Abstract
The evolution of mammalian caregiving involving hormones, such as oxytocin, vasopressin, and the myelinated vagal nerve as part of the ventral parasympathetic system, enables humans to connect, co-regulate each other’s emotions and create prosociality. Compassion-based interventions draw upon a number of specific exercises and strategies to stimulate these physiological processes and create conditions of “interpersonal safeness,” thereby helping people engage with, alleviate, and prevent suffering. Hence, compassion-based approaches are connected with our evolved caring motivation and attachment and our general affiliative systems that help regulate distress. Physiologically, they are connected to activity of the vagus nerve and corresponding adaptive heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is an important physiological marker for overall health, and the body–mind connection. Therefore, there is significant value of training compassion to increase HRV and training HRV to facilitate compassion. Despite the significance of compassion in alleviating and preventing suffering, there remain difficulties in its precise assessment. HRV offers a useful form of measurement to assess and train compassion. Specific examples of what exercises can facilitate HRV and how to measure HRV will be described. This paper argues that the field of compassion science needs to move toward including HRV as a primary outcome measure in its future assessment and training, due to its connection to vagal regulatory activity, and its link to overall health and well-being.
Highlights
Many species, such as fish, turtles, and other egg-laying reptiles produce large numbers of young ones, who need to disperse rapidly afterbirth to avoid predation, including, at times, from their own parents [1]
All the available compassion interventions are secular in design, theoretically these interventions have been typically influenced by Tibetan Buddhist traditions [11], and as such the definitions of compassion in the majority of compassion interventions do not include links to evolutionary models or physiology [11]
Compassion-focused therapy is notably different to the other interventions, as the theoretical underpinning is based on an evolutionary model that links to physiology [11]
Summary
Many species, such as fish, turtles, and other egg-laying reptiles produce large numbers of young ones, who need to disperse rapidly afterbirth to avoid predation, including, at times, from their own parents [1]. Fish and reptilian young are born to be mobile, be able to seek their own protection, and be self-sustaining This is sometimes referred to as r selection. As infants become more mobile, parents act as a secure base, facilitating gradual exploration of their environment [3] To facilitate these interactional sequences, k selected regulation processors operated through a sequence of adaptations. One of the key functions of parental investment is sensitivity to distress and preparedness to act appropriately to relieve that distress This is the basic sentiment and core of compassion [4, 5], and as we will discuss, compassion utilizes the same evolved physiological pathways as basic caring behavior. All motives have two basic processes, which when applied to compassion include [1] having a motive-appropriate signal detection (input) to suffering (i.e., sensitivity and awareness of distress) and [2] having a behavior–output repertoire that allows appropriate responsiveness to suffering (i.e., taking action to alleviate and prevent suffering)
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