:03:39]Hi, I’m Karuna. I’m the founder and executive director of MindOasis. And with me today is Leanna Gilliam and returning guest Kelly Sell for Meditation Happy Hour: Tea, Talk, and Truth with Karuna. Hi, y’all. [00:03:55]
Leanna: [00:03:55] Hi.
Kelly: [00:03:56] Hi.
Karuna: [00:03:57] Leanna. Tell us where in the world you are.
Leanna: [00:03:59] I’m in Austin, Texas.
Karuna: [00:04:02] Awesome, and Kelly?
Kelly: [00:04:04] Bellingham, Washington.
Karuna: [00:04:06] Very nice. And will you, Leanna, tell us a little bit about you. Just a little bit about your life.
Leanna: [00:04:14] Yeah, thanks. I’m really happy to be here. I have lived in Austin 27 years. I’m essentially a native Texan, was not born here, but got here when I was a little baby as the story goes. I have a family. I have three beautiful daughters and one’s in college and one’s in high school and one’s in middle school. So I got all the bases covered there. I came to the practices of meditation, mindfulness and self compassion about eight years ago. And I was introduced to Karuna and this amazing community on Mind Oasis a little while back and enjoy being part of this community and guiding on community meditation. I’m really excited to be here with Kelly as another practitioner and instructor for Mindful Self-Compassion, because those practices in particular were a big game changer for me in my life, and I just want to be able to share those practices and that mindset with others because it’s really powerful.
Karuna: [00:05:29] Awesome. Good. We’re going to come right back there. Kelly, tell us a little bit about you for listeners who didn’t catch you the first time that you were my guest?
Kelly: [00:05:37] Well, I live in Bellingham, Washington. We moved here just over a year ago and from Colorado. And before that, we had been in Texas and then before that, Arizona. So we have moved all over. And people keep asking us here. You know, do you like to move or are you going to stay here forever? And I keep saying it’s every time we move, I think it’s going to be for forever. But it’s not that way. So who knows? Hopefully we’ll be here and not move again. I guess I came to some of the mindfulness self compassion through my own self work long ago and then finding the work with [00:06:20] Kristin and Chris was [00:06:21] great to deepen that and to have a way to have a structure to share it with people, which is a nice thing to do. I also practice Eastern medicine, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, so that’s about it. And I have a my cat is with me, which is just out of screen, so I had to move some stuff.
Karuna: [00:06:45] My cat is with me. I usually 86 Otis because he likes to make biscuits on me and he has claws. But he was asleep so peacefully that I thought maybe he would stay that way, but of course not. So we’ll see how this goes. And then, Kelly, just one more thing I happen to know about you is that you’re also an avid mountain bicyclist.
Kelly: [00:07:06] Yep.
Karuna: [00:07:07] All things outdoors. We share that in common. And Leanna and I share something fun in common that we trekked to Nepal together now a few years ago. It’s amazing that it was a few years ago. So I’m here with friends and colleagues both, which is always my most favorite thing. So Leanna, I’m going to start by asking you kind of a direct question as I was thinking about our time here together, and I think it might be something that people who maybe aren’t as familiar with self compassion practices would ask. And that’s why self compassion now when it feels like our world is sort of falling apart at the seams, you know, we’re seeing these images in Ukraine and whatever you think of the situation, it can’t be denied that there’s huge human suffering happening in that area of the world, probably on all sides of the border. And so why self compassion?
Leanna: [00:08:02] A really good question that’s been on my mind as well to just navigating this time. I mean, honestly, this past few years have been tricky. There’s a lot, and there’s been a lot going on collectively in the world. And the reason for me for coming back to these practices that give me a sense of safety, that give me a sense of grounded-ness and centeredness and well-being, those practices in turn, allow me to show up for others in a very present way, a very authentic way. The metaphor we talk about in mindful self compassion is the oxygen mask. So when you’re in an airplane, if you’re traveling with people who need assistance, the instruction is put your oxygen mask on first and then you can help others. So it’s kind of that metaphor of tuning into what’s needed for ourselves in any given moment, and particularly in a moment of stress or struggle. And by doing so answering that question, What do I need? Then there’s something about that we can just relax and ease into the situation. And again, it’s about. Showing up for others and taking action when it’s needed and and being present to to what else is happening for other people around us?
