How to Practice Loving-Kindness & Meditation

Self-compassion encompasses three main themes including self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. These themes are the source of empowerment and understanding to help you build on your loving-kindness for yourself and others.

Self-kindness is when we express understanding toward ourselves. We tend to use more patience, encouraging words during our inner dialogue as well as kindly acknowledge that we’re doing the best we can.

Common humanity is the acknowledgment that we are human and we are fallible. There are places in our lives that we are still learning to navigate - common humanity is the theme of showing yourself compassion when you don’t get it right as well as showing compassion toward others when they make a mistake.

Mindfulness happens when we cultivate present awareness without judgment, avoidance, or repression. There are many ways to practice mindfulness from meditation to yoga.

One of the best loving-kindness practices is meditation. During this meditation, I welcome you to sit in a comfortable seat or lay down. The outline of the meditation is that you welcome 3 people to sit with you and wish them well by saying to them the following phrases or anything that you wish for them “may you be happy, may you be healthy in mind and body, and may you feel loved”. The first person is someone you love, the second is someone you are neutral about (could be a stranger or a friend of a friend), and the third is someone you’ve had a conflict with. Finally, you sit alone and send the same well wishes to yourself, while you’re wishing well wishes for yourself you can place a hand on your heart. This meditation can bring up a lot of emotions, so make sure you’re in a space to process. I recommend journaling anything that comes up for you after this practice.