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Loving Kindness Meditation
We get a slightly more formal introduction to this practice, though really we don't learn a lot of theory behind it or anything that wasn't talked about in the day of mindfulness. Practicing compassion makes you more compassionate, towards yourself and towards others.
-- With this first step, there is a difference to this practice here than at the Day of Mindfulness. Choose a person who loves you. It can be anyone, living/dead/whatever. The compassionate phrases that we will be thinking about, instead of saying them to ourselves, we will imagine this person who loves us saying them to us. I choose my grandfather on my mom's side. He died a few years ago at age 93 (I think it was 93). He is the kindest person I've ever know, an easy choice if I'm looking for compassion. I don't remember what phrases we used here were. the instructor was guiding us through this. Similar things to what we did in the day of mindfulness. Begin by relaxing, focusing on your breathing. Think of the person you chose. Think of this person saying to you "May you be well", "May you be happy", and a couple other things. We're walked through this slowly, each phrase mentioned multiple times.
-- Because there isn't a whole lot different than in class, I'll keep this brief. The progression is to repeat this action for someone you love, then a neutral person, someone you interact with but wouldn't really think about in one way or another, a store worker, mailman, that type of thing.
-- The addition here is something mentioned in the day of mindfulness but not actually done. "Think of a person who causes you trouble and conflict. Not the most difficult person in the world, but someone who you have trouble interacting with". I won't be saying who I chose in case they somehow one day find my online identity (I don't exactly hide who I am that much here, someone who knows me IRL would figure this out pretty easily if they saw my post history here, or on reddit, where I am NOT radii, thank you very much) and end up here. Anyway, think of a person who causes you trouble, conflict. Wish these compassionate things on this person who is a bit of a negative in your life.
-- And lastly, express this same compassion for all living things.
This was a very emotional experience for myself, and for lots of people, the first time we did it at the day of mindfulness. Maybe because we hadn't done it before, maybe because it was done at the end of 6 hours of peaceful meditation and we were in a different state of mind, I dunno. Here there was not the same response.
That is the end of the last "official" class, we are all graduates of mindfulness based stress reduction and pain relief (the full name used in the handouts we get from the UNC folks). Even though the last class is a "bonus", I'm saving any sort of final thoughts/post mortem for after that class next Monday.
-- Also, I STILL have weeks of reading that I've done to write up, things that I've learned, or things that I've used to supplement what I've learned in class, that i do intend to write about. At this point I need to get that done just because I've said I would.
-- No more homework, and that is when things get difficult. Yet another place where this class mirrors my physical therapy experience in some way. Being done with pelvic floor physical therapy was SCARY. Having checkpoints, check-ins on a semi-regular basis made it very easy to do the 100 new things I learned how to do throughout my day. The instant I was only accountable to myself, it became just as easy to say "ok, this is no longer my top priority. So what if I don't use my standing desk at all today? I will do it tomorrow." and to have that cascade a little bit, despite benefits from physical therapy that I've described in near miraculous fashion. I need to accept that I will be further away from perfect without that prodding and without the regular check-ins with therapist/teacher, but that I honestly have a strong desire to work on building the things i've learned here into lifelong habits.
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