Karuna: [00:09:41] Kelly, do you have anything you’d like to add to that?
Kelly: [00:09:45] No, that’s a good explanation. You know, that other great thing to remember with the mindful self compassion is thinking about the common humanity… Which is hard because we see so much happening in the world right now and… It’s hard. None of us want to remember that it could be happening to any of us. We could have been born in any country in a way, you know. And so we’re lucky right now and…. To allow those feelings to help have compassion arise in us and empathy without it crushing us sometimes is getting difficult. So that is a nice thing about the mindfulness. Self-compassion is we’re not the only ones thinking or feeling the way we’re at most likely with, as [00:10:33] Chris Grimmer [00:10:34] says, 7 billion other people. Somebody probably felt like this before some place. So that is a helpful thing. It doesn’t mean it’s any easier, which is a tough one when we’re doing a lot of this work. A teacher once said to me… It was dealing with a very difficult situation and understanding that I was helping the situation, and from a spiritual perspective, sometimes we do practices hoping we will get a different outcome. We pray for a different thing, but actually sometimes doesn’t make it any easier to know exactly why you’re doing something. It’s still the hard thing we have to manage or suffer or whatever word you want to use, depending on your lineage.
Karuna: [00:11:22] I’m happy you brought up lineage, Kelly. Why don’t you talk a little bit about where you learned about mindful self compassion practices? And then I’d also love to hear from both of you about the link up together that your co teaching, which I think is beautiful. There’s Kelly’s kitty in the background.
Kelly: [00:11:40] It’s one of them.
Karuna: [00:11:41] What’s the kitty’s name?
Kelly: [00:11:43] That’s Izzy short for Isabella. And then the other one. You can’t see a Sassy short for Sasquatch because she’s a polydactyl.
Karuna: [00:11:51] Oh, very cool!
Kelly: [00:11:53] She has thumbs.
Karuna: [00:11:56] It happens. Is she a Maine Coon?
Karuna: [00:11:59] Awh look at you. Little furry toes.
Kelly: [00:12:05] She’s not a Maine Coon. We have had a Maine Coon in the past. They’re amazing critters. So, yeah, we love Maine Coons. They’re awesome, but yeah, we love the thumbed kitties. He’s even got an extra one on her back.
Karuna: [00:12:18] Really? Wow. That’s just like an extra kitty all around.
Kelly: [00:12:23] They can come in all kinds of configurations. They can get born… and so she has two extras in the front and one in the back and some have multiple. We’ve had a couple of kitties with thumbs. So she’s here. So I first learned about the idea of compassion. It wasn’t mindfulness self compassion back then. It was through a program called the Hoffman Quadrinity Process, which is out in California, is their home base, and it was created by a guy named Bob Hoffman back in the 70s and 80s. And he was amazing, man, and brought together many, many teachers and came up with a program that originally was would happen over weekends, over eight months. And then they figured out a way to do it over eight weeks and different times and finally shorten that down to an eight week period. And now I think it’s just a week that you can you go you hand in your cell phone and you are on for seven days straight doing, they call it like a therapeutic educational experience and it’s pretty amazing. So you learn about all kinds of different things. It has a huge amount of somatic work, visualization, so it’s a very intense week and you really have to be able to step out of your life and have a lot of support to do that. The cool thing about that program is that it’s all up to you. You’re doing it in a group with like 40 people and you have small group work in different things and you’re learning a bunch of tools, but it’s all up to you. So you get out what you put in and nobody is there pressuring you. There’s not people trying to coach you to get what you want. So the flip side of that is that you really have to be suffering and know that you are suffering to go and do something like that and to give it your all.
