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.