Loving Kindness Meditation

Hey, you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenny show. I'm so happy to be here. And I'm okay. So I keep I keep trying to figure out like, how do I want to slide into this conversation? How do I want to enter into this thing? I could have called it I had so many funny titles. I had so many funny titles for this episode. But I think what I'm just gonna stick with is loving kindness meditation. But let me tell you why we're talking about this. Okay. Couple of reasons. First of all, welcome to the show. If you are a loyal listener, thank you so much for coming back for being here. It literally means so much to me. I really do appreciate it. If you are new to the show, welcome. Thank you for taking a risk for offering up some of your time, your attention, your energy, to listen, I hope you get something from the show today that makes it feel worth your while. I appreciate you giving it a shot. If you're watching this show my YouTube is thank you so much for tuning in and watching and you get the added benefit of getting to see Toby pajamas. It's so my 15 year old cat Toby pajamas is totally curled up on the floor, and my fuzzy pink blanket. And it just makes me so happy. He's my co host. He's my co host for today. All right, so this is what we're gonna dive into. So I wanted to do something short and quick, but also wicked helpful. And there's a few reasons why we're talking about loving kindness, and I'm offering up this little meditation. Now some of you, if you've been around my world, you've been around Yoga, you are a meditator, whatever, you may have heard of loving kindness before. And I'm not ironic keep this so simple. So I'm not going to do some long, lengthy thing. But I do want to give you a tool that you might find super duper helpful, especially as we're rolling into the greater holiday season as we're coming up on all like the end of the year. We know so many of us that to gather together with our families with our families of origin, with let's call them some of you you are trigger people your button pushes. And you might not be feeling super generous with your hearts, like your heart center might not be that open for business. Oh my god. Also, there's been just so much just so much going on in the world. Where people are peopling like mother buck is, life is lifing. You know, humans be human. I mean, there's just so much violence and separation and lack of cooperation and not listening. And just like I'm putting my two fists together and I'm like bumping them. They're like, there's so much it feels like separation and conflict in people and not feeling very compassionate and kind and, and loving towards one another. You know, and one of the, one of the titles I was playing around with had to do with mood rings. Now, I'm 55 people in my age group, you might remember mood rings. So you guys, when we were kids, there were these like magical little rings that like you could slide on your finger and they would change colors. And really they were reacting to I think it was like the temperature of your body or whatever. But like Redman meant passionate and green meant cool, and like all the color orange meant this and blue. And black meant black either meant like, like, sadness, fear, or like your excuse me, or your ring was broken, right? It's just so funny. So I was thinking about mood rings. And I was about I was gonna call this episode, but it was way too long. I was just being funny. I was like, oh, what color is my mood ring? My mood ring is the color of I'm about to lose my shit, right? I'm about to lose my shit, and how insane the world feels lately. And you know, they were talking about how they had taken polls recently. And people were thinking about, like, the political climate and what they're thinking about the election coming up next year and like all this stuff, and they gave him like, I think five words to choose. And I think only like 6% of people said anything remotely close to hopeful or excited. Everybody else either said depressed, exhausted, or despair. And I was like oh Oh my god. So like the mood ring of the world, we've got wars, we've got atrocities we've got group we've got like ancient, like ancient existing differences where people are just, it's just horrifying on so many levels, you know? And so the mood has been I just thought to myself, What could I offer up? What can I offer up that anyone, anybody whether you have some religion, no religion spiritual, not spiritual atheists, whatever, wherever you fall on the spectrum of spirituality or whatever, right? In caveat, you know, religion organized religion is really seen differently for for verses or when we're looking at that spectrum of spirituality, but I'm gonna say wherever you fall, wherever you fall on the field of this stuff, I'm like, I wanted to be able to offer something up. That might be helpful, especially as we're going to be entering into closer proximity, maybe to the kinds of relationships with people, whether that's your family, or family members, or whatever. Where there is possibility for there to be disagreement, or conflict or fear, or old traumas coming up unresolved stuff, communication, issues, whatever. And I'm like, What can we do for ourselves and others, that might be helpful. Now, the word metta now some of you may or may not, I'm going to make make the connection while I'm talking about this. So I've often talked about how you know I have, I have been certified in a lot of different things, I have practiced many different things. Many of you or most of you don't know, I've been a yoga teacher for over like 25 years, but I was also I am also a Thai Yoga massage person. So I for many, many, many years, did practice gave Thai Yoga, massage Thai, yoga, bodywork, to people. And then there was also a period in my life where I was teaching it to others, I was helping to certify other people to be able to offer this art form this skill, this way of extending, loving kindness. So that's what we talked about a lot. In, in the practice of Thai Yoga massage, was this idea.

