3 Daily Self-Compassion Practices for Educator Wellness
Want to spend more time on self-care this year? Explore three daily self-compassion exercises to boost educator wellness.
When you enter a store this time of year, it’s impossible not to notice the red, pink, and heart-shaped items lining the shelves. Valentine’s Day is a national holiday that sometimes comes with an unrealistic expectation that love should be expressed in totality just once a year.
As educators, it can be fun to focus on self-love, compassion, and community when celebrating Valentine’s Day in the classroom. As most educators know, these values are an essential part of teaching all year.
But while we might find time to show our love to our students, family, and friends, it can be difficult to show ourselves love. But self-compassion is key to educator wellness.
In a culture that demeans, exploits, and reminds teachers that they are never doing enough, teaching enough, or saving an already failing education system from collapsing, practicing self-love is truly revolutionary.
What is Self-Compassion?
Self-compassion is treating yourself with kindness, understanding, and acceptance, especially in moments of difficulty, just as you would a close friend.
Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychologist and researcher, pioneered the concept of self-compassion in the early 2000s. Since then, she has conducted extensive research on its psychological benefits, written books like Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, and created practical tools to help people cultivate self-compassion in daily life.
Daily practices for self-compassion might sound like another toxic-positivity trope, but research shows that self-compassion builds greater resilience, love, and happiness. Practicing self-compassion and treating oneself the way you’d treat a friend also leads to decreased stress.
When we criticize ourselves, we activate our sympathetic nervous system and increase stress hormones. This cycle stops us from learning and developing the resilience we need to cope with daily adversity and stressors. Leaning into self-compassion activates our biological soothing system, which makes us feel better about ourselves, our circumstances, and the world around us.
3 Self-Compassion Practices for Educators
Ready to take educator wellness into your own hands? Nurture yourself by incorporating three simple self-compassion practices into your daily rhythm. Check them out below!
Send yourself a love letter.
Although writing yourself a letter might feel unsettling at first, the practice will become natural over time. Use these steps to try this practice for yourself:
Find a journal or notebook and sit down in a comfortable and quiet space.
Spend a few moments grounding yourself, noticing your body in the present moment, and taking a few cleansing breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Think about a friend, mentor, or imaginary person who is wise, loving, and compassionate. Visualize them in your mind.
Begin to write a letter from their perspective.
What would they say to you?
How would they make you feel like you matter with their words?
What do you need to hear from this person right now?
Pause as you write your letter to drink a warm beverage, ground yourself, or notice any body sensations/emotions that come up.
Finish writing your letter. If it feels helpful, put your letter in an envelope and address it to yourself.
Open the letter at a time when you feel like you need a dopamine boost.
Practice lovingkindness.
Lovingkindness is a form of meditation and mindset rooted in Buddhist tradition, focusing on generating unconditional love, compassion, and goodwill toward oneself and others. Dr. Neff incorporates lovingkindness into her work on self-compassion, emphasizing that treating oneself with warmth and understanding—especially in times of struggle—is key to emotional resilience and well-being.
We can strengthen feelings of care and connection toward others, and self-love and self-compassion toward ourselves, by practicing lovingkindness. To add this self-compassion practice into your daily life, try this:
Carve out 10-20 minutes one to two times per week.
Find a comfortable position.
Options include staying seated, standing, or lying down.
Notice any body sensations or emotions that come up for you before the practice.
Listen to Dr. Neff’s guided lovingkindness meditation or a shorter version by Greater Good in Action.
Tune into your body sensations and emotions after the practice.
Has anything changed, even if subtly?
How might practicing lovingkindness over time rewire your brain toward gratitude?
Utilize a journal for reflection.
Notice the glimmers.
Glimmers, also known as joy-filled micro-moments that often go unnoticed, can support us in rewiring our brains to focus on the positive and come back to safety, activating the parasympathetic nervous system and fostering emotional balance.
A glimmer can be as simple as the daily feeling of the sun on your skin as you exit your office at the end of the day, or the sound of birds chirping on your morning walk. Tuning into the things that bring us joy is a way to take care of ourselves and practice self-compassion for educators, especially during challenging times.
Try this exercise:
Throughout the day, pay close attention to glimmer cues that let you know that a joy-filled micro-moment is happening.
How do you feel during these moments?
What body sensations do you experience during these moments?
How do you react to these moments?
Intentionally look for glimmers throughout the day and identify certain places and times when these moments tend to happen. (For example,
Start a journal practice and reflect on your glimmers at the end of the day.
Explore Research on Self-Compassion
Want to learn even more about self-compassion for teachers? Explore these articles on the benefits of this practice.
Explore More Resources on Educator Wellness
There are many ways you can practice more self-care as an educator. Use these resources from Educator Forever to get started.
About The Author
April Brown (M.Ed) is Educator Forever’s Director of Learning and Development and a curriculum coach for the Curriculum Development Foundations and Advanced Curriculum certification programs. In 2015, April began designing curriculum and writing articles for an EdTech company as a side gig while teaching in Placencia, Belize. After having her eldest daughter in 2016, April was eager to use her unique experience teaching and leading in mainstream and alternative settings in the United States and internationally to work remotely while still making a difference in education.
The Educator Forever Network empowered April to leverage her skills as a compassionate disruptor and out-of-the-box thinker to excel as an instructional/well-being coach, adjunct instructor of Trauma Supportive Schools and Mindfulness courses, curriculum developer, and writer for publications such as PBS SoCal, Education.com, Harvard Graduate School of Education: Making Caring Common, and Britannica for Parents. April is an advocate for teachers and students – inside and outside of the classroom. You can find April in rural Vermont spending time with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and charming dogs.