It took me a long time and many false starts to finally establish a regular meditation practice. Though I was drawn to teachings about mindfulness, my early attempts at practising it were filled with doubt and self-judgment. So what finally made the difference?

In a word: Metta.

If you’re unfamiliar, the term is Pali in origin, and it’s most commonly translated as “loving-kindness.” Other interpretations include friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, and amity.

It’s found in early Buddhist texts where it’s considered one of the four sublime abodes or brahma viharas. However, the word also has Sanskrit antecedents (i.e. Maitrī, Maitra, Mitra) that may predate Buddhism and can be found in early Vedic texts.

Today, both Buddhists and practitioners of mindfulness frequently incorporate metta or loving-kindness practice into their meditation sessions.

In my own case, I instantly fell in love with the practice. Despite experimenting with various types of meditation over the years, I only first encountered metta during the eighth and final week of a mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) course. Right away, it struck me as beautiful and wholesome, simple yet powerful and profound. Almost immediately, I knew I needed to learn more.

What is loving-kindness meditation?

In exploring metta, I came across guided practices and teachings offered by Tara Brach, Kristin Neff, Jack Kornfield, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and many others. Not only did these teachers provide further insights into loving-kindness meditation, but they also contributed to my having an altogether different understanding of meditation as a whole.

 Among other things, it became clear my prior attempts at establishing a practice had failed as a result of the same perfectionistic tendencies that got me into trouble in most areas of my life. In other words, I was so critical of my efforts to meditate, it became a practice in beating myself up rather than one that inspired peace, freedom, or a sense of refuge.  

What I came to understand was mindfulness practice is meant to include more than simply observing experience. Rather, it has these two equally important qualities. The first facet is of awareness or presence, but the other aspect is one of compassion and kindness.

The analogy routinely used by mindfulness teachers is of a bird. It’s said each wing represents one of the two qualities: one wing symbolizes awareness and the other signifies compassion. In order for the bird to fly, both wings need to be engaged.

For myself, bringing the aspect of compassion and kindness into each session changed my relationship to meditation entirely.

That said, loving-kindness meditation is a very particular kind of practice, and it’s possible  to engage both wings of mindfulness without applying metta.

In a nutshell, loving-kindness meditation involves methodically conjuring an embodied sense of benevolence and sequentially directing it to oneself, then a friend or other benefactor, then a neutral person, then a difficult person, and finally to all beings everywhere. It typically involves internally repeating well-wishes like:

• May you be filled with ease
• May you be happy
• May you be peaceful
• May you be held in love
• May you be free

However, the words matter only as much as their specific impact on your mind, body, and heart. It’s the felt sense of goodwill and care behind them that’s important. Therefore, in addition to repeating these metta phrases, many practitioners opt to use visualization or include gentle touch to further conjure a somatic sense of loving-kindness.

Why practise it?

If you look at developments in brain science research over the last few decades, you’ll find that neuroscientists have largely come to the conclusion that the brain doesn’t reach some final stage of growth and stop developing. To the contrary, studies indicate that our grey matter is constantly being shaped and changed by our experiences and behaviours. This phenomenon is referred to as neuroplasticity, and it means we can shape our minds by engaging with certain thoughts and actions. In fact, though most of don’t realize it, we already do this every single day.

All of us are practising something, feeding ourselves one narrative or another. We might say things like “I’m broke” or “I’m lazy” or “I’m doing it wrong.” And then we engage in behaviours that coincide with these stories.

However, what we don’t usually register is that the more a certain behaviour gets repeated, the easier it becomes to engage in that behaviour. It can become so fluid it feels entirely effortless. This is how neuroplasticity works.

As neuroscientist Shauna Shapiro says, “What you practise grows stronger.” This means that any repeated action will result in an increase in the power of the mechanisms driving the action.

In my early attempts to meditate, I certainly wasn’t practising self-compassion. I wasn’t even really practising mindfulness. What I was practising was self-judgment. It was tyranny in the guise of perfectionism and shaming in the name of some unattainable ideal. And both the tyranny and the shame grew stronger, which resulted in me abandoning the practice.
Of course, this all became clear only in retrospect and was entirely unconscious at the time—a common human occurrence.  Indeed, it’s our unconscious thoughts and beliefs that propel much of our daily behaviour.

When both wings of mindfulness are engaged, however, it allows us to  become more and more aware of the unconscious forces running our lives. And for most of us inhabiting the dominant Western culture, those forces are judgmental, shaming, self-aversive, and flat out mean. It can be a shock to realize just how awful we are to ourselves.