This idea of meta M E TT, a meta, which in a lot of languages, or whatever it is often transcribed as saying, you know, meaning loving kindness. So, and supposedly, according to the Vedic texts of India, they say that the hat, the hat, like your hat, but bump, a bump, a bump, your hat is is the source of real feeling and knowing. And in some cultures, they'll say that the hat is actually like the seat of consciousness. There's so much there's so much that the heart knows, and in neuroscience and stuff like that, we talk about the heart being one of the brains that we have in our body. And I also know that when your mood ring is like, my mood rings, I'm about to lose my shit with the world with people with everything, like just how things feel right now, like, again, for so many people, it feels like a really difficult time of depression, despair, dispute, a lack of connection, loneliness, all of it right. And when we're often feeling that way, when our mood ring has turned, we often will close down our heart, we will try to protect our heart, our heart will not be relatively open and available for business. So the practice of metta or loving kindness, especially in this form of which I'm going to share it as a meditation. It can really help us to not only open our hearts to other people, but to open our hearts to ourselves. It also can help us when we when we do this meditation, if we do it with with, I would say with awareness, with presence with devotion, like really, really paying attention and being intentional with your words, like really trying to feel what you're saying, not just going through the motions, not just saying the words but really trying to find like that hat alignment in that hat congruence, so that what you're saying can be felt, and this practice can also help you not only to feel more connected to yourself To others, those who love to the greater world around you, I kind of think of this meditation practice as having almost you know, that symbol that looks like a swirl, right? Like it starts at the center. And then it goes out almost like a labyrinth that you would walk right and it goes out and out, the swirl gets bigger and bigger and bigger. That's how I feel like this, this that symbol for me is kind of has the feeling of this meditation, it starts with us, and then it expands out. And I've heard other people talk about that when they do this practice, they feel more connected not only to themselves, but they feel more connected to their friends, their families, the people that they're doing the meditation for, or with in mind. And also they feel more connected to source or spirit or God or the divine, or consciousness or the universe, right. It also helps people to, to really pay attention to feel like they're they're more focused and concentrated, right, because they're being very present and intentional with the words. And also people say that they end up feeling more peaceful, that they have a more peaceful feeling in their body, but also in their minds, I think it's a very powerful thing. I know that for myself, when I start to get agitated or afraid, or whatever, using something repetitious like a mantra, or something like that is incredibly powerful. And this, I always think of metta meditation, or loving kindness meditation as having kind of that mantra, like that repetitious feel to it, because even though you're slightly changing the words, you're coming back to the basic core essence of the thing again, and again and again. So if you're somebody who wants a simple practice, and I'm going to break it down step by step by step, it's really quite easy. Once you get the hang of it. And you I want to say this, I'm going to share some words that you can use. And as you're listening, you might just start with using the words that I'm putting forth. But if you start to practice this and make it your own, you might slightly shift and if you just Google loving kindness meditation, or metta meditation, right, you might find I'm not kidding when I say hundreds of variations of this, find one that works for you, right, find one that you'll actually do and stick with, and then put it in your spiritual toolkit as as a practice that can be incredibly beneficial for you. And if you're going through a particular season right now, right, as my meditation teacher used to say, pick a practice stick with it and go deep with it. Right, don't go around digging in the backyard looking trying to reach water or, or resources, but just basically trying something skipping moving to the next thing like gives give it time to actually land in you become familiar with you so that you can decide if it is actually helpful for you. Rather than digging a bunch of shallow holes, or shallow Yeah, like in your backyard, go deep go vertical, go vertical, go vertical go deep rather than horizontal shallow, okay. So basically what you do when you when we do this, right, we'd like to sit up nice and tall with it with a tall spine, you just kind of feel yourself routed down, I always I feel myself like routed to the earth, but also extending up to the sky. And that, to me is kind of like when I'm kind of opening up not only my diaphragm so I can breathe better, right. But it's also kind of gives you this awareness, it's about really becoming present. And I like to think of this as like, Oh, this is when I am in that space between heaven and earth, right when I root down and then rise up and extend, I feel like it's like for me, it's like lifting my antenna. Remember when we were kids and there would be like radios and you would turn on the radio. And then you would go like thinking Dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, and you would pull that silver antenna up, I always found that so satisfying. Pulling it up and pushing it down. But right now when we're going into this meditation, right, we find a comfortable seat. Comfortable is a key word here, right? Not so comfortable that you're going to fall asleep, but comfortable and upright so that you are kind of like lifting