Loving-Kindness And Compassion: May We Enjoy An Open Heart
by Lynn Fraser
To cultivate peace, lovingkindness, and compassion, it’s essential to regulate our nervous system so we can move beyond the fight/flight/freeze response. Practicing lovingkindness—starting with ourselves, extending to those we care about, and eventually including others—helps us reconnect with a sense of kind connection. Once you’ve listened to the entire practice, you may choose to focus directly on the phrases (starting at 2:30). Feel free to pause the recording at any time to deepen your experience with any particular phrase.
Transcript
Loving kindness and compassion,
To remind ourselves of the humanity of people who might be rubbing us the wrong way.
Give ourselves that opportunity to regulate our nervous system.
We're connected with our heart.
We can put a hand or two hands on your heart center.
Compassion is not really available to us if we're in a fight,
Flight,
Freeze,
Or fawn state.
So in order to come into a state of connection through compassion,
We actually have to be pretty regulated.
We have to be here and be not in a state of feeling threatened.
We can be aware of that,
And also that's not an on-off switch.
When we feel in a fight,
Flight,
Freeze,
Fawn,
In a survival mode,
There's reasons for that.
If we're feeling hypervigilant,
There's reasons for that.
And so part of the practice that we do is we come in and we regulate our nervous system.
That openheartedness,
Compassion,
And loving kindness become more available.
So let's look around the space that we're in.
Let's notice the body that we're in.
If you're enjoying looking around,
Probably your body is also relaxing.
If it's kind of neutral,
It won't have too much effect.
But if you've had a very compulsive mind,
If you're worrying about something,
Then just looking around can be very helpful because it helps us to come into this moment.
And in this moment,
What we're doing is a practice.
It's very helpful for us to do practices so we can appreciate ourselves for that.
There are other people in the world who care about being present and kind and loving and openhearted.
I mean,
That's a wonderful thing to know.
So if we were to breathe in and breathe out and let ourselves feel that in our body,
Maybe your breath has a bit more ease,
Shoulders tend to relax or soften.
So let's start with traditional loving kindness practice.
There's so many different phrases that we use for this.
We offer that to ourselves,
To people we care about,
To other people and to all beings.
Feel free to change what I'm saying if you want to do that.
Let's start with,
May I be well and at peace.
Just listen to the words and let them land in your brain,
But also in your heart and your body.
May I be well and at peace.
And then bring to mind somebody you really care about or maybe a few somebodies.
May my friend be well and at peace.
And send that out to them.
Imagine your friend or friends feeling well and at peace.
And may others that I don't know as well,
Other people that come to mind,
May they be well and no peace.
Holding that aspiration for them.
May they be well and no peace.
And may all beings everywhere be well and no peace.
Notice your breath,
Notice your body.
May I know a settled mind,
Free from worry and catastrophic thinking.
May I know a settled mind,
Free from worry and catastrophic thinking.
Let yourself feel that.
Bring to mind people you care about.
May they be free from worry and catastrophic thinking.
You might visualize,
Look on their face,
Their body language,
Or send that out from your heart to their heart.
May they be free from worry and catastrophic thinking.
And then sending that out to other people who we don't know or don't know as well.
People who are like us,
We all want to be free.
May they be free from worry and catastrophic thinking.
May they be free from worry and catastrophic thinking.
And may all beings everywhere be free from worry and catastrophic thinking.
May I be strong and resilient.
Let yourself feel that.
Stay in touch with your body,
Your breath.
May I be strong and resilient.
May I be strong and resilient.
Take a moment to really feel that in your whole system.
May I be strong and resilient.
Bring to mind people you care about.
Might be the same people or different people.
Could be one person or a group.
May they be strong and resilient.
May they be strong and resilient.
Let that intention come to life in your heart for them and extend that blessing to them.
May they be strong and resilient.
Visualize their face or whatever comes to mind when you think of that person or group of people you really care about.
May they know the feeling of strength and resilience.
And then for people everywhere,
People you know,
People you don't know.
May we all know that steadiness,
That groundedness of strength and resilience.
May everyone know strength and resilience.
Feel strong,
Grounded,
Capable.
People in your community or in your country that you don't know.
People all around the world,
May they know the feeling of strength and resilience.
May all beings everywhere know strength and resilience.
May I know the joy of an open heart.
If you want,
You could put your hands on your heart or you could open your arms.
May I know the joy of an open heart.
Let yourself feel that in your whole body and especially in your heart.
May I know the joy of an open heart.
And may my good friend or friends,
The people I care about,
May they know the joy of an open heart.