What we practise grows stronger.

However, by practising metta meditation, we can skillfully begin to carve out different paths in the brain. We can sculpt passageways  filled with unflappable good will. Or we can chisel grooves of kindness, etch trenches of joy. We can fashion avenues of loving-care and build ourselves a home there, a cottage perhaps, with berries fruiting in the yard and soup bubbling on the warm hearth inside.
 

What we practise grows stronger.

It all comes down to what we most want to cultivate in life. That’s the beauty of neuroplasticity. It allows us to consciously choose practices that support our well-being and magnify them, magnify what and who we most want to be.

How to practise it?

To begin, choose a peaceful space where you can sit, stand, or lie down without distraction. Turn off your phone or put it on silent mode to avoid interruptions. Let anyone you live with know you don’t want to be disturbed for the next 15 minutes.

Next, assume a comfortable posture. If sitting, you can opt for a cross-legged position on a cushion or simply sit on a chair with your feet flat on the ground. Regardless, if you sit, stand, or lie down, it’s best to keep your back straight, shoulders relaxed, and hands resting comfortably by your side or on your lap.

Before you start to practise, take a moment to set your intention for the meditation. Acknowledge your reason for practising metta. You may want to cultivate joy, compassion, , peace, equanimity, or other qualities toward yourself and others. Be sure to also include the quality of loving-kindness itself.

1. Begin with yourself. It’s traditional to start by directing metta toward yourself. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to centre yourself. Then, silently repeat phrases like:

• May I be happy
• May I be safe
• May I be healthy
• May I live with ease

Feel the warmth and sincerity of these wishes within you.

If you find it challenging to conjure goodwill toward yourself, consider starting where love is easiest instead (there’s more on this below), and then extending it toward yourself after. You can then proceed with the rest of the practice as laid out in the remaining steps.

2. Extend metta to a loved one. After a few minutes of focusing on yourself, bring to mind someone you love deeply. It could be a family member, a friend, or a mentor. Repeat the same phrases for this individual that you directed toward yourself, simply changing the pronoun from “I” to “you.”

• May you be happy
• May you be safe
• May you be healthy
• May you live with ease

3. Expand to neutral acquaintances. Next, think of someone you know casually or haveneutral feelings toward. This might be a crossing guard, a cashier at your local corner store, or  Send Metta to them as well, using the same phrases and genuinely wishing them well.

4. Send metta to difficult people. Think of someone who you have conflict with or find difficult in some way. Offer them the same phrases of care you offered yourself, your loved one, and your acquaintance.

5. Extend metta to all beings. Finally, broaden your focus to encompass all living beings, including all living creatures, and extend and the planet herself. Say phrases like

• May all beings be happy
• May all beings be safe
• May all beings be healthy
• May all beings live with ease

Spend a few minutes sending metta to each category of beings, adjusting the practice as needed, . Gradually, you can increase the duration of each step and the overall meditation time if you wish.

After completing your loving-kindness meditation, you may want to take a moment to express gratitude for the practice and rest in the qualities you cultivated. Feel the peace and love within you, and see if you can carry the energy of metta throughout your day.

Remember, metta works best when it becomes a regular practice. It’ll likely take awhile to feel its full effects. Be patient with yourself, and over time, you’ll notice a positive shift in your attitude toward yourself and others.

What are some tips?

There are several things I try to keep in mind when I practise metta that might be useful to share. Here are four things to remember when working with loving-kindness.

1. Start where love is easiest

In the traditional Buddhist teachings, the suggestion is to start loving-kindness practice with self-metta. However, because so many of us living in the dominant western culture are filled with self-aversion, it’s becoming more and more common for mindfulness teachers to recommend  starting where love is easiest to access.

To begin, it’s helpful to consider what invokes a felt-sense of boundless care. Perhaps it’s a child or a beloved pet. It could be a dear friend or a spiritual figure like Kwan Yin or the Buddha or Jesus. It might also be a garden or a stretch of wilderness, a favourite tree, mountain, or river. Regardless of what figure or place you opt to work with, your focal point should allow you to feel a somatic sense of well-being.

An embodied sense of metta will be felt differently by different people. There may be a sense of lightness or density. Equanimity or effervescence. Warmth or ease or a relaxing of certain body parts.

For myself, one indicator I’m embodying metta is I’ll feel the urge to smile. My mouth starts to slant upward and there’s this accompanying sensation in and around my chest, a kind of bubbly lightness that arrives.

