Anxiety: Practical Tips To Help You - episode 4

Tracey Moggeridge, Mindfulness Practitioner & Coach presents 'Loving kindness meditation'

Transcript

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- And now finally, the invitation is to take a pause and actually give yourself a gift of a loving kindness meditation. Now, kindness can be one of the hardest things actually, for us to give to ourselves, but it's exactly the prescription that many of us need. So the invitation is to develop a new default setting going from why me to why not me? You know, we all have challenges in our life. So what can we do to weave compassion and supportive practises in there? So thinking about your comfort, what can you do to set yourself up for success right now? You might want to just have a little bit of a shake. Notice your posture. What's going to allow you to spend the next few minutes in a comfortable meditation position? And this loving kindness practise is an opportunity just to sit and offer kindness to yourself. So you might again want to close your eyes or soften your gaze. Just tuning into what's here for you in this moment. Perhaps noticing your breath. Taking a big inhale, and then letting that go. And the invitation is to take your attention to your heart area. And you might even like to place your hand here too, if you would like. I find that it can be a really nice supportive part of the practise, that sense of touch. Feeling the warmth from your hand on your skin. Just checking in, how are we feeling? What's here for us in this present moment? And first of all, we'll start with some phrases around kindness and allow these phrases to sink into ourselves. If you like, you can think of it as sowing seeds of care and allowing them to grow within us. May I be well. Just saying that to yourself. May I be well. As if you're dropping a pebble into a small pond. That phrase gently rippling through your body, your mind. May I be well. Notice if you have any judgments arise and simply allowing them to go. Just sitting with the phrase, may I be well. Breathing in that kindliness and allowing it to flow through your body. Perhaps another phrase. May I be happy. Allowing that phrase to be with you. May I be happy. Well, how about, may I know peace? In this moment, may I know peace. As well as phrases, we may want to experiment with images. You might like to imagine a sun at the end of the day. Watching it as it sinks into the horizon, that lovely, deep, warm reddy-orange sun. Can you get a sense of its rays? Don't worry if you can't imagine it well hopefully. This is just to get a sense of that sun, and imagine perhaps that sun filling up our heart space or even feeling it's rays filling our body. Noticing its warmth on our skin through our heart space. That warm, comforting feeling. Allowing it to spread through our chest, our abdomen. Pinned to our head, filling us up with warmth, with gentleness, with kindness. Allowing ourselves just to experience this moment. Suffusing this practise with kindness, with a gentleness. And we may want to invite our breath, breathing in a sense of kindness, a sense of ease. And as we breathe in, we breathe in kindness. As we breathe out, that kindness sinks into us fully, deeply. Allowing it to travel again around our bodies. What's it like to allow kindness of breath to soften our shoulders? To relax our jaw? To travel into our legs and our feet? Simply giving ourselves the gift of this present moment. Allowing kindness, that sense of care, that sense of warmth just to be with you. Breathing in those good wishes towards yourself. Noticing any warmth or sensations that may be present. Letting go of any tension. Relaxing fully into this moment as much as you can. And now we'll bring the meditation to a close. You might become aware of your posture. You might get a sense of sounds perhaps in the room. See if you can gently move your body, open your eyes and bring yourself back into the room. And just notice how you're feeling now.