PRACTICE LOVING KINDNESS

1. Describe your experience. (Did you find it beneficial? Difficult?) Why or Why not? Would you recommend this to others? Why or Why not?

I have been listening and meditating to the Loving Kindness practice twice per day as recommended by the author of Integral Health, Elliott Dacher. Mostly I have been experiencing this practice in solitude, but also I have shared it with my Yoga students and friends when appropriate. I am an advocate of guided meditations as a tool for training the mind and calming the nervous system. I like the progression of this exercise, the way it begins with sending and feeling love for someone outside of your self that you hold in great esteem. This makes it easy to open to the love. Then turning the love inward toward yourself, which may be a little more challenging for some people. Next, extending the love further out into groups of people, including your enemies, until you are basically sending love out to the world, filtering the suffering from the spirit and extending loving kindness to those suffering souls. Another thing I like about this meditation is the space it gives between instruction to just sit and contemplate. There is a good minute or so between instructions where one can just listen to the lapping ocean waves while sending out healing energy and love. For me, it is a good companion to practice Reiki distance healing. Each time I sit to meditate on this practice, I begin with different individuals in my life to focus on. I send love, kind, healing energy to them and receive different sensations back, depending on our relationship. The sensations of love feel very different when tuned in to various relationships. The emotions and sensations that I feel when focusing on my children are tender yet exhilarating. The love I feel for my friends is joyful. The emotions I feel for my lover while in this practice are, well very private and intense. Extending love while filtering out suffering offers a very intense, heavy feeling, that I really have to concentrate on. I am sensitive to other people’s energy, so it is imperative that I let that suffering dissolve completely. I experience negative energy as heavy and dark. I visualize the suffering dissolving in my heart like oil dispersing through water. In time, the water emulsifies the oil, clearing the way and opening to a fresh clarity.  

This loving kindness practice came at the perfect time, as my Yoga teacher also gave a teaching on loving kindness this week. She gave us a practice very similar to the one described above. It is called the three fold blessing. It helps to develop compassion, or ‘karuna’ in sanskrit. The first step is to send love to a perpetrator of violence. Someone who projects suffering onto others is them self suffering, so sending them love will help them to heal and hopefully break the cycle.  Second, send love to the victim of the violence or suffering, so that they may be healed. Finally, turn the love inward to your self as the witness. As witnesses, we take on energy, so loving our self, allowing our self to be healed and protected from negativity. This is a practice that can be done quickly, whenever a situation arises. She recommends doing this practice while watching the evening news.