Bring them to mind,
Imagine the look on their face,
The joy of an open heart.
And then other people that I don't know,
People in my area,
People around the world,
May they know the joy of an open heart.
Let yourself really feel into that,
In your own open heart,
To your friends,
People you love and other people all over the world.
May we all know the joy of an open heart.
And may all beings everywhere know the joy of an open heart.
May I be kind and compassionate with myself.
We'll pause here and really feel into that.
May I be kind and compassionate with myself.
We would have to change right now for you to have that sense of patience,
Kindness,
Connection,
Self-compassion.
Maybe the inner critic would have to lessen its vehemence.
Maybe you could bring in some kindness.
Give yourself a break,
Be on your own side.
Feel into that,
That feeling of being kind and compassionate with myself.
And even if it's a little bit pretend at the moment,
Feel into that at least a little bit.
We all do that.
We all have that capacity.
Yeah,
I feel open-hearted towards myself.
Be kinder,
More compassionate,
More connected.
Let yourself feel into that.
And without getting too engaged in thoughts,
Really feel into that.
May I be kind and compassionate with myself.
And bringing to mind the people I love,
May they be kind and compassionate with themselves.
We might bring in one person and then another or a whole group of people.
So what if we were all more kind and compassionate with ourselves,
This group of people we care about?
Let yourself feel into that.
What would change?
And sending that wish out as a blessing.
May they,
These people I care about,
May they be kind and compassionate with themselves.
And extending that to other people all around the world,
In our community,
People we don't know,
Maybe even people that we have a hard heart towards.
Extend that wishing,
That blessing,
That all of these people would feel kindness and compassion towards themselves.
Really feeling into that energy in our heart.
May all beings everywhere be kinder and more compassionate to themselves.
May I be happy and at peace.
May I be happy and at peace.
May the people I know and care about be happy and at peace.
Extending that blessing to the people I know and care about,
May they be happy and at peace.
And extending that out to all people everywhere,
In my community,
Around the world.
May they be happy and at peace.
The people I care about,
The people I don't know,
The people I don't like,
Can I extend to them the wish,
The blessing,
To be happy and at peace.
And to all beings everywhere,
May we all know happiness and peace.
Let's pause and really feel into that in our body right now.
Notice if there's anything that has changed,
Maybe some parts of your body have softened.
Notice your breath.
We can't really have these experiences of happiness and peace if we have a active nervous system,
If we're feeling hypervigilant.
We go into fight,
Flight,
Freeze,
Fawn,
Which are survival mechanisms.
And when we can have a more grounded,
Settled nervous system,
Then this openheartedness,
Joy,
Happiness,
Peace become available to us.
Kindness,
Compassion.
What was your experience like?
What came up for you?
What felt really natural?
What didn't?
What insights came in?
One of the ways that we can be kind with ourselves is to not judge ourselves if we're not as openhearted as we would like.
We all have these ways of experiencing the world and there's a lot of threat and danger in the world.
There's a lot of people who feel threatening to us and who are,
And we're not pretending.
And in this practice,
We're just practicing extending the blessings to ourselves,
To those we care about and to those we don't know who might be neutral or those who might not be neutral,
Who might be somebody that we have trouble with.
And then to all beings.
What comes forward?
What insights came forward?
What did you notice?
One of the ways that we might notice that is we notice that,
Well,
I was holding my breath or truthfully,
I wasn't feeling very openhearted towards that group of people.
So we have these multiple layers of being and one of those layers is our nervous system,
Which is always trying to protect us from harm.
It's not wrong.
And we have this openheartedness,
This more grounded intuitive wisdom as well.
If we're emotionally dysregulated,
We're not gonna have capacity to feel really openhearted.
We're gonna be trying to protect ourselves.
So that's something that we could be kind with ourselves about.
Right now,
I'm not feeling very openhearted.
I'm feeling like I could really use a break from all of the strife and the fear and the anxiety.
So we could be kind that that's what's going on.
Notice your whole body,
Your breath,
Your being.
This is such a beautiful practice to see what's going on and what might be holding us back and also to practice being more openhearted.
That's something that can ripen and develop and become richer as we do the practice more,
As we move through the day.
It's not a one and done.
It's something that we are always kind of opening into.
Being patient and kind with ourselves is definitely a shortcut to that.
4.9 (25)
Recent Reviews
Jessica
December 10, 2024
I really appreciated the nervous system perspective on loving kindness, it helped me understand why it is sometimes a challenging practice. And as always you guide with so much compassion. Thank you!