Kelly: [00:14:31] It’s not just like, Hey, it sounds like a fun retreat. It’s super intense and parts of it are just heartbreaking. But coming out of that, I hadn’t done any work like that before. I learned about compassion there, and I came home with a simple practice of reading the definition of compassion and lighting a candle every day for myself. It is a particular practice in there, in the Quadrinity, and they talk about the quadrinity because you have an emotional self, spiritual self, intellectual self, and the physical self. And one of the practices in that is to ask each part of your self how it feels or what it’s thinking and what does it need. And so that is kind of the basics. And so I have notebooks full of that practice from every you know. A lot of mornings are in moment and you can do it in a moment. But that is really basically the essential practice. And it’s completely separate, not separate. But Kristen Neff and Chris are doing their own work and a lot of people are doing different work, but that was my practice. Then one of my therapists out of that program I worked with separately, because you can go back and do a weekend of work and once you and your partner’s gone through it, you can go do a weekend together, which is super intense, but then you have a massive amount of shared language and it’s you and a therapist and your wife or partner and it’s very, very intense. And we’ve done that. Christina and I’ve done that.
Karuna: [00:16:20] For the listeners that can’t see my expression. I made sort of a grimace because it sounds so intense and scary to me and also probably very worthwhile.
Kelly: [00:16:30] That’s it. It’s everything. So that’s the other part. When you come out of the Hoffman, often many of my colleagues who came out of that together, we’re like, it’s worse because I can actually feel now. And I couldn’t feel before I was able to close that part of myself off. And if we close off the bad part or we can’t only close off, we don’t get the good part. So that was amazing program. And then my one of my therapists in that years later doing a week in there taught me the self-compassion break without calling it the self-compassion break. And I did that for over a year just as a way to start my meditation, which is not how you want to… We’ll talk about this more in the program. To really practice that, you have to be suffering. Or if you’re just practicing, you have to pull up suffering to be able to practice self-compassion. And you don’t want to do that all the time. But this was through a time when I had just learned about my abuse in my past. Growing up as a Catholic altar boy and a ton of stuff was going in my family, so I was suffering. Every morning I woke up and what was on my mind. And so it didn’t take a lot of effort to have something to practice my self compassion with.
Kelly: [00:17:49] And then after working with her for a year, she’s like, Oh yeah, this is just from a whole program with Christian Neff and she’s a researcher. We’re incorporating that stuff. And so then I found the books and was able to go do a week long retreat with Kristin and Chris Germer up at the Red Feather Lakes, which is very amazing because you get to do all the the whole week on the eight week session we’re going to do. We did it in a week and a ton of other stuff, which was amazing to have that much time to really sit with these practices and have them in a big way. So yeah, that’s my background of how I found compassion, which is huge because I easily could not have found it and I’d be a terrible practitioner. I wouldn’t be able to sit with people suffering and pain. And so now being to sit with a patient or a friend and knowing my own. Dark, painful past and shadows makes it easier to sit with somebody and hear theirs because it’s just not as scary as it would have been in the past. So I hope that helps people when I can sit and listen, which is a big part of our job.
Karuna: [00:19:05] So before we move to you, I’ll just say since you referenced it, Kelly, thank you. Leanna and Kelly are offering a mini workshop on the 22nd of March called Taking a Self-Compassion Break. It’s free to attend. It’s 30 minutes. You’ll learn what a self-compassion break is, how to take it, how to incorporate it into your practices. If for some reason you’re hearing this recording after the fact, it’s no big deal. You can still go to mind oasis dot org and you go to the learn tab and under the free mini workshops the recording will live there so you can actually visit and sign up and receive that workshop any time. So Leanna, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background with Mindful Self Compassion?
