Loving Kindness 101
A Loving Kindness meditation a specific type of mindfulness practice used to cultivate feelings of connectedness, compassion, benevolence, and goodwill toward yourself and others. It is also known as a compassion meditation or metta meditation. Metta is the Pali word for Loving Kindness and roughly translates as, tender or benevolent affection. Try a Loving Kindness meditation.
Benefits of Loving Kindness Meditation
All forms of meditation have been proven to have significant benefits for your overall mental and physical wellbeing. Studies on the long-term (and even short-term!) benefits of loving kindness meditation include increased positive emotions and feelings of social connection.
Increased positive emotions and social connection have been shown to increase emotional intelligence — such as empathy and compassion, improve physical and mental health, reduce severity of depression, improve immunity function, decrease the development and length of illness, and increase longevity.
Increase your resilience.
Loving Kindness meditations have been shown to increase your capacity for emotional regulation, which means your less likely to act unskillfully when under stress. It also increase your vagus nerve response, helping you feel more calm in the midst of stressful situations and return to base-line heart-rate and hormonal levels, faster. This decreases the inflammatory properties of stress hormones in the body that are responsible for chronic lifestyle diseases. Long-term meditators have even shown growth in their gray matter specifically in areas, “associated with empathic response, anxiety and mood.”
Decreases Chronic Pain and migraines.
Loving Kindness meditations have been shown to reduce the severity of chronic pain — especially in low back pain — in as little as eight weeks. Research shows that after a single, simple migraine intervention, “participants reported a 33% decrease in pain and a 43% decrease in emotional tension.”
Decreases Depression and PTSD
Self-criticism is psychologically destructive. On the other hand, self-compassion – the opposite of self-criticism and self-loathing – is incredibly healing and leads to resilience.“Self-criticism is a vulnerability risk factor for a number of psychological disorders, and it predicts poor response to psychological and pharmacological treatments.”
Loving Kindness meditations have been shown to help reduce self-criticism and improve self-compassion. In 12-week study, Loving-Kindness meditation was able to significantly reduced depression and PTSD symptoms. In another study, a Loving-Kindness meditation practice was associated with greater decreases in pain, anger, and psychological distress than the control group.
Increases positive emotions in yourself and others.
Loving Kindness meditations are helpful in increasing positive emotions, the effects which are measurable for months after an intervention. Positive emotions help you to build your personal resource — a fancy way of saying your resilience or your ability to bounce back from stressful experiences. ‘Positive emotions predict many desirable short- and long-term outcomes. These outcomes include mental health, successful coping, and closer relationships.'
Improves feelings of compassion, empathy and social connectedness.
Loneliness is an epidemic in the USA. Many people feel disconnected with others and this lack of connection with others negatively effects your health and wellbeing. Disconnection to others also means that we often unable to relate to the pain and suffering of others and become self-focused, close-minded, and ultimately even more disconnected.
When we turn our attention to building self-compassion we start to recognize the ways in which we create disharmony by becoming insular to others experiences. Loving Kindness helps us to recognize that we all have something to do with one another. We all inherently wish to be safe, happy, healthy, yet we all experience pain and suffering. This broader awareness and feeling of connectedness to the lives of others helps us to change how we interact in the world.
Learn more about Loving Kindness Meditations: Sign-up for Seek United’s Monthly Newsletter.
6.Reduce Implict Bias.
A recent study by found that participants of Loving-Kindness Meditation interventions, increased their social connection and exhibited more pro-social behavior; becoming more helpful, compassionate, more empathetic, and decreased their bias toward others.
7. Decreases Aging.
Stress ages you. A biological marker of aging is telomere length. Science shows that women who practiced Loving-Kindness Meditation had longer telomere length compared to controls — meaning that having a daily Loving-Kindness meditation practice can help reduce aging .
8. Decreases onset of lifestyle diseases.
Lifestyle diseases associated with chronic stress are the leading cause of death in the United States. Having a more active vagus nerve response, reduces your chances of developing chronic lifestyle diseases. Implementing a loving kindness meditation practice helps to positively impact your vagus nerve response.
Overtime, having a daily loving kindness meditation practice can compound positive emotions that lead to, “friendship development (a key to overall wellbeing), better marital satisfaction, higher incomes, better physical health, longevity, and more success.”
Research shows that our capacity to respond to others with compassion is a key component of social connection and to our wellbeing. Luckily, our capacity for kindness or compassion is not a fixed state. By implementing the the right practices you can increase your compassion for yourself in others.
Benefits of Loving Kindness Meditation In the Workplace
The benefits of a loving kindness meditation extend beyond the personal mental and physical benefits.
Increased empathy and compassion.
According to research out of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, compassion is one of many responses to empathy. It is show of concern for the sufferings of others, or “feelings of warmth, concern, and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s wellbeing.”
Most people reserve empathy and compassion for within their closest friend and family circles. Loving Kindness meditations help us stretch that circle to help you build your capacity to offer empathy and compassion to all people in all areas of our lives — even the most difficult relationships.
When you learn can see co-workers as real people, you inevitably start to form friendships.
Improved communication across divisions.