up your antenna and you're now about to like dial into that radio station of love that we want to tap into right? K L O V, the K love station, we want to listen to that. Okay? So this is what you're going to do. Okay? And if you want to do that, please, if you're driving your car, don't close your eyes and do this. But if you're somebody who is seated somewhere or someplace, safely, right, you can close your eyes and just kind of listen to this and let it just land in you let it land in your heart. So what you're going to do is you're going to bring your attention within I often will invite people to put their hand right on their heart, if they're doing this laying down. So that's a caveat. If you can do this laying down without falling asleep, do it laying down. Absolutely. If you're sitting up or whatever, though, to bringing your hand to your heart like literally feeling the warmth of your physical hand over your heart, and also is kind of cute. This is where we're bringing our attention to that wisdom, that wisdom and consciousness, you know, of the heart. It's so it's so powerful. So first, here's what's going to happen, I'm going to tell you first, and then we're going to go through it. So first you're going to say these words to yourself. And then the second time through, you're going to say them, for someone you love. And then you'll say them for someone that you have difficulty with. And then you'll say them to expand it out, think of that spiral. And then we're going to expand it out. And we're going to say it to all beings, all creatures throughout the universe. Okay, so first we start with us, then we go close proximity, somebody we love, then we go to somebody we have, maybe have conflict or difficulty with, and then we expand it out to all beings everywhere. And especially in a time that we're in right now, where we do feel so politicized, we do feel so separate, we do feel so polarized, we do feel so like, fuck, you know, fuck you, and you are wrong. And we are right in this and them and us in them. Like, oh, my God, this can be a very powerful practice, when you feel kind of like, I don't know what else to do. I feel afraid, I feel scattered, I feel whatever. Being able to tap into your heart and tap into metta and tap into loving kindness is can be a very powerful, very powerful, soothing balm. And then literally, imagine it expanding out this isn't some nicety, right, this isn't just like, Oh, how cute. We're doing loving kindness meditation, it's not about going through the motions. It's not about spiritually performing and posturing and pretend, well, that's a whole podcast for another day. Oh, my God, spiritual posturing, I got a lot to say about that. But this is, this is something where I want you to be very present and intentional. So that not only do you reap the benefit of it, but literally that intention, what like all mines are joined in consciousness. So when we align ourselves with love, I can't help but believe it has a positive effect. Okay. So this is what you're going to say close your eyes, you can take a couple of good deep breaths in and out, let yourself settle into the place in the space. Do you want to bring your hand to heart great,

if not, that's fine. Just let your hands rest somewhere. And you're going to bring your attention within to your heart center. And you're going to silently repeat to yourself these following words, may I be protected and safe? May I be happy? And at ease? May I be healthy and strong? May I care for myself wisely. May I be at peace. So you say these things silently to yourself for yourself first. Like I said, there's a lot of variations on this. But find one where the words really resonate with you and feel genuine for you. And it's really, really, really common, right, you want to find one that feels right. And a right one you'll know will feel like a right one because of how it makes you feel. And you will not really probably have a shit ton of resistance to the words. But I want to say this, you might observe some resistance to saying these kinds of things to yourself, opening your heart to yourself, practicing loving kindness, offering metta to yourself, you might observe that there is some resistance to yourself sending and receiving loving kindness, and just do your best to bear witness to it. But without judgment. Notice it I always say notice what you notice, just notice it. But don't necessarily let it stop you. Okay? It might not be familiar to you yet that you're extending love and compassion and loving kindness towards yourself. Okay, once you send those words to yourself, now you're going to think of somebody that you love. You're going to bring your attention in your mind's eye, see if you can picture them in your mind, in your brain right in your mind. And then also, right, see if you can feel them like get congruent in your heart. get aligned in your heart, try to hold them in your heart, and then silently send them these words of affirmation. So now we shift from my eye and we say, may you be protected and safe. I can't help but close my eyes when I say when I say these words. Okay? May you be protected and safe. May you be happy and at ease. May you To be healthy and strong, may you care for yourself wisely. May you be at peace. And then once you complete that cycle, we now bring your attention to someone you have difficulty with. Again, if there's resistance to doing this, try to notice it with deep compassion. And again, we silently send those words, right? May you be protected and safe, may you be happy and at ease, may you be healthy and strong. May you care for yourself wisely. May you be at peace, we repeat it again, with the intention of sending it to somebody where maybe there is some difficulty. People have often asked me, Can I still say this or send this to somebody who's already passed or who is dead or who is in a literally in a coma, they're not they're mentally ill, I can't access them physically. And I said, Yes, all mines are joined, just hold them in your mind, it doesn't matter if