Last week, I talked about loving-kindness meditation, and offered a basic practice at the end of the blog post. This week’s post builds on that practice, and offers a sequel of sorts -- a way to develop that practice further and continue cultivating loving-kindness.
We now know that continued practice with a loving-kindness meditation can lead to all sorts of positive outcomes: increased happiness (for you, not just those to whom you extend loving-kindness!), increased altruism, and increased resilience. For more on this, I highly recommend Daniel Goleman’s and Richie Davidson’s book, Altered Traits. They provide all kinds of evidence that even novice meditators develop “echoes” of brain patterns that highly experienced meditators demonstrate in brain scans.
For your students, the good news is that continued loving-kindness meditation can decrease negative emotions, like depressive symptoms, and also build emotion regulation. Because anxiety and depression are spiking in teenagers right now, this is an important preventive measure. Of course, this is good news for adults too!
And the more you practice, the more it helps (this is what’s called a “dose effect”). Even better, practicing for a short period of time can have long-term effects.
With all that in mind, let’s extend last week’s practice now, so that you can continue to cultivate your own sense of loving-kindness. Last week we mostly focused on those whom we care about. This week, we’ll broaden our practice to include those outside of our immediate circle, including those with whom we might have difficulty. This can be a more challenging practice, and it’s ok to approach this slowly, spending more time on practices like last week’s before moving into this sort of practice. As you flex your loving-kindness muscles, your capacity to broaden your practice will grow.
And once you feel comfortable with it, share it with your students. All the science in the world can’t substitute for your own subjective experience here, and the experience you spread into the world through your students. Let’s talk about the upside of “contagious” for a change!
So go ahead, give yourself the gift of trying this now.
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