Compassion and Gratitude: Aristocratic Learning

Aristotle once said that educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. This holds true and on the other side of the coin, it is still effective to differ. The premise lies in that compassion and gratitude not only comes from the heart but also the mind. For these reasons is that both approaches really help foster learning. To immerse and reaffirm Aristotle’s thoughts, the heart is important in educating the mind because without a willingness to connect passion and education, the mind and heart start to deviate, leaving in learners a big gap that will eventually hinder the process of creativity.

Communication and Compassion

Language is not only used as a skill for communication but also as a way of conveying information. Not only can information be conveyed though language but also through the cognitive processing of emotions- which is given the term “mentalizing” , or perspective thinking. Perspective thinking comes from the ability of an individual to process another person's cues. Lately, the concept of empathy has gained attention and momentum; the belief that one person should put themselves in the shoes of another. However, compassion may prove to be a better approach. As a wise men once put it, “an empath must try to observe and not absorb”; this is what compassion is all about. Compassion is best described as feeling for and and with the other. In contrast to empathy, compassion does a better job at compartmentalizing emotions. It is more fluid and prevents charged emotions from directly affecting a person.

One creative way to foster compassion includes the practice of mindfulness. Studies have shown that the practice of mindfulness meditation can have long lasting health benefits. Patients that have arterial hypertension have showed to improve their health when practicing mindfulness. One example of an educational practice pertaining mindfulness is that of the living kindness training. Ultimately, this practice aims at cultivating feelings of benevolence towards all human beings by imagining a person to give kindness to. Students are encouraged to be grateful, kind, and compassionate towards their peers during this training. Not only does this foster compassion in individual students, but also helps at crating a friendlier environment in the classroom where communication is strengthen and team work nurtured. Furthermore, gratitude can make students better strategic thinkers. Individuals who regularly practice gratitude show greater neural sensitivity in brain areas associated with decision-making and learning. Dedicating a few minutes each day to hopeful wishes and small acts that promote positive thinking, can improve the compassion of students and thus foster their creativity and willingness to participate in the classroom.

Neuro-scientific approach on compassion

Future developmental neuroscience research may be able to determine critical periods throughout the human lifespan which indicate when it is best to teach these socially relevant skills during development. Knowledge about this could help assure an effective education which fosters wellbeing and adaptive emotion regulation through forming meaningful relationships.

A question that is still held is if the practices of gratitude and compassion are still effective on people who struggle with mental health. In a study conducted with college students struggling with anxiety and depression, students that wrote gratitude letters fro twelve weeks showed improvements in their mental health.

Additionally, people who are more grateful have shown to have greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which is an area that pertains to decision making and learning. This evidence suggests that generally, if a person is more grateful, they are also more aware about the ways in which they express such gratitude.

Like it’s been stated, psychological research has shown that an empathetic response can result in compassion. From this compassion, an individual may feel inclined to help in a situation of distress and feel motivated to express concern for the other's suffering.

Currently, researchers are investigating the long-term effects of different types of socio-affective training techniques, focusing not only on their effect on functional brain plasticity but also on changes in brain structure, health-related variables related to stress regulators, neuronal networks and even immune responses, as well as ecological everyday behavior and cognition including relations and social engagement. Previous evidence shows how empathy triggers a painful response reflective in the insula brain region, whereas compassion fuels creativity functional national areas. Could compassion and gratitude contribute to neuroplasticity?

Pain as a way of analyzing compassion

Empathetic subjects have shown to experience pain from another's suffering, as shown by fMRI scans that activate anterior cingulate cortex. The result from this is more altruistic practices afterwards, however there are no long term affects as proposed by compassion.

Emotions, sociality, and plasticity

Empathetic distress leads to negative neural affect. Compassion promotes prosocial behavior and also promotes resilience and positive affect, which as a result promotes better coping mechanisms under stressful situations. Therefore, the premise is in compassion and gratitude as better drivers for creativity, learning, and neuroplasticity. Gratitude and compassion practices have the ability of changing the brain.

If gratitude and compassion truly shift perspective thinking, then perhaps Aristotle was more right than wrong. What Aristotle expressed lays the foundation to innovation, thinking, and intellect. Education then, it’s not limited to the classroom. Informal education is present in the community that currently has a food scarcity problem and is need of a group of people coming together to create a solution plan. Informal leadership is present in the team of students formulating a project to start a composting program in their school. From compassionate, gratitude- oriented practices, students can develop new ways of informal education. These experiences open the door to meaningful and tangible learning. This project based learning approach complements education from the heart and mind.

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Call to action!

Educate from the heart and to the heart. Educate informally, formally.

Educate for depth and shape and form. Educate to incite problem solving with and for meaning and purpose. Educate to create problem solving that roots from wanting to express gratitude and compassion.

Lead yourself to be educated to and from the heart.

Best,

Sofía Hidalgo

Sources Joshua Brown, et al. “How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain.” Greater Good, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain

Frith, Chris D., and Uta Frith. “The Neural Basis of Mentalizing.” Neuron, Cell Press, 17 May 2006, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627306003448.

Singer, Tania, and Olga M. Klimecki. “Empathy and Compassion.” Current Biology, Cell Press, 22 Sept. 2014, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214007702.