Loving Kindness Meditation (Metta)

Metta, or Loving Kindness meditation, is an ancient mindfulness practice focused on cultivating unconditional kindness and friendliness towards yourself and others. This guided practice starts with grounding and centring and provides instructions on offering metta to a dear friend, yourself, a neutral person and a wider community. Please be gentle with yourself in this practice, especially if the concept is new.

Transcript

So today we're going to be practicing a metta meditation which is a loving kindness meditation and this is a practice in the buddhist tradition to cultivate a sense of loving kindness for yourself and others.

So let yourself start to settle in a comfortable position and you can be sitting or you can be lying down for this and you can close your eyes if you feel okay to do that and you might like to start by taking a few sighing breaths so moving from whatever you've been doing in your day to being in this place and in this guided practice with me.

So you might take a breath in and just hold the breath for a moment at the top and then sigh the breath out letting go of tension preparing yourself to start to tune in and if you feel like you need to move a little bit you're welcome to do that too you might want to shrug your shoulders a few times have a little bit of a wriggle around roll your neck whatever feels good to really land in your body and take this opportunity to notice how you are right now so checking in with how you're beginning in this practice you might feel particular sensations in your body you might be able to sense and feel emotions and then let's start to bring someone to mind who you easily feel a sense of friendship towards so it could be a dear friend it could be a family member a partner a child it could be a pet it could be any being that comes to mind perhaps choosing the first one that comes to mind and really holding an image of them in your mind's eye whether that's a person or an animal and noticing how you feel as you bring them to mind perhaps it's the qualities that you like about them you might feel like placing a hand over your heart maybe a hand on your belly the tuning in to the sensation of how you feel when you bring this being to mind and really starting to cultivate a sense of wishing this being well so this sense of friendliness that's being offered to that loved one it's an unconditional friendliness no matter what is happening in their life right now or what's happening in your own life there's this wish for them to be well and to be happy and I invite you to repeat some phrases in your mind and I'll guide you through some phrases but if you want to use your own you're welcome to and imagine that you're really saying these words to this loved one may you be happy may you be safe and free from harm may you be well in body and mind and may your life be filled with joy and with ease and so repeating those words for your own may you be happy may you be safe and free from harm may you be well in your body and in your mind and may your life be filled with joy and ease and you can repeat those like a little silent mantra you might visualize yourself as you breathe in inviting that real sense of love and kindness into your own heart and as you breathe out sending that to this loved one this being to which you offer unconditional kindness and just notice here if there's any sensation that you feel as you do this practice and it's totally okay if there isn't anything and then gently letting the image of that person go as best you can start to bring your attention towards yourself now that might be imagining that you're looking at yourself in the mirror perhaps imagining that you're sitting across from yourself or looking down on yourself and just notice how you feel as you hold this image of yourself in your mind's eye and how that might feel different to the way that you were with the loved one or the pet and turning the practice now towards really befriending yourself and offering those same wishes of well-being and kindness just as you did to your dear friend or your loved one acknowledging that you deserve happiness and well-being and freedom just as much as anyone else and so perhaps with your hand on your heart again repeating the phrases may I be happy may I be safe and free from harm may I be well in body and mind and may my life be filled with joy and with ease and repeating those phrases or perhaps there are others that resonate for you noticing how it feels to offer this unconditional friendliness towards yourself may I be happy,

May I be well,

May I be safe,

May I be free,

May I live with joy and ease may I love myself exactly as I am and now very gently letting that image of yourself go just taking a breath and now inviting into your mind's eye a stranger so this could be somebody that you see perhaps in the street or in your community,

In a shop,

You don't know them very well at all so it could be someone that you don't have strong feelings towards either way you don't dislike them but they're not a dear friend and when you have someone that comes to mind just hold them there maybe visualize an image of them or just a sense of them and just as you offered loving kindness towards your dear friend or towards yourself can you offer this unconditional friendliness to this neutral person in their simple humanness repeating the phrases may you be happy may you be well in body and mind,

May you be safe and free from harm may your life be filled with joy and with ease and noticing once again how it feels to offer loving kindness to this person and continuing to repeat those phrases silently to the image of this person in your mind and if your mind starts to wander just gently bringing it back to this practice repeating the mantra may you be happy may you be safe and free from harm may you be well may your life be filled with joy and ease breathing that sense of loving kindness that unconditional friendliness into your own heart and then offering it out to this neutral person in your life and now letting that image of this person go and you can now start to expand your awareness perhaps to your immediate surroundings depending on where you are right now you might have other people in your house or the building that you're in you might expand out that awareness to take in the other people in the street or the town community that you're in and perhaps acknowledging that there are beings in this circle of expansion that you may have challenges with,

May find challenging you have a sense of a of a group of people surrounding you they might be physically near you or maybe it's more of a virtual circle and taking this opportunity to offer this unconditional friendliness and kindness that you've cultivated and sending that out to this group of people may you all be happy may you all be safe and free from harm may you all be well in body and mind may your lives be filled with joy and with ease noticing if there's any difficulty or challenge in this and sometimes simply the the phrase may your heart be at peace can be a nice one to offer and you might expand your awareness out even more imagining that you're taking in the whole of your country of your region of the whole globe offering loving kindness out to all humans everywhere to all beings everywhere offering loving kindness to the land and the seas and perhaps imagining there that there's someone else out there in the world that's offering loving kindness back to you without knowing you without knowing anything about you but simply offering it to you because you're right here on this planet whatever might be going on in their life or whatever might be going on in your life it's laid to the side offering unconditional friendliness and kindness and love and seeing if maybe with a hand on your heart you can receive that perhaps repeating may we all be happy may we all be safe and free from harm may we all be well in body and in mind and may our lives be filled with joy and with ease and just for a moment if it feels okay with you you might like to just turn the corners of your mouth up slightly be the corners of the eyes perhaps even imagining the corners of your heart like lifting up towards your shoulders taking a really nice long breath in and letting that breath out smooth and slow letting those images go and just starting to really bring your attention back into your body again if you're sitting you might feel your feet on the ground perhaps feeling your body on the earth bringing a bit of movement back in if you like rolling the shoulders wriggling the fingers and toes and tuning back in checking back in with how you're feeling physically emotionally mentally and listening into any insights or any wisdom that you might have gathered up from this practice and whenever you're ready to you can let your head bow gently let your eyes slowly start to blink open and as you lift your gaze just taking in the room or the setting around you really slowly letting yourself come back into your own space and moving on with your day whatever that might bring i'm wishing you lots and lots of love as you go about that thank you so much for practicing with me today again my name is emily and i hope that i get to practice again with you again soon okay