•
Locate your breathing where you can feel it most easily. Feel how your breath moves in your
body, and when your attention wanders, gently feel the movement of your breath once again.
•
After a few minutes, start to notice
physical sensations
of stress that you’re holding in your
body, perhaps in your neck, jaw, belly or forehead.
•
Also notice if you’re holding some
difficult emotions
, such as worry about the future or
uneasiness about the past. Understand that every human body bears stress and worry
throughout the day.
•
Now offer yourself goodwill
because
of what you’re holding in your body right now. Say the
following phrases to yourself, softly and gently:
May I be safe.
May I be peaceful.
May I be kind to myself.
May I accept myself as I am.
•
When you notice that your mind has wandered, return to the words or the experience of
discomfort in your body or mind. Go slow.
•
If you are ever overwhelmed with emotion, you can always return to your breathing. You can
also name the emotion, or find it in the physical body and soften that area. Then, when you’re
comfortable, return to the phrases.
•
Finally, take a few breaths and just rest quietly in your own body. Know that you can return to
the phrases anytime you wish.
•
Gently open your eyes.
This practice is more difficult than it appears and Session 3 addresses many of the obstacles that
are likely to arise. The purpose of the loving-kindness and self-compassion meditation is to
activate an affectionate attitude in which our experience, and who we are, can be warmly
embraced. In actual practice, often we feel good, sometimes we feel bad and frequently we feel
nothing at all. Therefore, we should not judge our meditation by how good we feel moment-by-
moment. We’re cultivating loving intentions, not pleasant feelings, although an enhanced sense of
well-being is an inevitable byproduct of loving intentions
.
We need to be patient with the process. There’s a Jewish story to illustrate thi
:
A disciple asks the rabbi:
“Why does Torah tell us to 'place these words upon your hearts'?
Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?”
The rabbi answers:
“It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the
holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until,
one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”
Participants are also encouraged to create their own phrases, phrases that do not cause distress
or an argument in one’s mind. The home practice assignment of session 3 is to find a few, simple
phrases that feel authentic and can be used over and over in meditation. The rule of thumb is
“What do I need to hear?” The phrases used in meditation should remain the same over time to
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