Metta Compassionate Loving Kindness Practice

This is a metta compassionate loving kindness practice that is perfect for bringing mindful self-compassion to yourself, to your friends and family, to your community and the world around you. If you're looking to bring more loving kindness into your life, and to share that with others, this is the perfect practice for you.

Transcript

This is a meta practice for compassionate loving-kindness,

For expressing this to yourself,

For those around you,

For your community,

And also for the world.

So let's begin by finding ourselves in a nice comfortable seated position.

Just allow yourself to let go and come into the place where we are here and now.

So you're welcome to either close your eyes or find a nice soft focus,

Whatever feels right for you today,

And then just allow yourself to settle into the space where we are here and now,

Beginning to bring our attention and focus inward,

Reconnecting with the body,

Mind,

And spirit.

Just allowing yourself to be present and aware to where we are here and now.

Let's start by bringing a little attention and focus to our stability and our strength in our alignment.

So bringing attention and focus to our spine and our vertebrae,

Let's start by grounding and rooting into the earth beneath us.

So bringing your attention and focus to your sit bones and just noticing your connection and the weight of your own body,

Either sitting in the chair or on the mat or on the floor,

Wherever you are,

And just noticing that connection with the earth beneath you,

Noticing that support.

And then from here,

Let's start to bring our mind's eye up through the back of the spine,

So scanning vertebrae by vertebrae,

Allowing your mind's eye to travel up through the spine,

So through the lower back,

Into the mid-back,

Through the upper back and shoulders,

Perhaps rolling the shoulders back and down.

Continuing to scan up through the spine vertebrae by vertebrae,

Up through the back of the neck,

Into the back of the skull,

And up through the top of the crown of the head.

And allow yourself to lift with the top of the head up towards the ceiling,

Creating some beautiful length and energy with the back of the spine,

Head,

Neck,

And shoulders directly over the hips.

Just noticing that beautiful,

Contrasting energy with the lifted,

Lightened energy up towards the ceiling,

And then the rooted,

Grounded energy through the sit bones,

Creating a beautiful length and spine for your support.

And once we've created that beautiful length and spine,

Let's start to breathe in and out through the nose deeply,

Mindfully,

Allowing ourselves to connect body and breath where we are here and now.

And with each deep breath,

Allowing yourself to relax a little bit more,

Settling into this space where we are here and now.

And bringing our focus and attention to that breath,

Breathing in and out deeply.

On our next inhale,

Let's breathe in together through the nose,

And then releasing out through the mouth with a sigh.

Beautiful,

Just letting everything go.

Let's do another breath just like that.

In through the nose,

And releasing out through the mouth with a sigh.

And one more in through the nose,

And releasing out through the mouth.

Beautiful.

So now that we've let everything go,

We've reconnected with body and breath,

Let's bring our focus and attention inward,

Just noticing that breath,

Breathing in and out through the body.

Noticing the sensation of the breath,

Perhaps the gentle rise and fall of the chest.

Just allowing our focus and attention to remain on this breath,

Breathing in and out,

Allowing our focus attention just to remain rested on the breathing in and out of the breath.

And then we'll begin our metta loving kindness practice.

So continuing with our mind's eye and our attention inward,

I'm just going to lead us through a gentle mindful practice,

Almost as a mantra or an affirmation.

I'll guide us through some loving kindness words and thoughts.

Just allow that attention and focus to tune inward on your own breath,

As well as the words that I'm guiding us through.

So continuing to breathe in and out mindfully and deeply in and out through the nose.

And now allowing our focus to tune inward,

Listening to this guided meditation.

May I be well,

Healthy and whole.

May I be happy and content.

May I be loved.

May I love and be loving.

May I feel comfort and joy.

May I feel complete.

Taking a few moments here to allow those thoughts and focus to rest on ourselves.

And next we'll allow ourselves to offer those words of compassion and kindness to someone that you love.

So see if you can visualize or imagine someone that you love very deeply.

This can be a friend or family member,

Whatever feels right at this moment.

Just allow whoever that is to come into your mind's eye and rest your focus on that person.

May you be well,

Healthy and whole.

May you be happy and content.

May you be loved.

May you love and be loving.

May you feel comfort and joy.

May you feel complete.

Breathing in and out and allowing that intention to rest on that beautiful person that you love.

Now I'd invite you to find someone that you'd like to focus on that perhaps is an acquaintance of yours that you know but maybe not well.

Just allow whoever that is to pop into your mind now and visualize that person as we offer these loving,

Compassionate words to this person that you may or may not know that well.

May you be well,

Healthy and whole.

May you be happy and content.

May you be loved.

May you love and be loving.

May you feel comfort and joy.

May you feel complete.

I'm just allowing a few moments of breath to remain on that person and then next allow yourself to visualize a person that perhaps you may be struggling with or finding a little difficult or challenging.

Whatever that occurrence is,

Whoever that person is,

Just allow your mind's eye to bring them up at this moment as we send them words of blessing,

Kindness and compassion.

May you be well,

Healthy and whole.

May you be happy and content.

May you be loved.

May you love and be loving.

May you feel comfort and joy.

May you feel complete.

Taking a few more breaths to honor that person that you've just visualized.

And next I'd like you to envision your community.

This can certainly be the place that you live or perhaps the place that you work or maybe this is a group that you interact with quite often.

Whatever that happens to be,

Just bring that community into your mind's eye at this moment and we'll offer that community some words of compassion,

Love and kindness.

May this community be well,

Healthy and whole.

May this community be happy and content.

May this community be loved.

May this community love and be loving.

May this community feel comfort and joy.

May this community feel complete.

Taking a few more moments and breaths with that focus on your community.

And then finally I'd like to offer our loving compassionate words to our beautiful world,

Our beautiful universe and our beautiful existence.

So bringing your mind's eye and attention to the world and whatever that means for you.

Let's offer words of compassion,

Love and kindness.

May our world be well,

Healthy and whole.

May our world be happy and content.

May our world be loved.

May our world love and be loving.

May our world feel comfort and joy.

May our world feel complete.

Taking a few more breaths with loving compassion for our world.

And then continuing our breath,

Perhaps breathing in a little bit deeper in and out through the nose.

Once again allowing our mind,

Body and spirit and breath just to reconnect,

Realign,

Noticing our presence in the space where we are here and now.

Lengthening those breaths and allowing yourself to come back into that space.

And then closing our practice the same way we began.

Let's bring in our breath,

Breathing in and out through the nose.

Let's take a nice deep inhale together on our next breath in and then releasing out through the mouth with a sigh.

Let's do another breath in like that in through the nose and releasing out through the mouth with a sigh.

And then a final breath just for you in through the nose and releasing out.

And then closing our practice today let's bring our hands together at our heart center in prayer with gratitude and appreciation for taking this moment to care for ourselves,

To care for those around us and to care for our world with loving compassionate kindness.

Thank you all for joining me today.

I hope you have a beautiful blessed rest of your afternoon,

Evening or morning wherever you are.

With love and light always,

The light in me salutes the light in each one of you.

Namaste.

Reviews

Beautiful - thank you 🙌

Lovely and comforting— thanks

This is the most beautiful of Metta meditations! I have been struggling with this practice lately, but I discovered this one and it really helped me to open and resonated with me quite deeply. Thank you sooo much 🧘🏾‍♀️💕

So so beautiful, such a kind, gentle loving voice and a warm soul. I love the grounding at the start and the journey up the spine. I think this has just become my favourite loving kindness meditation ;) Thank you xxx

Simply beautiful!