Try this loving kindness meditation when you feel disconnected from someone you love. Or when you can't let go of a grudge. Or when you're having a hard time forgiving yourself. It'll sweeten your whole life, one breath at a time, which is to say: you'll feel better, faster.

"When we practice loving kindness and compassion we are the first ones to profit." – Rumi

This meditation is adapted from my book, Sleep Rituals.

A Loving Kindness Meditation to Feel Better about Everything 

1. Sit comfortably and at ease. Place your hand on your heart, wherever you feel your heart is. Close your eyes and breathe easily, feeling or imagining the breath moving through the area of your heart.

2. Speak the mantra: “Peace, harmony, laughter, love.” This is your wish for yourself, and ultimately for all beings. Speak it, and then whisper it, and then repeat it silently.

3. Inhale the words, “peace, harmony, laughter, love.” Breathe it in from the universe and harbor the words inside your heart. You are a vessel.

4. Breathe out the words, “peace, harmony, laughter, love.” Breathe it out to everyone you love, your family and your friends.

5. Inhale the mantra. Release it out to anyone you have any interaction with–teachers or students, vendors or clients, employees or coworkers, people you pass on the street, and so on.

6. You are filling your heart and emptying it back out. Sink into this warmhearted feeling.

7. Feel your heart fill with unconditional love and let it flow back out unconditionally, with no thought attached, to those with whom you have a grievance. Just be a channel for the love through you and into the world. If any opposing feelings arise, these are signs that your heart is softening, revealing what’s held there. Keep breathing, visualizing the breath carrying compassion through you.

8. Inhale your mantra and radiate it out to all sentient beings on the planet.

9. Take a long, deep, slow breath in and fill every cell in your body with peace, harmony, laughter, love, and compassion.

10. When it feels comfortable, return to regular breathing. Remember that everyone has breath, and everyone has a heart. Let the barriers that would separate you from everyone else fade, even just a little.

11. Harness the good energy from your practice and take it into the rest of your day, into the world around you, into the streets and workplace, into your home, into your interactions with others, and into every mindful breath.

. . .

Tell me:

Is there something here that you really needed to read today?

Tell me in the comments. I read every single one, and I’d love to know!

With love,

Jen

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P.S. Get my book Sleep Rituals for 100 at-home practices like this one, that are all about feeling better. So you can sleep better. Live better. And make your whole life feel... richer.