Leanna: [00:19:50] Sure. So I was introduced to the practices through a Brene Brown book. She knows Kristen Neff, who is one of the founders of Mindful Self-Compassion. And there was a link or website address for taking this quiz Self Compassion Quiz. And who doesn’t love a little quiz, right? How is this going to turn out? So I took the quiz and thought, Oh. Oh, I am really hard on myself. These are this is this is interesting. So I started exploring just on my own reading about the practices. The self-compassion break was one, and at that same time I was doing my meditation teacher training. So it just kind of unfolded in this way where I was drawn to the practices for myself. I’m what, another mindful self compassion teacher, Christy Auburn, calls I’m a recovering perfectionist and that’s something that we explore in the program. Is those perfectionist tendencies, your inner critic, that voice inside that is judgmental, judging yourself. And it’s just this light bulb went off for me. Oh, I don’t have to listen to that voice. There it is. I notice it. What can I do instead? How do I basically how do I talk to myself the way I would talk to a friend? And it just seems so simple now looking back. But at that time it was just a huge epiphany, a huge lightbulb moment where I realized that a lot of my suffering and I was having chronic pain at the time too.
Leanna: [00:21:47] And so the practice was helpful and in just how to deal with that… Just being able to sit with something, notice what was going on and be kinder to myself. Yeah, because I just didn’t grow up that way. I was always very hard on myself, like I said, a perfectionist, very, very conscious of doing everything right. And it’s kind of like just giving yourself a break. And I really needed a break in that time. And yeah, and just since then, I just continue to, to turn to this. One of the things I like to say about the self-compassion break and something that Kelly had said made me think of it. It’s like, this is portable, right? Like these these things you can do really anytime, anywhere. No one has to know what you’re doing. But you take a moment. You give yourself a little, little compassionate touch and say, What do I need right now? Or This is hard. Or Other people feel this way too. So, so yeah. It’s just woven into my life. Yeah. It’s just kind of part of who I am now. I have a morning ritual. Kelly, you talked about lighting a candle, and yeah, I do the same thing and just think on loving kindness for myself. What’s needed today.
Karuna: [00:23:28] You also have a… I think it’s an eight week series. Eight weeks. Six weeks, eight weeks. Thanks. Called Mindful Self Compassion, Befriending Yourself. And it starts in mid-April. I’m curious, do you all think that we… I can only speak as growing up in the West or in America. And I just wonder, are we kind of set up to be hard on ourselves and to be perfectionists from day one? Because I remember being identified as gifted and talented in kindergarten. And it all kind of went downhill from there. I remember, you know, the gold stars, which I know everybody likes gold stars. But, I really, you know, if I didn’t get that gold star on my I mean, if I would get like a 90 out of 100 on a spelling test, I felt like I had somehow kind of like failed. And then even though I was really wild in high school, even then, I performed well grade wise. And I remember, feeling really competitive around I think I was 35th in my class of 450 or something, you know, and not really feeling like that was enough. And then to this day, if I’m not liked, which happens frequently as the leader of Mind Oasis, people don’t always like my decisions or what I have to say. Or today I slept in instead of cross-country skiing. And there was a little voice. I mean, that voice is real for me at least. And the voice was well, that was lazy, you know. So I’m just curious in your training because I haven’t done a lot of self-compassion stuff, do you feel that there’s a little bit of a setup?
Leanna: [00:25:30] I can’t hear you, Kelly.
Kelly: [00:25:35] Sorry… Jump in there Leanna with… Whatever you want to start.
Leanna: [00:25:39] Well, you know what I mean. Actually, I have heard this question before, and. I mean, I do think your environment or your culture, where you come from, does impact your motivation. It does impact what ends up being important to you. And it’s only through the process of kind of. Learning about why and having your awareness of why you’re doing what you’re doing. Can you shift gears? So to answer your question, I do think there is more of a doing culture in the West. It’s very much about achievement. I mean, let’s be honest, like consumerism, like all the things like I need these things and there is less emphasis on being and going inward and listening to yourself and balance, rest and work to play to and also rest. I do feel that, my daughter’s generation, the younger generation, there seems to be a little difference in what you’re speaking to. Like it’s not as much I’m saying about the go, go, do, do. And there is a little bit more of a tendency to consider balance and quality of life. And so I don’t know, you know, I think it’s both.