Trust and good communication is vital to an organizations success. The best employees work in a collaborative manner, don’t carry grudges, and offer to help when team members are sick, overwhelmed, or on a short deadline. Loving Kindness meditation has been proven to improved pro-social behavior and decrease implicit bias against minorities.
Improved focus, productivity, creativity — and less turnover.
Positive emotions are associated with better focus, productivity and creativity. Happy employees are engaged in their highest brain state, meaning they have the capacity for a broader prospective, and so are more open to new ideas, possibilities and creative solutions. They’re also less likely to overreact or have a knee-jerk reaction when faced with a stressful problem. Research also shows that meditation leads to more mental clarity and improves your ability to switch into a flow-state — meaning employees are better able to switch between tasks and manage varying workloads. More engaged employees also means less turnover, and fewer accidents.
Improved mental health & physical health.
People who meditate have been shown to decrease their chances of developing depression and lifestyle diseases like; heart disease, diabetes, cancer and Alzheimers. They’re less likely to take sick days as they have a stronger immune response. Ultimately, they’re less likely to cost you in lost productivity because of absenteeism or presenteeism, and less likely to increase your long-term healthcare costs.
Getting Started: Loving Kindness Meditation for Beginners.
Loving Kindness meditations use a phrase or series of phrases, sometimes referred to as a mantra, to anchor your attention. This is similar to how in other meditation practices you use your breath to anchor your attention.
Phrases can be modified to best serve the person meditating, but should be some variation of what’s shared below. It can be helpful to stick with one set of phrases as you build your practice.
May I be safe.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I live with ease.
or
As I wish to be happy, all beings wish to be happy.or
May I be free from anger and resentment.
May I be filled with positive, peaceful energy.
May I live in harmony.
How to Practice Loving Kindness meditation
You’ll begin by offering the the series of phrases to yourself, and then extend them to a benefactor, a friend, a neutral person, a difficult person, and finally all beings everywhere. Depending on the time you have for your practice, you might offer these phrases to all parts of the series or just focus on a few.
When you practice a loving kindness meditation you are working to change the way you see and relate to yourselves, your friends and families, strangers and acquaintances, difficult people, and all beings everywhere. Ultimately, this practice helps you build your capacity in four main areas; loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
Learn more about Loving Kindness Meditations: Sign-up for Seek United’s Monthly Newsletter.
Guided Loving Kindness Meditations
1. LOving Kindness Meditation for building compassion toward yourself.
The practice of a loving kindness meditation begins by building self-compassion The goal is that by learning how to be kinder and more compassionate toward yourself, you in turn can be more kind and compassionate to others. It’s important to remember that you don’t have to a light-bulb moment of personal acceptance, but that engaging in the practice itself will inevitably change the way you react to yourself.
2. Loving Kindness Meditation Fo A Benefactor.
Using the same phrases you used for yourself, the next person you’ll offer loving kindness to is a benefactor. Ideally, it’s a person who has helped you in some way. It could be a mentor, an older friend, a young child, a pet or someone you don’t even know, but has inspired you in some way. It’s recommended not to choose someone you have been in a romantic relationship with.
3.LOving Kindness Meditation for A Friend.
The next person you’ll offer loving kindness to is a friend. Someone you care about and has treated you with kindness. Often you’ll offer loving kindness to a friend that has been struggling and one that has been thriving. In this way, you have the opportunity to practice building sympathetic joy.
4.LOving Kindness Meditation for A Neutral Person.
The third in the series of a loving kindness meditation is extending compassion toward a neutral person. This is someone you neither like nor dislike. They may be someone you met at a coffee shop, the dry cleaners, or a neighbor you see walking. The goal here is to start to stretch our capacity for compassion, by noticing how our lives all have something to do with one another.
5. LOving Kindness Meditation for A Difficult Person.
The fourth person you will offer loving kindness to is a difficult person. You don’t nee to start with the person who has hurt you the most, or someone you despise. You can begin with someone you may enjoy, but find the relationship or choices they’ve made to be difficult for you right now. By learning how to extend compassion to difficult people, we can notice that we can still care for a person even if we disagree and that there is something larger that connects us all. It also helps us to become aware that so often difficult moments or behavior is often born out of some sort of pain or suffering of either that person or our interpretation of those actions. It can also help us see that the pain and suffering of others does nothing to grow our own health and happiness.
6. LOving Kindness Meditation for All Beings Everywhere.
The final group that you offer loving kindness to is all beings everywhere. All people, animals, plants, and creatures. Often it will be offered in pairs, such as may all beings to my left and all beings to my right. Or all beings above and all beings below so that no being is missed. Again, you don’t have to practice this with any sort of gooey-fairytale notion of all beings finding happiness, tomorrow. Rather, the intent of the practice helps you to stretch your capacity and recognize your ability to offer compassion with abundance.
Loving Kindness Meditation Course
According to the American Psychological Association, 42% of adults say they are not doing enough, or aren’t sure whether they’re doing enough to manage their stress and 20% of Americans never even attempt to relieve or manage their stress.
Starting a daily Loving Kindness meditation practice is a significant way to increase your mental and physical wellbeing.
Check out Seek United’s online Loving Kindness Meditation Course.
KEEP UP WITH THE MINDFUL LIVING BLOG.
