Meditation Made Easier

By Jodie Benveniste, Director of Parent Wellbeing - www.parentwellbeing.com.au

I’ve always appreciated the benefits that meditation can bring - a sense of calm, contentedness and connectedness.

But I’ve never been very good at meditating.  I find the whole suspending thought thing very difficult!

Of course meditation is a skill that gets easier with practice.  And clearly I haven’t practised enough.

But I’ve found another form of meditating that I’m enjoying more. It’s called Loving Kindness Meditation.

In their book, The Gift of Loving-Kindness, Mary Brantley and Tesilya Hanauer explain how Loving Kindness Meditation is about being friendly to yourself and others.

By practicing Loving Kindness Meditation, you develop positive feelings about yourself and others around you.

And this is what I particularly like about it.  When you practice Loving Kindness Meditation you repeat a series of phrases aimed at yourself, someone you love, someone you feel neutral about, a difficult person or all living things.

I find repeating phrases so much easier to focus on than no thoughts at all.

Loving Kindness Meditation How to

In their book, Brantley and Hanauer outline a simple beginning meditation of the following four phrases:

• May I be happy.
• May I be healthy.
• May I be peaceful.
• May I be safe.

You can also substitute ‘I’ for others you’d like to direct your meditation too. And of course, you can play around with the phrases to find ones that suit you.

Lately, I’ve been concentrating on:

• May I be happy.
• May I be healthy.
• May I be calm.
• May I be connected.

I’ve also substituted the last two for:

• May I be confident
• May I calm.

The beauty about Loving Kindness Meditation is that you can do it almost anywhere - walking on the beach, lying in bed before you go to sleep, and of course in lotus position.

And you can even give it a go when stuck in traffic, in your lunch hour, or while waiting in line.

It is a very adaptable practice, and in their book, The Gift of Loving-Kindness, Brantley & Hanauer outline 100 ways you can use it.

Plus, most importantly, renowned happiness scholar Barbara Fredrickson, has found that practicing Loving Kindness Meditation has helped people savour more, be more mindful, accept themselves, find positive meaning, and trust others.  People have shown to become less depressed and to enjoy life more.

So if meditation is your thing, Loving Kindness Meditation might be worth a try.