Leanna: [00:27:23] And, you know, we live in a culture that is very fast paced, consumer oriented, materialistic and less so about just being. The story that that I like to use when I answer this question, when it’s been asked of me is, I believe it was Sharon Salzberg shared this, maybe Kelly you can confirm that. But apparently the Dalai Lama came to the states and there was kind of like a little group of people following him around at a retreat center and as someone asked him why how did how do you help people who are had so much self-hatred and self loathing? And he just stopped in his tracks and looked at this person and said, I don’t understand. I don’t understand what self-hatred. Like, it just didn’t even occur to him. It wasn’t something that in his culture and the East that is possible. So this turning towards yourself and being kind to yourself and appreciating your own basic goodness is a part of life. In the West, it’s something that we we kind of have to seek out.
Karuna: [00:28:50] Kelly, what do you have to add?
Kelly: [00:28:53] Well. You know, part of it I’m not a Buddhist. So some of the stories… One of the things is that Buddhist at certain levels, there is no self. And so that was part of his misunderstanding. As the story goes, is there actually isn’t the self we think of as self? There is no self. So it’s kind of a different idea to for them to think of it that way. It was part of my understanding of that. Thing. But I think it’s easy to think that it’s better someplace else. And if you travel the world, it’s people are dealing with this the same way we feel. And there might be a different flavor or spice to it. And it’s ancient because I don’t know if I pronounce it right, but there’s like the three molars that cover us being better than, not good enough, and those three, which I think Patanjali talks about or is even an ancient text. So this is those feelings we have of constant overachieving or underachieving or whatever it is we put on ourselves, it’s just a human condition we share throughout the world. So I think it’s easy to think that, you know, it’s a better someplace else. And I think if you travel and talk to people in any country, we all deal with all kinds of stuff. You know, we have great friends all over the world. We go to some place like Singapore. That place is completely money, that is. And that’s been a business center forever. So I think no matter what time in history, people have been questioning what’s going on in the world and what do I want to do and and different depending on your your spiritual practices. I think about many like our our gurus’ guru would live in the mountains and those type of saint type characters who have always headed out in away from culture to find something else. I think we’re all still dealing with that, and that is the nature of the human condition, which like Singapore, is a great example. You’re in this massive city and then you can walk and find tiny little temples hidden all over the place that are still trying to bring a different light to the situation. And we have that and I think in all cultures, I remember being once we were in even in Vegas, Caesars, Caesars Palace, we got to go see Pavarotti on his final tour. And I had done some opera in college, so I love listening to those guys. But we got to see Pavarotti. We’re staying at Caesars and behind Caesars. A bunch of Buddhist many years ago had come over and installed a statue and a whole shrine. But you have to go find it. It’s very cool. There’s always incense there, you can light it. And so even in a city like that that’s mixed where these points of light, we can find that if we’re so inclined to to follow those. So I think it’s hard for everybody.
Karuna: [00:32:16] Kelly, tell us a little bit about the Mindful Self Compassion eight week series. What, what would one expect to enjoy?
Kelly: [00:32:27] Well, you’re probably not going to enjoy all of it. But over the eight weeks, it gives a lot of time to… I think there’s a list. There’s 47 different practices. And I don’t know, Leanna, how many meditations? A bunch.
Leanna: [00:32:44] A lot.
