In this article you will read about The Loving Kindness Meditation: about the practice, benefits plus recommendations for frequency and duration. You will be guided through the meditation so that you can complete it in your own time.

What is Loving Kindness Meditation

Act of Love

While other types of meditation center around the “mind space” or are “insight-based”, this meditation works with the heart energy, connects and leads with the heart. You experience a sense of filling your whole being and experience inner peace. This will require a reserve of emotional and mental energy, so be sure that you are awake and have energy to complete the practice. Through this practice you expand your compassion to yourself, others, your home and friends, community and the world. It is the Honourable Dalai Lama who described this meditation as a way to ascribe compassion onto others by focusing first on ourselves.

Loving Kindness Meditation Benefits

This meditation practice encourages openeness and empathy and helps to strengthen our sense of connection with others around us. There is also a sense of peace and acceptance after this practice. This practice is especially beneficial if one feels negative towards someone and disconnected, experiencing emotions such as anger, sadness, loneliness, resentment and jealousy. This could be a feelings towards your boss, family or any individual or group in general. It could also be humanity as a whole. It is possible to sweeten these negative feelings with a practice like The Loving Kindness Meditation.

Duration of Loving Kindness Meditation

Ideally this meditation is effective when practiced for 30 minutes.

The World Needs More Kindness

In today’s world, we need love and kindness more than ever. Despite the conveniences of our fast-paced world and automated life, we often feel a disconnect from one another and ourselves. This meditation creates greater empathy and connection, it helps us to remember that we humans are all connected and united.

Our relationships with others can cause us much hardship and grielf in our lives. We uninentionally can project negative emotions on others or live in resentment and thus create walls to our hearts. Empathy and compassion for ourselves, those that we know and those that we do not know can really make a difference in this world. We can extend our realm of heart energy and inturn work towards forgiveness, compassion and empathy for ourselves and others.

Circles of Empathy

In this meditation we widen our cirlces of empathy towards:

• first, yourself and those you cherish that are close to you
• those your respect like colleagues, mentors and neighbours,
• those you are acquinted with like your neigbour, doctor or teacher
• the wider community and world
• lastly, those that you may harbour negative attitudes towards like a colleague, competitor or ex-partner.

Position in Loving Kindness Meditation

This meditation can be practiced in any posture. Choose a position that has worked for you in the past. If you would like to sit, find a seat comfortably and with your back upright in a netural and comfortable position. You can sit on the ground, a stool or a chair. You can prop your back on a cushion or wall if needed. By keeping your feet flat on the ground, you will stay rooted and grounded. Uncross your legs.

How to Practice the Loving Kindness Meditation

Send positive thoughts and intentions

Loving Kindness Meditation Script

Do this in order as you widen your cirlce.

• You: “May I experience loving kindness to myself first, May I enjoy peace, health and happiness”. You may add what you wish. Observe as warm feelings for yourself grow through his intention.
• A beloved and cherished person close to you: May you brother/mother/father/daughter, experience happiness, health and peace”. Silently fill this inention with sincerity and visualize yourself saying this to them.
• Someone that you respect: Make an affirming statement to someone that you respect. You can say this silently to someone who has helped you, taught you a lesson or provided you with an important service.
• An Acquaintance: You can either use their name or not. You may feel neutral about them, send them positive intentions.
• Someone in the community: In the same way, you can send affirmations towards a group of people, or those that you don’t know personally or seen.
• Someone that you dislike: This is probably the most challenging part of the process. Sending positive intentions to someone who has hurt you or you are angry with can lead you to feel negatively. As you continue to stay with the intention, some of these feelings will fade.

The World Needs More Love

Read more about compassion and Loving Kindness from the Dalai Lama Centre.

Are you looking to learn more about starting a meditation practice? Learn about posture, attire, positions, eyes and sound to support your practice. We invite you to read DoCalm’s Article How to Begin a Meditation Practice.