Radical Compassion Through the Sensory Field: Coming Home to Ourselves and the World
At Living Psychotherapy Collective, we support the unfolding of wholeness in our clients through depth-oriented, body-centered, relational, and liberation-based approaches. Central to this process is the cultivation of radical compassion—not just as an idea or moral value, but as a felt sense, an embodied experience of being with ourselves and others in the fullness of presence.
This post explores how compassion, when anchored in the sensory field of the body, becomes a radical force of healing and liberation. Drawing on the teachings of spiritual teacher, psychologist and author, Tara Brach, PhD and the depth-oriented, somatic perspectives offered by training analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, Barbara Holifield, MSW, MFT, SEP we’ll explore how compassion can be practiced, experienced, and integrated—not just as a concept, but as a way of being.
What Is Radical Compassion?
Radical compassion asks us to turn toward our pain, our messiness, our humanity—with love. Tara Brach describes it as a “tenderness that arises when we stop fighting ourselves.” It is radical because it challenges dominant cultural narratives that tell us to suppress pain, override vulnerability, or earn love through perfection.
Radical compassion is not passive. It’s a courageous, embodied stance that says: I will meet this moment as it is—with my full presence and heart. An active stance like the depths of the ocean meeting surface waves or the expansive sky containing the presence of the storm. For many, the first step begins not in the mind, but in the body.
The Sensory Field: The Doorway to Embodied Compassion
The sensory field is the ever-shifting landscape of sensations, textures, breath, temperature, and movement within and around the body. Barbara Holifield, in her book, Being with the Body in Depth Psychology, Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm, emphasizes the therapeutic potential of this field: it is where trauma lives, where unconscious material surfaces, and crucially, where compassion can arise organically—not forced, but discovered.
In body-centered depth therapy, we listen with and through the body. We ask:
What is the weight, the texture, the rhythm of this emotional experience?
Can I stay with this tightness, this trembling, this ache—without needing to fix it?
What happens when I place a warm hand on the part of me that hurts?
When we shift from analyzing our pain to feeling it in a supported, relational field, something changes. The body, in its wisdom, often responds with softness, breath, or insight.
Practicing Radical Compassion Through the Body
Here is a simple, experiential practice you can try—either on your own or as part of your healing journey in therapy.
1. Pause and Land in the Body
Gently close your eyes or soften your gaze. Take a few moments to feel your feet on the ground, your seat supported. Bring awareness to your breath—not to change it, but to notice it breathing you.
2. Notice What’s Present
Bring attention to any sensations you notice—warmth, tightness, tingling, numbness. You might place a hand where you feel it most. Ask inwardly, What wants attention right now?
3. Name with Kindness
If emotion is present—grief, fear, shame, longing—gently name it: “Ah, sadness is here.” “Ah, fear.” As Tara Brach suggests in her RAIN practice, naming helps us relate rather than react.
4. Offer Warmth
Send warmth or gentle touch to the part of you in pain. Perhaps whisper inwardly, It’s okay to feel this. I’m here with you. Let yourself feel the support of gravity, the breath, and the larger field of life holding you.
5. Expand the Circle
Once you’ve spent time with your own experience, you might ask: What would it be like to extend this same compassion to someone else who is struggling? Not as a requirement, but as a natural ripple from being with yourself.
Embodied Radical Compassion in Psychotherapy
In the therapy space, radical compassion becomes a shared, relational experience. The therapist is not merely a witness but a compassionate presence attuned to the client’s embodied process. As Holifield notes, the body in therapy is not an object to be analyzed, but a subject to be listened to.
Together, therapist and client may:
Track bodily sensations as pathways to unconscious material
Use breath, sound, or movement to deepen presence
Hold painful memories or parts of the self with tender awareness
Restore connection where trauma has created fragmentation
This work can feel both ancient and emergent—reconnecting us with the deep truth that healing is not something we force, but something we allow through presence and care.
The Liberatory Power of Compassion
Radical compassion is not just an individual practice—it has the power to disrupt cycles of internalized oppression, shame, and disconnection. In a liberation psychology frame, embodied compassion becomes an act of reclaiming our right to feel, to belong, and to be fully human. As we soften to our own pain, we become more available to the suffering of others—not from burnout or obligation, but from genuine presence. Compassion becomes a collective medicine, inviting the possibility of a more connected, just, and loving world.
Final Thoughts
Radical compassion is not always easy—but it is always possible. Through the sensory field of the body, we come home to ourselves. And from that place, we can meet life—with all its joys and sorrows—with a fierce and tender heart.
If this resonates with you, or you’re curious about working with radical, embodied compassion in therapy, we invite you to reach out. At Living Psychotherapy Collective, we walk alongside you in your journey toward healing, presence, and homecoming.