Kelly: [00:32:46] So over that eight week course, you have time to try out a bunch of different stuff, and hopefully you’re going to find something that’s going to resonate. You can’t do them all. There’s too many practices to do in a day, but you can find something to grab on to that we can start. Listening to ourselves and finding that other voice that existing in us. And then there’s a lot of didactic information to help calm the intellect. So here’s all the research. There’s a tremendous amount of that that gets covered, which can help some people feel like it’s worth doing things. So it all depends on your type, too. You know, some people want to think about stuff first before they do it. Others it’s better just to jump in. And so the program has changes like that through every week. You just get to try a bunch of different stuff and ideas on and see how it goes. And then there are, some of the practices are hard and we’re talking about self-compassion. So to have compassion is a desire to relieve suffering or the stress we’re going in, which means we have to have that going on, too, and we can become start becoming more aware of how we’re struggling.
Kelly: [00:34:01] So that can be uncomfortable. But there is a way where our guru or our teacher would talk about. We’re constantly trying to get out of discomfort. And you know, that original I don’t know how to pronounce it right. But in out of the original teaching of all life is suffering. There’s a different word for that that says it’s just kind of like this place is broken. It’s not it will never be right. It’s just a little off. It’s out of balance. So suffering can be too strong a word. So just that. Planet Earth is a little, you know, it’s just not ever going to be right. We have a wobble, you know, and that’s kind of how I feel sometimes. But can we come back into balance? So that’s the thing. Balance is not the idea that you never go out of it in Chinese medicine, but can you just come back? Can you come back? Can you come back?
Leanna: [00:35:01] And it’s about, I guess, balancing, right? I think in some ways we put an emphasis on balance, like staying in equilibrium all the time. Right. But really, we’re always balancing. We’re always coming back and getting like, I think of a tightrope walking on, I’m balancing, right, I’m staying up, I’m elevated, but I can lean this way. I can lean that way, but then I come back to the center. I think the practices are really helpful to give us tools and resources so that we can do that balancing act a little bit more skillfully. I think one of the things that came up for me in taking the course myself is I just felt that I had kind of like a toolbox of things that I could turn to on the hard days or in the hard moments. And so over time that has built up some resilience, I would say. I think the course is really designed to give us the resources because as Kelly mentioned, you know, we’re always going to… There is always suffering, there is always struggle. And there is being balanced and being joyful and attending to ourselves in a kinder way. I think there’s, as Kelly mentioned, more than enough practices to choose from and something will resonate for you, something you will make a connection with something and hopefully just keep turning back to that over and over and over so that it does become woven into your daily life.
Karuna: [00:36:58] That’s awesome. I, didn’t realize how nice and stacked or broad the toolbox is that this series brings. So it’s called mindful self compassion, befriending yourself. And it’s in the evening starting April 12. And just so everyone knows you can learn more at Mind Oasis dot org and you go to the learn tab and you just scroll down and things are organized by dates. So you just get down to the 12th of April and you’ll see Leanna and Kelly’s face there. And just as an FYI, we do record sessions. It’s preferred that you are there live because it’s really important work to build community and trust with one another. But if you miss one of the sessions, just know that you won’t be behind and that both Kelly and Leanna are here for you. Before we get to my final question, I’m just curious, how did the two of you decide to do this together? It’s so lovely.
Kelly: [00:38:01] Well, you I had done the program the six weeks with you all, and you asked me if I wanted to do it again. And I thought, But don’t you have Leanna, who’s a CM teacher on staff already at Mind Oasis? So she should run the she should be teaching the program for you guys and she’s already on the crew. So that’s what I said.
Karuna: [00:38:24] And then Leanna, you said?
Leanna: [00:38:27] I was with you on your I think it was your mini for your six week course. And I was kind of the the Mind Oasis representative to help you with all the technical details and everything. And I really appreciated our connection and the way you handled that course. And then yeah, a little while back, it just really bubbled up for me to try to offer this course the whole eight week course, and ask you to be a co teacher and yay, you said yes. And here we are and I’m thrilled to be doing it with you.
Karuna: [00:39:08] I think one of the beautiful things about co teaching is that you get a container that has different perspectives. And then you as a student come in with your own perspective as well. And so it’s to me, really rich, a rich experience to have more than one facilitator. So, Leanna, my final question for you before we wrap it up is what’s your truth?
