The lived experience of self-compassion among participants in the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program: A hermeneutic phenomenological study

Purpose: This study explored how adults who participated in a Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program experience self-compassion, and interpreted the meaning structure of that experience to reveal its underlying essence.

Methods: Van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology was adopted. Data were collected from three adults who had completed a standard MSC program through individual written accounts and two group in-depth interviews, and were analyzed through the four existentials of lived body, lived time, lived space, and lived relation.

Results: Self-compassion was not a matter of acquiring a new skill or reaching a particular emotional state, but an existential experience of reorienting one’s relationship with oneself. It emerged as participants became aware of their present selves through bodily sensation; took shape over time through repeated wavering and returning; was fostered in a space where the pressures of evaluation and achievement were suspended; and unfolded as understanding oneself extended into understanding others. These four dimensions converged into a single movement, whose essence was interpreted as “a mind that turns back against the current”—a turning away from the familiar direction that had continually driven participants forward, and a return to the self as it is in the present.

Conclusion: Self-compassion is understood not as a fixed psychological trait but as an existential way of being. Self-compassion-based programs should cultivate a safe environment in which the burdens of evaluation and achievement are suspended, and should respect participants’ life contexts and their own pace.