4 Loving Kindness Meditations In 1
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Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. My name is Sean Fargo, and today's episode is definitely one of my favorite episodes we've ever recorded. We've done about 180, 190 episodes over the years, and this one is one of my favorites, and I hope that you enjoy it. We're going to be talking about loving kindness for ourselves and for others.

We're going to be talking about what it means to cultivate a sense of how natural it is to not quite feel it all the time. Some of the barriers that we have to opening our hearts, whether it's to ourselves or to others. And we're going to be doing a guided meditation in which we're

going to be combining four different styles of loving-kindness that I've learned over the years that are probably the most popular forms of loving-kindness meditation. I'm really curious which one will resonate with you the most. I certainly have my preferences, but I'd love to learn which one really resonated with you,

So please let us know in a review of our podcast episode or in a comment section somewhere, or just email me. My email is sean at mindfulnessexercises.com. So I'd love to hear from you and I'm wishing you care and warmth. So I know a lot of us are going through tough times right now and we all need that

empathy and acceptance and care. So without further ado, let's slide into this episode on loving kindness, how to share loving kindness with others, and how to practice it.

I think it may be helpful to talk about loving kindness a little bit before we practice together. And for those of you who'd like to go into a deep dive on this topic, I encourage you to check out the guest teacher workshop

in the members area from Donald Rothberg, who talked about loving kindness and teaching loving kindness or sharing the practice of cultivating care with others, with ourselves. Some people, when we talk about loving kindness or say that we're going to be doing a loving kindness practice,

Some people will resist and sometimes that depends on the day, the mood, rather than just their general feeling on this type of practice. Because sometimes when we're carrying fear,

anger, grief, strong cravings. Loving kindness can feel threatening in some way, or that we're trying to discount what we're feeling. Some people may feel that it's sappy, that it's woo-woo, that it's going to turn us into a doormat. There's so many

reasons why we may not be receptive or open, we're curious about this type of practice. And I think it's helpful to honor that and even to welcome the sense of skepticism sometimes. And it's okay that these are natural reactions and that we all have different coping mechanisms to keep us safe. So if any of you feel resistant to this practice,

That's totally fine. The goal of this practice is not to feel loving fully 100% of the time, or at least that's not the explicit goal for everyone, or it's not the invitation from most teachers. The invitation is to invite the heart to connect with our experience, with other, with ourselves, with

fill in the blank, mother earth, ancestors, you name it, God, everyone's going to want to connect or feel open to connecting with certain things. But the invitation is to like invite the heart to connect. And if it doesn't want to connect, if it's not open to connecting, that's totally fine. We can meet

what's here with hopefully some growing sense of gentleness, allowance, warmth. So we can meet resistance. It's this gentle awareness. And I think many

Mindfulness practitioners feel that mindfulness practice and loving-kindness practice are the same thing. That mindfulness practice and self-compassion practice is the same thing. That mindfulness and sympathetic joy are the same thing. We're connecting with

This unfolding experience with this gentle awareness that sometimes may feel like our heart is bursting with love. Sometimes it's much more subdued to sort of a simple awareness and presence for whatever's here, whether it's resistance or joy, fear or gladness.

The invitation is this gentle awareness and connecting the heart with each other, ourselves, our emotions, etc. And oftentimes there's this element of carrying curiosity, empathy, investigation, sort of a heart-based investigation. Just kind of like sensing, kind of softening into the experience. And sometimes it feels...

light, joyful, sometimes it feels heavy, where we purge. So with every time we practice this, it may feel very different. But it's useful practice to kind of get a sense for what conditions we place on our love. Love for others, our love for ourselves, our love for wild, mysterious life. And we can run into edges of resentment, grief,

judgment, shame. And may we meet these edges with gentleness and continued presence as we breathe. So rather than do loving kindness for say colleagues at work, perhaps today we can do a more general practice and you can sense into whoever you want to sense into, including colleagues, but they don't have to be colleagues.

