From agitation to tranquility

A few days ago, I woke up with a highly agitated mind. As is my routine, I sat down to meditate, expecting the incessant mental chatter to dominate the entire session. I decided to do a guided lovingkindness (Metta) meditation. In this practice, the meditator cultivates feelings of kindness and friendliness towards others (and themselves) by silently repeating simple phrases of goodwill.

A few minutes into it, my mind became concentrated and settled down. After 20 minutes, I experienced a reset and was able to move into the day with focus and calm.

This powerful experience reminds me of a story that my favorite meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to tell beginner meditators. He says, “I love to think”, and “early on in my practice, I would spend the entire sitting thinking”. He had great difficulty training the mind to become concentrated in order to develop his Insight/Vipassana meditation practice^†. It wasn’t until he started intensive lovingkindness practice that his mind became concentrated for the deepening of Insight meditation.

The benefits of lovingkindness meditation go beyond my and Joseph’s experience. There are promising data^‡ that show increased compassion, arousal of positive emotions, decreased anxiety and psychological distress in study subjects doing lovingkindness practice. In addition, performing a lovingkindness meditation for just 7mins showed a reduction in racial bias.

If you would like to practice lovingkindness, here’s an example:

1. Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes.
2. Take 2-3 deep breaths to come into the present moment.
3. Bring to mind someone for whom it’s easy for you to feel kind feelings towards. Not a complicated relationship. Someone who you really want to be happy. It can be someone you admire from afar.
4. Then repeat some simple phrases, silently to yourself. Here are examples:

• May you be happy.
• May you be healthy.
• May you be safe and protected.
• May you be free from suffering.
• May you experience deep and rewarding friendships.
• May your greatest dreams be realized.

At first, saying these phrases may seem contrived. I encourage you to keep going for 5-10 minutes. You can say one or two of them over and over or you can come up with your own. The point is to connect with your intention for this person to be happy. Once you are fully in the experience of feeling that you really want this person to be happy, you can bring someone else to mind, gradually moving to people for whom it may be difficult to feel compassion. And finally, you include everyone in your circle, including yourself, and then expand to include all beings everywhere.

Notice what happens to the quality of your mind and your heart.