they are still physically embodied. Or on the other side, as we sometimes say, the intention is what matters. Okay? Because sometimes people you have difficulty with passed away before there could be any kind of reconciliation, and we don't need them to be physically present for this to still be impactful. Okay? Now, the fourth step, we're going to bring your attention in to all beings everywhere, whatever that means to you just think about expanding this out to all the animals, to the environment, to the trees, to the rivers, to the rocks, to the mountains, to the oceans, to all the people everywhere, once we know and once unknown, just literally expand, like I think of it often is like this beautiful, golden, like pink light, that just this healing light. And when I when I bring my attention to quote unquote, the whole world, I just imagine this light just radiating out, from my heart to the whole world. And again, you will say the same things. And you might say like, May you all be protected and safe? May you all be happy and at ease. May you all be healthy and strong. May you all care for yourselves wisely. May you all be at peace. You could even say May we all be happy and healthy, may we so you get to decide and personalize it. And then once you've completed that fourth round, you can kind of just let the affirmations let the words go. But stay with the feeling. And this is why putting your hand on your heart or your belly or sometimes even just holding your own face in your hands. Just with gentleness, with compassion, again, with metta with loving kindness and with grace. And then place your attention fully on your heart when there's no more words, and we're just in the embodiment of the feeling. Place your attention on your heart. And just for a few moments, just simply breathe into that feeling of metta extending that loving kindness out, allow yourself to relax and just observe how it feels. Observe the residual, the residue, that beautiful residue, the vibration or the effect of what you just said. It's a very powerful practice to promote kind feelings of love towards yourself, towards others, to the people you are at. Like I said, maybe having a challenging time with people you disagree with people you're in conflict with. This is a way to you know, it's interesting, we have certain breaths that we do certain breath work right. And we have a breath that we call the sweet breath. I think that this is also a way that we sweeten the hat and we sweeten the mind it's like a way of kind of rubbing off some rough edges and it really helps us to have more healing compassionate thoughts towards ourselves. And I think for me, the residue is like one of the positive ways that I respond to this as that I feel slowed down. I feel like I have more patience, more tolerance, more compassion and that I can expand my care to be on my own personal concerns. And I love that I love extending love out to all the beings of the world like you know, like even like Toby back here, like sweet Toby like to be able to extend that love out To my mom, who's over there in the picture behind me, right? So I hope this has been helpful to you in some way. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go through it again one more time, the metta and the loving kindness, not all the words, but just the order, right? First we extend it out to ourselves to so to yourself, then you extend it out those words, that energy, that intention, right that metta and loving kindness, we're broadcasting it out, you're amplifying it out to someone you love, then to someone you have difficulty with, and then to all beings everywhere. And again, just imagine that spiral starting at the center with you, and then watching it as it ripples out and expands out exponentially. And some version of these words and remember, Google it, find it for yourself, May I May I be protected and safe, then becomes may you be protected and safe. May I be happy and at ease becomes May you be happy and at ease. May I be healthy and strong becomes may you be healthy and strong. May I care for myself wisely become may you care for yourself wisely. May I be at peace becomes may you be at peace. And you send this out with so much love and affection. And with goodwill with good will. Let's take a discourse on goodwill, Metta and loving kindness. And I hope you have found this helpful. I hope you put it into practice, right? Let's move from thinking about things intellectualizing things to really dropping down into the body where we become intimate with these things, and actually practice them and do them. And I know so many of you listening probably have done this before, have heard of it before, but maybe you haven't actually been practicing it consistently. And if you're somebody who's like, I've never done this before, but this sounds like something that I can do, then double Amen hands, that makes me so happy. So take it,

use it, take what works, leave the rest, the whole shebang. I just wanted to send something out as like I said, as we enter, we're already in a thick season, we are in a thick season of like I said most of the world feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, lonely, scared, whatever. And this is a powerful way for us to get back in touch with our hearts with our kindness with our compassion and our connection to one another. Because we are all affected when one of us suffers. We all have this ripple effect. So what can we be pouring into the world? What can when we feel like there's nothing I can do about what's happening, quote unquote, over there? Right? Well we can do is to let ourselves feel and this is a much longer, bigger conversation. But I just wanted to offer a little sip sip, as Linda Thai says a little something that might be helpful to some of you. Okay, you guys, wherever you go out in the world. May you leave the people in the place and the animals in the environment and yourself better for having been there. Wherever you go, may you and your presence and your loving kindness be a blessing by