And as practitioners and as teachers with this practice, it's really helpful to cultivate safe of a place as we can to allow ourselves to feel vulnerable. It can be helpful to gently close the eyes or to look downward and feel into the body to notice these energies that are inside.

these sensations, whether they're pleasant or unpleasant. Just noticing how they feel different parts of the body, to notice how we're breathing, to notice how the heart is feeling, and to invite the heart to connect with this experience, however it is, the sense of gentle, now calling to mind,

A person or an animal makes you smile when you think of them. Perhaps it's a pet, dear friend, yet spiritual figure. That someone or some animal that makes your heart sing when you think of their smiling face. Feeling that warm joy. Spending a moment with this person or animal

in their smiling present, really connecting the sense of care, maybe expressing something to them. Maybe it's gratitude or smile or hug, or just saying, "I love you." Taking a deep breath or two and reconnecting with our body and our heart, just noticing what's here, this gentle awareness.

and now calling to mind a friend, someone you feel generally good about. Maybe they have your back and you have theirs. Maybe calling to mind their face, their smile, or their laugh, and wishing them well, and maybe saying to them, "May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you live with ease."

maybe wishing them well and in our hearts offering them care or love, continued friendship, maybe taking a deep breath or two, really connecting with the body around the heart, just noticing what's here. Now calling to mind someone who we may be having some difficulty, someone where our feelings are a little bit mixed,

Maybe we're feeling a sense of unease around them and noticing what happens in the body with our breath when we think of this person. And may we meet these feelings with a sense of gentle tenderness, allowing ourselves to feel this way, perhaps of curiosity and care, and calling this person to mind, perhaps in the same room as us.

where we look at them in the eye. We can put it over our heart and look at this person in the eye and we can say to them, "You are a human being just like me. You want to be happy just like me. Life is not always easy for you just like me. You want to be appreciated just like me. You're doing your best

even if it's hard for me to understand, just like I am. You want to be healthy, just like me. You want to be loved and accepted for who you are, just like me. Looking them in the eye, conveying some sense of care with boundaries, the intention to stay connected with them as human being, doing,

that's gonna ultimately serve both of you, both of us. Maybe taking a deep breath or two, reconnecting with ourself and our heart, and recalling a time in our own past when we felt really free, alive, when we felt a sense of lightness, wonder, remembering that part of ourselves that's still here. Maybe it's been forgotten,

and covered up, beaten up, or maybe it's still here fully, but inviting that sense of ourself to shine through, to remember what it feels like to be free, to be ourself, to be fully me again, and inviting a sense of love for ourself and our true essence.

this appreciation for this core part of who we are and breathing more fully with this sense of love throughout our whole body, breathing love into every cell, remembering who we truly are, this loving awareness, breathing in and out. May we invite our hearts to connect

with more and more parts of experience for the rest of our life. Maybe taking a deep breath or two, feeling our body on the seat, the ground, wiggling the fingers or the toes or our ear, slowly opening the eyes whenever you're ready.

So in this practice, we begin with what's often called the benefactor, a person or an animal that it's very easy to feel a heart connection with, partly as a way just to help our hearts open. And with that,

- Phase of the practice, we're kind of sensing into how it felt to be with that benefactor. It's kind of a somatic quality connection and also just expression of gratitude, something that we wish to share with them. And that is a valid form of loving kindness practice. We then segued calling to mind,

a friend. Also someone who's generally easy to connect with at the heart level. It's not to say we necessarily connected with them at the heart level today, but someone who is on the easier side. And in that phase of the practice, we did traditional phrases of

May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you live with ease. There's nothing magical about those phrases. We can choose other phrases. We can choose simple words.

We just did one rotation of phrases, but you can use them repeatedly by repeating one phrase, one word, one stanza over and over, inviting the heart to act. That's also a very valid form of loving kindness practice. We then segwayed into someone who's rather difficult or challenging to connect with at this time. Maybe they're not someone who

we have the hardest time with, but someone who's difficult or challenging to some degree. In that phase of practice, we did the practice of just like me. It's a form of empathy practice where we remember that in many ways, this person who are having

difficulty with is ultimately like me. I've used it in professional contexts with lots of resistance in the beginning, but ultimately it's usually one of the most favorite practices that colleagues do when they actually look at each other in the eyes, which can be extremely uncomfortable and healing. That is another valid form of loving kindness practice. We segued to

ourself in which we recalled a moment from our past in which we felt perhaps joy, a joyous form of self in some way, partly to kind of remember our sense of aliveness, essence in some way, to help us kind of connect with something

deep that is worth remembering. That's also a very valid form of loving kindness practice. We basically had four different styles wrapped into one "meditation". Usually they're compartmentalized into different kinds of meditations, but organically it just felt like it may be fun to explore different practices tethered together.

It was also a little bit on the long side compared to how long our typical Wednesday meditations are. So thank you for sticking with it.