21 Days of Meditation: Day 10 [Lovingkindness Visualization]
I'll help format the transcript and create a description. Let me start with the reformatted meditation transcript:
Believe it or not, we're going to do loving kindness again today, but I want to give you a different variation of it. One that I gleaned from a teacher, Carolyn Elliott. Where instead of using the phrases, you use very vivid imagery of the person and just imagining them as happy and free as possible.
And this has always been my preferred way to practice. I don't know about you but for me the phrases for some reason I, I struggle to connect with them and I really have to adjust them and bring a lot of visual imagery to really create that feeling of loving kindness. So I want to give you the opportunity to experience what it's like to practice in a different way.
[Setting Up] So let's settle in. Find a comfortable posture. Whatever that looks like for you this morning. I'm sitting, but you might want to lie down, stand, and if it feels safe and okay to do so, you can close your eyes.
We'll start by just tuning into the sound of the bell.
Let's take a deep breath together to ground, in through the nose, and slowly out through the mouth.
Inviting any muscles in the face that are tense to start to soften, especially the jaw.
[Body Awareness] And as you're making this invitation to the body to relax, see if you can do it with this quality of loving kindness we've been cultivating.
For me, I might say, it's okay, body. You can relax right now. You're doing such a good job. It's hard being you. You get tense. You have to carry stress and a lot of emotion. Right now, you're safe. You can let the shoulders come down. If you don't want to, that's okay as well. And just see if you can take that playful relationship, almost like you're talking to a child.
When we're connecting to our bodies we're often talking to the childlike version of ourselves, the more primal, young, conditioned parts.
So you can make that same loving invitation to relax to the shoulders, the hands, the belly.
And then let the breath settle back into its natural rhythm.
Taking a moment to enjoy just the goodness of not having to be anywhere else right now. Not having to do anything. Not having to solve any problems.
Really let yourself taste that and settle into it.
This very relaxed, open, loving presence. Drinking in this moment of being alive.
[Loving Kindness Practice] So for today's Loving Kindness, we're going to start by thinking and imagining someone for whom it feels easy to offer loving kindness. Someone you have a good relationship with, you care about.
Instead of sending them wishes or phrases, what you're going to do is imagine this person or being, it could be a pet, just in their most absolute free, happy liberated state. And note the location that they're in. Are they in their kitchen? Are they at work doing something they love?