Welcome to session 9,
Loving kindness.
Today we're going to be doing a slightly different meditation so this is going to be a different technique and style to the one that we've been practicing over the last few sessions but it's a very useful one.
Neuroscientific studies have shown that practicing loving kindness meditation regularly can have a profound effect on increasing compassion and empathy towards others as well as to improving feelings of mental well-being as well.
So in the session we're going to be bringing to mind various people in our lives that we know and we're mentally going to be repeating the phrase may you be happy,
May you be free from suffering,
May all of your dreams come true and then when you're mentally saying and repeating this phrase doing your best to actually feel feelings of goodwill and positivity towards the people that you are thinking about.
So as always beginning with your eyes open sit with a relaxed but alert posture making sure the back is straight and then just checking in with yourself see how your mind and body both feel and then when you're ready just taking three deep in breaths through the nose and out through the mouth in and out in and out in and then closing your eyes on the out breath start to notice the weight of your body heaviness of the legs your torso your arms and your head and see if you can notice any sounds and then when you're ready gently bring someone to mind who you have very positive feelings for someone that you love or someone that you care deeply about visualize them as much as you can in your mind and then just internally repeating the phrase may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true and really imagine what it would be like for the person that you care so deeply about if their dreams did come true and how it would make you feel and now just bring someone else to mind you care deeply about who you have very positive feelings towards again visualize them in your mind and again just repeating may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true notice how you feel in your body when you're wishing this person well do you feel any different may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true if you feel any feelings of positivity or happiness at this stage that's great just see if you can stay with them as much as possible and if they're not there that's fine too just continue with the practice now bring to mind a stranger so this could be someone that you walked past on the street today could have been someone in a shop you visited it could have been the postman someone that you don't really know bring them to mind and again wish this person well may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true and again imagining what it would be like for this person for all of their dreams to come true and how that would make you feel may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true again just noticing how you feel inside as this practice progresses now bring to mind and visualize someone that you actively dislike this could be a politician it could be someone who you've fallen out with anyone that you have negative feelings towards just visualize them in your mind and again we're gonna wish them well saying may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true even if you think you dislike this person you really don't know what their life has been like and for all intents and purposes if you had their life you probably would have behaved in exactly the same way as they have so in the spirit of compassion still wishing this person well and now bring to mind everyone spreading compassion and positivity for all beings all human beings all animals everything and everyone on this planet and just say may all beings be happy may all beings be free from suffering may the dreams of all beings come true mean really why wouldn't you want this for everyone and everything to be happy on this planet so really feeling it in your body as you say the words may you be happy may you be free from suffering may all of your dreams come true just check in with your body and see how it feels having wished so many people well and if you can make that feeling grow and expand and then just gently direct attention towards yourself and give yourself permission to be happy allow yourself to be free from suffering and hope that all of your dreams will come true it says a lot and it's interesting that most people find this part of the meditation wishing yourself well much harder than the other parts when we're even wishing enemies well this probably alludes to how hard many of us are on ourselves in our daily lives so again wishing for yourself to be happy for yourself to be free from suffering and hoping that all of your dreams will come true and then just letting go of all effort entirely allowing the mind to be free to do whatever it wants notice any sounds smells sensations related to sitting and again check in with yourself now how do you feel compared to the beginning of the session and then when you're ready gently opening your eyes this meditation might seem different to the other ones some people love it some people less so in either case I really wouldn't underestimate how powerful it is even if you just add this meditation for two minutes at the end of your daily practice or for two minutes whilst you're sat on the train or bus on the way to work it really can impact your compassion towards other people and indeed towards yourself I hope you enjoyed the session and have a good day
