Cultivate warmth, friendliness, and love by treating them as skills that can be trained through practice, rather than expecting immediate, spontaneous feelings.
Engage in loving kindness meditation without expecting or forcing specific emotions; simply perform the practice and trust that the intention will yield results over time.
If you feel skeptical or averse to loving kindness, consider the scientific research suggesting short daily doses offer physiological, psychological, and behavioral benefits, and its effectiveness as a concentration practice.
When practicing loving kindness for a difficult person, acknowledge their shared humanity and struggles, wishing them well without condoning their actions, believing that happy and safe individuals are less likely to be annoying. Try to see them as a human with their own life and struggles, as if you had grown up in their situation.
When your mind inevitably wanders during meditation, gently guide your attention back to your chosen anchor (e.g., ’there is a body’) without judgment.
Enhance focus during meditation by playfully using brief, one-word mental notes (e.g., ’tightness,’ ‘hearing,’ ’thinking’) to label and acknowledge sensory experiences.
Implement a consistent and formal gratitude practice, such as writing down things you’re grateful for every morning and sharing them with friends, to foster positive emotions.
Incorporate short, daily sessions of loving kindness meditation into your routine to experience a range of health, psychological, and behavioral benefits.
Begin your loving kindness practice by directing warmth towards an ’easy person’ or animal, especially if you struggle with self-compassion, using this as a bridge to focus on yourself later.
Silently repeat the classical loving kindness phrases—‘May you be happy,’ ‘May you be safe,’ ‘May you be healthy and strong,’ ‘May you live with ease’—adapting them as needed for your practice.
When practicing loving kindness for a ‘difficult person,’ select someone who is only mildly annoying, rather than someone you intensely dislike, to make the practice more accessible.
Start your meditation sessions with a round of loving kindness practice before transitioning into more insight-oriented or mindfulness-based meditation.
After loving kindness, shift to an insight practice by using the phrase ’there is a body’ as an anchor to direct your attention to all physical sensations in your body.
For the initial stage of loving kindness, choose a specific animal or person in your life who is genuinely easy for you to love.
When focusing on a person or animal in loving kindness, either visualize their image or conjure a felt sense of them in your body, choosing the method that works best for you.
When directing loving kindness to yourself, visualize your current self, your childhood self, or simply focus on the felt sense of your body in its current posture.
To enhance self-compassion, visualize a specific time when you felt happy while wishing for your own happiness during loving kindness practice.
Direct loving kindness towards a mentor, benefactor, parent, teacher, good friend, or even a historical/public figure if a personal mentor isn’t readily available.
Include a neutral person—someone you see regularly but have no strong emotional connection to (e.g., a barista, cashier, distant colleague)—in your loving kindness practice, even if their image is fuzzy.
Conclude your loving kindness meditation by extending wishes to ‘all beings everywhere,’ visualizing the Earth, or experiencing a sense of bodily expansion.
Begin your meditation practice by taking a couple of deep breaths to help settle your mind and prepare for focus.
Consider signing up for the Meditation Party retreat at the Omega Institute in October, with options for in-person or online attendance, by checking the show notes for a link.