Finding Loving Kindness

How a practice of Loving Kindness can save your sanity and keep you from losing your shit.

Jul 12, 2024

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your patience. It’s been a month since my last newsletter and you have all been on my mind. Life has been full with school and travel and flu in my house. There hasn’t been much time or brain space to sit down and write, but there has been lots of inspiration percolating.

Lets step back into the flow of things with the Loving Kindness Meditation.

May all beings be happy, may all beings be peaceful, may all beings be free of suffering.

You’ve heard me say this at the end of every class. It is a shortened version of a Loving Kindness Mediation that I learned from a Buddhist monk during my yoga teacher training, and it stuck with me.

It has become the essence of my practice and the energy that I want to send out into the world.

It is also a research-backed practice for:
reducing burnout among carers
improving relationships and feelings of social connection
increasing self-love, self-compassion, and self-worth
transforming emotional pain
increasing empathy
decreasing stress and anxiety
reducing chronic pain and migraines
improving overall mental and emotional health 12345

That’s pretty incredible for a meditation practice which you can do in five to 10 minutes - or as I sometimes do it in 30 seconds, under my breath, as I try to stop myself from absolutely losing my shit with my kids. It happens, yes, even to yoga teachers.

Truthfully, this simple but powerful meditation has become a little blessing, a prayer, a tool that I turn to quite often when I feel overwhelmed by life or helpless about the state of the world. I find it particularly useful as a parent when I feel tired, stressed, over stimulated, and about to explode (which can happen quite a lot as a parent of young kids).

I don’t want to yell at my kids. I don’t want to be triggered and angry. Instead of doubling down and turning the anger on myself for not keeping my cool or not being a “better mom”, I turn to Loving Kindness. By taking a deep breath and sending myself love and peace, I quickly bring myself back to centre and connect to my intention as a parent. It gives me a moment to find space for myself in the chaos. It allows me to remember the bigger picture of my situation and the hearts of my sweet babies who are not actually trying to drive me crazy.

When we take a moment to wish ourselves and others love, peace, and happiness, we can disconnect from the negative and align with our values - the who and what we want to be.

Buddhists believe that Loving Kindness is an antidote to selfishness and anger.6 And it turns out that a mother’s love is exactly what they have in mind.

In Buddhism, the principal and practice of cultivating good will and loving kindness towards ourselves and others is called Metta. The roots of the Metta meditation are traced to the early Buddhist scriptures, particularly the Karaniya Metta Sutta7 in the Pali Canon, in which the ideal state of Metta is compared to a mother’s love for her child:

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Even as a mother protects with her life
	Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
	Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
	Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
	Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.

So how do we do it?

The practice starts by identifying a person or thing that you love and tuning into that feeling. Focus on love with every breath, and through our focus amplify it, feeling it spread in our heart. Then we send that love, compassion, and kindness to ourselves - May I be happy, May I be healthy, May I feel loved, May I feel appreciated, May I feel peace. Name the feelings you want or need to bring yourself into a state of loving kindness. Then you send those same feelings towards a specific person - May you be loved, May you be peaceful, May you be free of suffering. Then send it to all beings - your teachers, your neighbours, your parents, pets, colleagues, even people you’ve never met. May all beings be happy, May all beings be happy, May all beings be free of suffering. As you send the love, care, kindness, peace, try to feel those emotions flowing in your body, and then flowing to others.

Practice this while sitting down, taking long, slow, deep breaths, and tuning into body, tuning into your heart. Try it any time you have 5-10 minutes of quiet to yourself. Once you have a bit of practice and know what it feels like to send loving kindness to yourself and to others, it’s easier to tap into when you’re on the go or just about to have a meltdown.

We all have parenting moments we’re not proud of, and that’s ok. It’s hard to be a parent. You will be triggered and lose your cool at some point. What matters is how we repair, how we recover, and how we move forward.

Caring for others isn’t easy, even when we love them with all of our heart. Let’s practice being loving and kind to ourselves, so that we can be loving and kind to the little beings who need it most.