Loving-Kindness Meditation
How can Loving-Kindness Meditation help you?
Research shows that Loving-Kindness Meditation (sometimes called ‘metta’ meditation) is a great way to cultivate our propensity for kindness. It involves mentally sending goodwill, kindness, and warmth toward others by silently repeating a series of mantras. (Greater Good in Action, University of California, Berkeley) has wonderful benefits from greater well-being to providing relief from illness and improving emotional intelligence. Loving-Kindness Meditation can:
- Increase positive emotions and decrease negative emotions
- Decrease migraines
- Decrease chronic pain
- Decrease PTSD
- Decrease schizophrenia-spectrum disorders
- Activate empathy and emotional processing in the brain
- Activate your ability to enter a relaxing restorative state and respiration rate
- Slow biological aging
- Increase compassion
- Reduce self-criticism and increases self-love (Psychology Today)
Overview
Loving-Kindness Meditation (sometimes called ‘metta’ meditation) is a great way to cultivate our propensity for kindness. It involves mentally sending goodwill, kindness, and warmth toward others by silently repeating a series of mantras. (Greater Good in Action, University of California, Berkeley)
Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM) is a popular self-care technique that can be used to boost well-being and reduce stress. Those who regularly practice Loving-Kindness Meditation are able to increase their capacity for forgiveness, connection to others, self-acceptance, and more.
Benefits of Loving-Kindness Meditation
During Loving-Kindness Meditation you focus benevolent and loving energy toward yourself and others. There are many well-documented benefits of traditional meditation, but as with other techniques, this form of meditation takes practice. It can be difficult and sometimes leads to resistance since the average person is not used to this level of giving and receiving love.
Some published studies have noted that this meditation technique may be useful in the management of social anxiety, marital conflict, anger, and coping with the strains of long-term caregiving. And other research has suggested that Loving-Kindness Meditation can enhance the activation of brain areas that are involved in emotional processing and empathy to boost a sense of positivity and reduce negativity.
While more research is needed to confirm the full extent of LKM benefits, there are no risks or costs associated with the practice. So if you choose to give this meditative practice a try, you’ve got nothing to lose except for a few quiet moments in your day.
Metta meditation is a type of Buddhist meditation. In Pali—a language that’s closely related to Sanskrit and spoken in northern India—’metta’ means positive energy and kindness toward others. The practice is also known as Loving-Kindness Meditation.
The goal of metta meditation is to cultivate kindness and unconditional positive emotions for all beings, including:
- Yourself
- Family
- Friends
- Neighbors
- Acquaintances
- Difficult people in your life
- Animals
The main technique of metta meditation involves reciting positive phrases toward yourself and these beings.
Like other types of meditation, the practice is beneficial for mental, emotional, and physical health. It’s especially useful for reducing negative emotions toward yourself and other people.
Loving-Kindness Meditation may work well with
Loving-Kindness Meditation is commonly used to treat
Explore the Research
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