Another indicator for me is a warming at the centre of my ribcage near my heart. It comes on like a gentle heat. And then, as I continue to practise, it radiates, a pulsing sun beneath my breastbone, sending out undulating waves of warmth inward and outward. A quivering orb. A golden source.

I’ve also at times felt it as something outside myself. This tangible sense of being immersed, like sitting in a warm bath or being embraced by loving arms.

Of course, every practitioner is different, and not everyone finds it easy to access the somatic experience of love. In some cases, practitioners may be so dissociated from the physical they find it difficult to identify any emotion in the body. Such a person will likely need to practice mindfulness for some time before they can tune into somatic sensations.  However, they can work with metta in the remaining ways described here to help them slowly access sensations of loving-kindness.

2. Choose meaningful phrases

There are a vast array of potential loving-kindness phrases to choose from, and I’ve curated a number that I like below. I suggest looking them over to get a feel for the possibilities. You might want to jot down any phrases you like. Try to find three to five you want to use and consider committing them to memory or copying them onto an index card so they’re easy to access when you practise.

• May you be filled with kindness, held in loving kindness.
• May you regard yourself with care and respect
• May you be filled with compassion for yourself and all beings
• May you know your own worth
• May you love yourself
• May you be peaceful
• May you live with ease
• May you dwell in peace
• May you be happy
• May you be joyful
• May you know the natural joy of being alive
• May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering
• May you be fully present and alive
• May you know happiness and the causes of happiness
• May I be free from pain and sorrow
• May you be protected
• May you be safe
• May you be safe from inner and outer danger
• May you be well in body, mind, and spirit
• May you awaken to the light of your true nature

Once you start working with your handpicked phrases, you may find you want  to tweak them. This is a great idea. Please do. Or, rewrite them entirely if you prefer. The more you can personalize your metta experience, the more powerful  it will be for you.

Words are important. They have the power to harm and heal, to slander and save. They can offer comfort and communion and care, or they can spread hate and intolerance. But, if we’re skillful, we can make our words the carriers of our deepest intentions. Indeed, this is what loving-kindness meditation offers us the opportunity to do.

So choose your words well, choose them wisely.   

3. Put a hand over your heart

In Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Dr. Kristin Neff, co-founder of the Mindful Self-Compassion program, explains that touch activates the parasympathetic nervous system to help us calm down and feel safe. Indeed, the body responds to physical gestures of warmth and care, just as a baby responds to being cuddled in its mother’s arms. Plus, our skin is an incredibly sensitive organ. Research indicates that touch releases oxytocin, provides a sense of security, soothes distressing emotions, and calms cardiovascular stress.

Neff suggests offering caring touch can look like:

• Laying one hand on your cheek
• Cradling your face in your hands
• Gently stroking your arms
• Crossing your arms and giving them a gentle squeeze
• Placing a hand on your abdomen
• Placing a hand on your heart
• Putting one hand on your abdomen and one over your heart
• Cupping one hand in the other in your lap

All of these can usher in a sense of care for the practitioner, however, placing a hand or two on your heart is a particularly powerful way to connect with loving-kindness.

Your heart literally has its own intelligence.  The so-called heart brain comprises a collection of about 40,000 neurons, similar to those found in the brain, suggesting the heart has its own nervous system. The heart communicates with the brain through various means, including neurological, biochemical, biophysical, and energetic channels. The vagus nerve, however, plays a significant role in this communication, transmitting information from the heart and other internal organs to the brain.

Interestingly, more signals flow from the heart to the brain than in the opposite direction. These appear to impact the brain regions involved in cognitive and emotional aspects of pain, making the heart a potential moderator of pain.

More research is needed to substantiate these finding, but in the meantime, laying a hand on your heart is a proven method of awakening a sense of care in mind and body.

4. Use visualization techniques

 Metta practice is typically paired with one or more visualization methods.

For starters, we bring to mind the recipients of our metta practice. We inwardly picture their faces, perhaps recalling some moment they made us smile or were kind. We try to capture the essence of the recipient in our internal landscape, and send them our good will directly via this created image.

But there are other ways to use the muscle of the imagination to bring about the energy of loving-kindness, and you can experiment with any of the following:

• The heart as a sun. Picture your heart as a glowing sphere of light. See this light growing brighter and expanding with each breath. As you direct metta toward yourself and others, imagine this light radiating outward from your heart, filling your body and the surrounding space with loving-kindness.
  
