What Mirror Meditation Can Teach You

Coming face-to-face with yourself is powerful

In a recent TEDx Talk, What Mirror Meditation Can Teach You, I shared my work using mirrors to shift self-criticism to self-compassion, regulate emotions, and improve face-to-face contact. Over the past few years, I’ve taught mirror meditation to hundreds of students and they’ve shared some amazing insights with me.

Do you remember the first time you saw yourself in the mirror? Reflections are powerful. As children, we learn to who we are through the reflections of those around us. In fact, psychologists have found that we need face-to-face contact for our social and emotional development. Seeing facial expressions helps us understand our own emotions. And through the back and forth of emotional expression we learn to manage our feelings. We also learn empathy, by sensing, and sometimes even emulating emotions of others, as we’re relating face-to-face.

Yet, our digital technology has drastically changed how we relate to each other — in one sense we are more connected than ever through text and social media. But we aren’t spending as much time looking at each other. In fact, we have far less face to face contact, even with ourselves.

When I go to parties and people ask, “What do you do?” I tell them I’m a mirror gazing expert.

Some turn away believing they’ve spotted a narcissist enabler. Others are intrigued, and sometimes even a bit terrified at the thought of looking at themselves in the mirror.

Did you look in the mirror today?

Do you try to avoid looking at yourself?

Or maybe wish you could stop looking?

I think you’ll agree that mirrors can evoke some strong feelings in us. But they can also be incredibly useful in ways you might not have imagined. In fact, I believe the mirror is one of the most essential tools we have to deal with the challenges in our world today. Because mirrors allow us to come face to face with ourselves. And being reflected is one of the most important and powerful experiences we can have as humans.

A recent Nielsen study found that we spend an average of 11 hours per day face-to-face with our screens. Texting, checking for…