Mindfulness practice has been shown to increase our self-awareness and ability to regulate emotions, and improve our relations with others. Mindfulness is an important component of compassion, which requires awareness and clear-seeing into our stress, both as individuals and collectives. Compassion involves acknowledging stress and suffering, combined with the wish or actions to alleviate the stress. One of the ways our society and systems perpetuate suffering is through oppression, which arises when there is a power imbalance, where some groups are over-empowered and other groups are treated as inferior.