• A warm embrace. Visualize holding each being you direct metta toward. Picture yourself hugging them tightly, feeling the warmth of your compassion enveloping them.
  
• A loving gaze. Imagine gazing deeply into the eyes of the person you’re sending metta to. See the reflection of your compassion in their eyes. Sense love flowing from your heart to theirs and vice versa through this exchange.
  
• Metta as a waterfall. Envision loving-kindness as a waterfall pouring down on you. Imagine standing beneath it, allowing metta to wash over you and soak every cell of your body, filling you with boundless love and compassion.
  
• Metta as a lotus. Visualize a lotus bud within your heart. With each iteration of your metta phrases, imagine this flower blooming and unfolding its petals. Feel your heart expanding and blossoming with metta.
  
• Cradling the inner child. This can be a powerful practice for anyone struggling with self-aversion. Imagine yourself as a child within your adult self’s embrace. See yourself comforting and cradling your inner child with unconditional love and tenderness, offering reassurance and protection.
  
• Metta as rain. Envision a gentle rain falling from the sky, showering the entire world with love and compassion. Picture drops of metta touching every person, animal, and living being, filling them with happiness and well-being.
  
• Metta as waves. Imagine sending waves of metta from your heart outward in all directions. Visualize these waves rippling through space, touching and enveloping every being with love and compassion.
  
• Metta as a colour. Consider what colours you associate with loving-kindness, and use these when you practise. For example, you might imagine a radiant pink or golden light represents loving-kindness. As you send metta to yourself and others, visualize this colour of light surrounding and permeating each recipient, filling them with warmth and care.
  
• Metta as a mirror. Picture yourself facing a mirror, and in its reflection, see yourself surrounded by a glowing aura of metta. This mirror reflects the love and kindness you’re cultivating, reflecting it back to you and magnifying its impact.

Combining different visualization techniques and experimenting with what resonates best with you can help enrich your practice. Remember, a successful metta visualization will engage your heart and emotions fully. And, as with any meditation, consistency and patience will lead to deeper and more profound experiences.

Loving-kindness FAQs

To wrap up this exploration of metta, here’s a brief look at some commonly asked questions about loving-kindness practice:

Is it normal to experience resistance or difficulty during metta meditation?

It’s not uncommon to encounter resistance or difficulty during metta practice, especially when directing loving-kindness toward yourself. With patience and persistence, however, it becomes easier and can have a transformative effect.

What about people who create great harm? How can we offer folks who bring about such evil in the world goodwill? Why would we even want to?

Offering metta to difficult individuals doesn’t condone their actions. What it does is allow us to cultivate compassion. Metta practice isn’t about endorsing harmful acts, but about fostering understanding and healing, both for ourselves and others. That said, you may want to select phrases that feel genuine and empowering. For example, you might try:

• May your heart soften and your actions be guided by love
• May you learn to cultivate love, compassion, and goodness in your heart.
• May you be lead to a path of kindness and understanding
• May your heart open to the truth of non-separation and grow with compassion for all
• May  you be released from your cycle of harmful behaviour
• May you awaken to the consequences of your actions and seek forgiveness from those you’ve wronged
• May you find a path of healing and growth that benefits all beings

By extending loving-kindness to all beings, without exception, we contribute to a more compassionate and interconnected world. Through regular metta meditation, we can develop a more loving attitude towards ourselves and others, fostering healing and growth in our lives and contributing to the well-being of the broader community.

The transformative power of metta lies in its ability to bridge divides, break down barriers, and awaken the inherent goodness in ourselves and those around us. As we continue to practice, our hearts and minds naturally expand with boundless love and kindness for the benefit of all beings.

What’s the difference between loving-kindness and compassion?

Loving-kindness focuses on generating positive feelings of love and well-wishes for oneself and others, while compassion emphasizes empathetic concern for the suffering of others and a desire to alleviate their pain.

What’s the difference between loving-kindness and gratitude?

Loving-kindness involves sending good wishes and love to oneself and others, while gratitude is about acknowledging and appreciating the positive aspects in one’s life or the kindness received from others.

I’d rather skip giving metta to myself—other people need it so much more than me—is that okay?

It’s understandable if you feel this way, but remember that offering metta to oneself is an essential part of cultivating genuine care for others. Both the in breath and out breath are needed to sustain life in your body. Similarly, both giving and receiving love are needed to nourish the heart. Indeed, by nurturing self-kindness, we develop a strong foundation to extend love to others. It’s not selfish; it’s a vital part of the practice.