Welcome to today's guided meditation.
In this session we will be practicing a loving-kindness meditation exercise.
Whenever you are ready just find a comfortable position.
We don't want necessarily a position where you will fall asleep.
Something comfortable but alert.
And whenever you are ready let's begin taking some deep breaths to calm down our body,
Calm down our physiology and relax.
Focusing intentionally on elongating the exhale and add a few extra seconds to that count on the exhale.
Just to relax the physiology and reduce our heart rate into a calm state which will facilitate focus and awareness throughout this meditation.
So just continue breathing for a few moments here.
Pay attention to anywhere you may be holding tension and aim to let go of that and release on the exhale.
While bringing your focus to the present moment and the sensations and the experience of the breath.
If you do ever find yourself lost in a thought throughout this session simply note that thought,
Recognize that it has taken you away.
Tell it,
Hey thank you for showing up but I am going to bring myself back to focus.
And that point of anchoring that you can bring yourself back to will always be the breath.
And from there you can focus on the session that I will be guiding you through.
To bring ourselves into the present moment let's just briefly pay attention to the sounds around us.
Not resisting anything just using them as a tool for now.
Giving them a moment of our focus before moving on to the sensation of our body.
Perhaps using the contact points of our seating or any dominant sensations as the point of focus here.
Just being intentional about our focus for a few moments.
Perhaps noticing the smell of the space,
The temperature of the room,
That temperature against the skin.
And then using all of the above tools to bring yourself to the present moment.
So to start this session today let's bring our focus even more narrowed in on the body.
Specifically to the heartbeat.
Specifically to the feeling of the heart within our chest.
And if you're finding this a little challenging just focus on your chest area and any sensations within your chest that you can hold on to and point your focus toward for a few moments here.
And in your heart just feel where you are at with the sensation of compassion.
Of love,
Of appreciation,
Of gratitude.
Have these experiences and emotions been familiar to you recently?
Are you feeling any right now?
What do those words mean to you at this point in time?
What do those emotions evoke in you?
On that topic,
Just take a few moments with me to think about somebody who means a lot to you.
Somebody who you feel a tremendous amount of gratitude,
Appreciation,
And love for.
What is it like to think about that individual?
Just observe.
And to lock this emotion in a little more strongly,
Let's visualize that person right in front of us.
Picture them in their happiest state with a big smile on their face.
Having a great time.
And sit with those emotions for a few minutes with me here.
Just enjoy them.
Appreciate them.
Most importantly,
Let's take that feeling of gratitude,
Love,
Kindness,
Compassion,
And multiply it throughout our bodies.
Imagine how good you are feeling right now,
How good that visualization feels,
And multiply that by a hundred.
Feel that love and joy and appreciation in every corner of your body.
Let's choose to feel those feelings right now.
Let's take a moment to think about whatever might be happening in our day-to-day lives.
And once again,
Looking at that individual,
And mentally telling them,
I wish you well.
And picture sending them almost telepathically all those positive energies that you are feeling when you think of them,
Visualizing those emotions and those feelings as a form of white light.
Let's picture our bodies illuminated with this feeling.
If you are struggling to produce these emotions,
That's totally fine.
Just continue practicing.
Every emotion and feeling can be a practice just like anything else.
Sometimes we need to exercise those muscles a little bit more to loosen them up.
So some of us might be feeling incredibly filled with white light right now.
And some of us might be feeling a little more faint,
But that's completely okay.
And suddenly,
Let's picture that light expanding out from us,
Almost as a white orb that grows beyond us and starts consuming the room that we are in,
Growing more to consume the home or the building,
Growing even more to consume our entire community and our city.
And the rapid growth continues and it starts to consume the entire area,
The entire country,
Until we are spreading that feeling of loving kindness unconditionally across the entire world as far as we can see.
Just imagining us sending that same love that we feel for that person that we appreciate so much to some of the people that we have maybe experienced challenges with or who frustrate us,
Sending them love and understanding as well.
We all live complex lives and unconditional love is appreciating and sending that energy to everyone regardless of how they may be showing up in the world because we can never truly understand where they are coming from,
What experience they have had and how complex their lives are as well.
And I know that might be challenging,
But let's sit with that for a couple moments longer,
Perhaps taking a deep breath in and an exhale,
Releasing any tension,
Helping us to lock in as calmly as possible this frame of mind.
Visualizing one or two or three of those individuals or situations and saying mentally once again,
I wish you well.
And to conclude this session,
Acknowledging that facilitating and practicing and locking in those neural pathways of love and kindness,
Unconditional love,
Appreciation,
Compassion for all people,
Especially the people we may not understand.
One of the most important things to remember in this is to provide ourselves with some self-love.
So looking inward,
Almost as if you're looking at back at yourself from the third person.
Let's send that same message of I wish you well,
Perhaps sharing some affirmations of gratitude and appreciation for ourselves,
Perhaps for our willingness to take a few moments to meditate today and exercise our minds and take care of ourselves and our mental health.
Taking one more breath with an intentionally elongated exhale and wiggling our toes and fingers and reentering the room.
