Loving kindness meditation

Dear friends, you may be familiar with the Loving Kindness Meditation ~ or Metta. Here I offer Tara Brach’s version of this meditation witch i’ve been using for many years. My current favorite version and also my favorite meditation teacher. It increases feelings of warmth and kindness towards others, a sense of self-love, self-worth, and offers an overall calming and deepening of being…

You can incorporate the practice of loving-kindness into your daily life. If you feel exhausted, if you feel fear… You can stop for a moment. Become aware of your heart and internally offer yourself a wish. You can say to yourself: May I be happy. May I accept myself exactly as I am. May I feel peaceful and safe. You can also place your hand on the heart area and then observe what happens when you offer yourself kindness.

Likewise, you can use this practice to send your wishes to someone you care about. And during the day, whenever you remember, send him or her a simple good wish. After a week, you’ll see how your feelings toward that person have changed. And also how their behaviour towards you has changed. With practice, your relationships with yourself and with others will become permeated with fresh openness and care.

Here is the mentioned meditation

Please find a posture that allows you to be relaxed and at ease. Scanning through your body let go of whatever tension you can. You might loosen through the shoulders. Soften your hands. Relax your belly. You can create an atmosphere of loving-kindness in the body with the image of a smile. First just imagine a vast blue sky, a sky that extends in all directions. And sense that sky filled with the curve of a smile. Warm, bright, open. And now let that ease and openness be felt through the whole mind. A smile filling the mind. So that your thoughts, your whole mental life just floats in this receptive space.

Smile into the eyes. you might feel the corners of the eyes up a biting a smile. Softening the flesh around the eyes. Relaxing the jaw and feeling the half smile of the Buddha, very slight but a real smile at the lips. And also sense the inside of your mouth smiling. This has been described as smile yoga because it lets your nervous system to relax fight/flight and just open to a quality of ease and well-being. The eyes are smiling, the mouth is smiling. A smile into your heart. Sense the curve of the smile at the heart and spreading through the chest. Not to cover over anything but to create a space that really can hold this life. You might feel yourself breathing gently in and out of the heart area. And let the sense of a smile just spread in all directions through the body, the arms relaxed, the belly, the legs. Open, receptive, at ease. With your attention centered at the heart, spring to mind someone in your life you find easy to feel loved with. They might be someone who you trust, fully loves and accepts you. A parent, a friend, a child, a teacher, your pet. Or it might be a being that arouses your love, your protectiveness like a child, again a pet or a friend who is vulnerable. Whoever you’ve brought to mind sense that beings goodness, what makes him or her dear to you. What brings up your sense of care. It might be how this person expresses their love, their humor, their aliveness, their care. Feel that being right close in so that you can look at his or her eyes and sense those eyes as they gaze at you expressing their warmth, their brightness, their goodness. And just let yourself take in that beings love.

Feel now in your own heart, in a visceral way, how your experience your love for this being. The warmth, the openness. And as you do, begin to mentally whisper your prayers of care. You might first whisper the person’s name. And i’ll be offering some phrases, you can repeat them or feel free to adapt them however you’d like.

May you be filled with loving-kindness, held in loving-kindess. May you realise loving-kindness as your essence. May you be happy. May you accept yourself just as you are. May you feel peaceful and safe. May your heart and mind awaken and be free.

And again as you offer the phrases you might imagine this person receiving your messages of care.

May you be filled with loving-kindness, held in loving-kindness. May you realise loving-kindness as your essence. May you be happy. May you accept yourself just as you are. May you feel peaceful and safe. May your heart and mind awaken and be free.

Now bringing your attention to your own being, allow yourself to remember and open up to your basic goodness. You might do this by bringing to mind times you’ve been kind or generous. You might recall your natural desire to be happy and not to suffer. Your longing to spiritually awaken. To know truth. To love well. You might honour your essential wakefulness, aliveness, honesty, love. If you find that acknowledging your own goodness is difficult then look at yourself thru the eyes of someone who knows and loves you. What does that person see about you? love about you? You might also bring to mind a spiritual figure, a being that embodies the beloved such as the Buddha or Quan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion, The Divine Mother, Jesus. To see yourself with this beings wise and loving eyes.

When you’ve connected with a sense of your essential goodness, rest in a tender appreciation for a few moments. Now with a silent whisper, begin offering yourself love and kindness through prayers of care. If you’d like you can gently place your hand on top of your heart as a way of deepening this communication to your own being. As you repeat each phrase sense the meaning of the words and let them arise from the sincerity of your heart. Please feel free to just the phrases offered here.

May i be filled with loving-kindness, held in loving-kindness. May i realise loving-kindness as my essence. May i be happy. May i accept myself just as i am. May i feel peaceful and safe. May my heart and mind awaken and be free.

Again repeating the phrases and if you find any resistance, any sense of being underserving, unworthy let that to be held in loving-kindness. If it helps try whispering the phrases out loud. But most importantly sense your intention to open your heart to your own being.

May i be filled with loving-kindness. Held in loving-kindness. May i realise loving-kindness as my essence. May i be happy. May i accept myself just as i am. May i feel peaceful and safe. May my heart and mind awaken and be free.

And again as you repeat the phrases connect to the meaning of these wishes through whatever images might arise, through a felt sense in your body.

Now allow your awareness to open out in all directions. Opening out in front of you. To either side, behind you. Below and above. Let awareness extend out infinitely in all directions. And in this vast space sense that your loving presence is holding all beings. Those that you know well. Those that are unknown to you. All species. Imagine that you can hold the earth, our mother in your lap and include all life everywhere in your boundless heart. Aware of the joys and sorrows that all beings experience. Once again offering your prayers.

May all beings be filled with loving-kindness. May all beings be happy. May all beings touch great and natural peace. May there be peace on earth, peace everywhere. May all beings awaken and be free.

Full version of this meditation by Tara on youtube >>
You can find many resources for mindfulness practice on Tara Brach’s website: tarabrach.com

I wish you all the best! Gabriela, Yoga From Living Room

PS: You can also record the meditation and then play it, or ask someone to read it…