Being in the spirit of Valentine’s Day and riding on the love wave, I thought it would be fun to explore Loving Kindness Meditation.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve been hearing and seeing a lot about all of the health benefits of meditation. There are apps now to make it even easier for you.
There is a lot of different types of meditation – Transcendental, Kundalini, Mindfulness, and Guided Visualization, to name a few.
Many types of meditation have you focus on your breath, your awareness, or visualizing something in your mind’s eye.
Loving Kindness Meditation has you focus on compassion and love and what that feels like in your body.
There is a common set of words that are used for this meditation.
Here is a script to get you started:
Sit in a comfortable position for you. Take a few deep slow breaths.
Start with yourself first. Give yourself the feeling of compassion while saying these words aloud:
May I be safe and free from harm.
May I be happy and free from stress.
May I be healthy and free from pain.
May I be able to live in this world peacefully and joyfully
The next target is someone that is easy to love.
Choose someone other than your romantic partner so that you don’t experience feelings of romantic love or lust. Choose a friend, child or family member.
May you be safe and free from harm.
May you be happy and free from stress.
May you be healthy and free from pain.
May you be able to live in this world peacefully and joyfully.
The next target is a neutral target.
You can choose one person that you don’t know very well or you can choose a group of people that you don’t know. For example, you could choose the person in line behind you at the store yesterday or everyone that lives in Miami, Florida. The goal is to choose someone that you don’t feel anything towards.
May you be safe and free from harm.
May you be happy and free from stress.
May you be healthy and free from pain.
May you be able to live in this world peacefully and joyfully.
The next target is a difficult target.
Think of someone that has hurt you very deeply.
Maybe they betrayed your trust or abused you physically or emotionally. Maybe someone took advantage of you or simply ignored you. Choose someone that it is difficult to feel compassion and forgiveness towards.
May you be safe and free from harm.
May you be happy and free from stress.
May you be healthy and free from pain.
May you be able to live in this world peacefully and joyfully.
Finally, offer your compassion to the entire world. Imagine your compassion as a light that shines from your heart and encompasses the entire globe.
May everyone be safe and free from harm.
May everyone be happy and free from stress.
May everyone be healthy and free from pain.
May everyone be able to live in this world peacefully and joyfully.
What can you expect to feel after practicing this? Here are 18 Science-Based reasons to practice Loving Kindness Meditation.
Need a little extra help? Here’s a 5 minute guided version of it.
There’s an abundance of different versions and options on YouTube. Find one that speaks to you or record yourself saying the script above.
