Welcome to this meditation for cultivating kindness with Erin Lee.
This meditation accompanies the Little Book of Big Intentions.
Finding a comfortable seat or laying down,
An invitation to close down the eyes or if you choose to keep them open,
Then let your gaze rest softly on something ahead of you without any striving.
Beginning to scan your physical body,
Let's begin at the feet without having to adjust anything,
Just noticing the existence of the toes,
The soles,
The tops of your feet,
The backs of your feet,
Without wanting anything to be different from how it is right now,
Just noticing your feet.
Moving up the legs now,
Allowing your awareness to sweep across your ankles,
Shins,
Calves,
Up to the knees.
Noticing any sensations that appear along the way,
Allowing any felt sensations to awaken you to the aliveness of your body in this moment.
But doing your best not to act on any impulses or any desires to change anything,
Just noticing your body as it exists in this moment here and now.
Now moving the awareness from the knees up the thighs,
Around the backs of the upper legs,
The hamstrings and resting your spacious attention on the backs of the hips as you breathe in here,
And opening your mouth allowing an exhale to fall out.
Allow your next breath in to carry the quality of kindness all the way down to the fronts of your hips and abdomen now,
And on the out-breath see if the lower back can release a little more,
Relaxing any unnecessary tension.
Continuing to breathe like this,
Inhaling kindness and exhaling to soften,
Inhaling kindness,
Exhaling to soften.
Moving the awareness now up the length of the spine,
Lower back,
Mid-back,
Upper back,
All the way to the base of the skull.
Allowing your awareness to become more spacious now as you examine the skin on your head.
Does it feel tense or relaxed,
Tight or tender?
Just noticing the skin on the head and as you breathe in and out here,
See if you can create a little more space between all the hair follicles on your scalp.
A very subtle sense of expansiveness or a sense of release,
Softening.
Kindness is a quality that gets felt in its expression without even having to speak a word.
So imagine now that you're allowing kindness to ooze its warm nectar across any tension that's present on your scalp,
Across your forehead,
Down the face,
The eyes,
Nose,
Cheeks,
Lips,
Inside the mouth,
The chin.
Allowing tension to slowly release,
Taking in a deep breath of kindness,
Opening your mouth,
Allowing the exhale to simply fall out.
Allow the nectar of kindness to ooze its way down your shoulders,
Like a warmth that travels down the length of the arms and hands,
All the way to the fingertips.
And kindness is here to awaken your heart.
As you keep your shoulders relaxed and your heart open,
Consider the goodness that exists within you.
The awareness placed on your heart,
Remembering that in a world of diversity and duality,
Differing opinions and so much guardedness,
So much armor,
Maybe even the armor that you've built around your own heart,
Kindness even accepts that this is okay.
And herein lies an invitation for us to lean into difficulties and challenges with a greater sense of tenderness.
Feel into the softening of your heart now as you breathe in and breathe out.
Taking a deep breath of kindness in here,
Opening your mouth and allow the exhale to simply fall out and continuing to feel the softening of your heart as it awakens through kindness.
Breathing in kindness,
Breathing out kindness.
Taking a deeper breath into the belly now and letting a long breath go.
Placing one hand on the heart,
The other on your belly and giving thanks to yourself for making time to cultivate kindness.