Leanna: [00:39:34] What’s my truth? My truth is that. I am enough. And. Yeah. That’s my truth. I am enough.
Karuna: [00:39:51] You are. Enough.
Karuna: [00:39:53] I love Izzy in the background doing gymnastics. Kelly it’s awesome.
Kelly: [00:39:59] She’s almost 17 years old.
Karuna: [00:40:02] Wow. Odie did you hear that? Kelly, what’s your truth?
Kelly: [00:40:09] Well. I don’t know. I never think through that. Which is the same answer I gave you last time. My truth right now is as. Really learning that everything we’re experiencing happens in the body and the importance of the physical body turning. I just turned 50 yesterday, which wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t in my mind until a couple of months ago I was home helping my brother. One of my older brothers moved my mom.
Kelly: [00:40:42] And just watching my parents age and my wife’s parents age. And right now, the truth is really making a commitment to the physical body. You know, like a friend said, fifty’s not that old, but you can start to see the end of the road. And it is really a questioning time of ok… My dad didn’t live that many more years. He died in his late seventies. Christine’s mom died in late seventies. It’s only 20 plus years away. It’s not that far. And so I’m just really been thinking about that and how it’s so important to be physically able to be in a body, which is a wonderful thing, but also not to just take that and not think about it all the time. So my truth right now is really learning how to take care of myself even more and confronting that. Also, it takes way more time. I’d rather be doing other stuff a lot of times than my physical therapy and stretches and things like that for my back. But it also takes a lot of time to deal with pain. So that’s my truth right now.
Karuna: [00:41:56] Yeah. I’m happy you said that. I was on a retreat with my teacher last week, and I’ve kind of gotten to a place in my Buddhist studies where now the importance of yoga in all of its forms, including yoga asana. How important that is to the physicality of the body working while with the subtle body and so much of how we experience our life is through our energetic nervous system, in addition to everything else that we’re taking in and just how important it is to care for both of those, in addition to all the other things we’re caring for. And I feel you, Kelly, my goal for 2023 is to climb a 23,000 foot mountain, and that requires some prep. And so there’s this time that I’ve blocked off on my calendar in the morning that I never would have blocked off before. And I’m pretty strict about it. It’s about 90% that like I can’t have meetings before 9 a.m. because that’s the time that I’m caring for my physical body. So I really appreciate that. Thank you for sharing. So Kelly and Leanna are first bringing the free mini workshop, which is on the 22nd of March and it’s called Taking a self-Compassion break. It’s just 30 minutes long. It’s free to attend. Go to mind oasis dot org.
Karuna: [00:43:24] Learn about it, register for it. If for some reason you’re hearing this recording after, don’t worry, you can still go. You can catch the recording. And then on the 12th of April, it’s mind blowing to me that we’re talking about April people. On the 12th of April, Kelly and Leanna will start their eight week series, and it’s called Mindful Self Compassion Befriending Yourself. And as they both articulated, in order to befriend others, we really have to work on the voice that we use in dealing and and working with ourselves. And so if you’re like me and seeing a lot of suffering out in the world, one of the places to start is to put the oxygen mask on yourself and take a peek at how you’re relating to yourself. And I can say wholeheartedly that both Leanna and Kelly are amazing human beings, and I can’t think of two better people to spend eight weeks exploring self compassion with because they are both compassionate and fierce and loving and all the things. So I want to just say thank you to both of you for making this really important offering at this time.
Leanna: [00:44:33] Thank you. Thank you very much.
Kelly: [00:44:36] Yeah. Thanks for doing another program.
Karuna: [00:44:39] So my mind oasis dot org 12th of April, Mindful Self-compassion, Befriending Yourself with Leanna Gilliam and Kelly Sell. Thanks ya’ll have a good rest of your day.
Leanna: [00:44:49] Thank you.
Karuna: [00:44:50] Thanks for taking time.
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