Five minutesAny ordinary dayBody basedAnger

Years of putting up with things build a thicker skin, and that same skin is what stops you being reached by the person in front of you. It can thin again.

Nobody sets out to get harder. It happens quietly, one shrug at a time, until a story that would have undone you at twenty barely registers at forty. A short daily practice of wishing someone well is enough to start softening it. You are not installing something new. You are getting back something you already had.

Qur’an and Sunnah

So do not be harsh with the orphan (Quran 93:9). It is said to a man who had been an orphan himself, and remembering your own tender years is usually what softens the skin.

فَأَمَّا ٱلۡيَتِيمَ فَلَا تَقۡهَرۡ

So do not be harsh with the orphan

Qur’an 93:9read it in the library

Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.

What the research says

Adults randomly assigned to a short compassion training gave more afterwards in an altruism task, and how much each person changed tracked changes in their neural responses to suffering. It is a controlled experiment, which is encouraging. It is also a brief training measured by a laboratory game rather than a picture of a changed life.

Weng HY, Fox AS, Shackman AJ, Stodola DE, Caldwell JZ, Olson MC, Rogers GM, Davidson RJ. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering.. Psychological science doi

Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.

Why it works

Feeling for others responds to practice, so what dulled with use can return with use.

This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.

Near this one

When you are already angry, imagining your way into someone else's head asks the tired part of you to do the heavy lifting. Start with your body instead: look at their face, let your breathing and your shoulders come closer to theirs.

A minuteGrowing empathy

Two people who spend time in step really do become more attuned. Nothing passes between your brains while it happens, though, so put the hours in rather than waiting for the wiring.

LongerGrowing empathy

The advice to touch, to eat together, to move your body, to say the true thing out loud stands up perfectly well without the hormone story attached.

Five minutesGrowing empathy