GIVING AND RECEIVING COMPASSION
- Please sit comfortably, close your eyes, and if you like, put a hand over your heart or another soothing place as a reminder to bring not just awareness, but loving awareness, to your experience and to yourself.
- Take a few deep, relaxing breaths and notice how your breath nourishes your body as you inhale, and soothes your body as you exhale.
- Let your breathing find its own natural rhythm. Continue feeling the sensation of breathing in and breathing out.
- Now, focusing your attention on your in-breath, let yourself savour the sensation of breathing in, noticing how your in-breath nourishes your body, breath after breath….and then release your breath.
- As you breathe, breathe in something good for yourself…whatever you need. Perhaps a quality of warmth, kindness, compassion, or love? Just feel it, or you can use a word or image if you like.
- Now, shift your attention to your out-breath. Feel your body breathe out, and feel the ease of exhalation.
- Please call to mind someone whom you love, or someone who is struggling and needs compassion. Visualize that person clearly in your mind.
- Begin directing your out-breath to this person, offering the ease of breathing out.
- If you wish, intentionally send warmth and kindness—something good—to this person with each outbreath.
- Now begin feeling your body breathe both in and out—breathing in for yourself, and breathing out for another: “In for me…and out for you.” Savour the breath. “One for me…and one for you.”
- If you wish, you can focus a little more on yourself, or the other person—whatever you need.
- Or you can send love to more than one person.
- Allow your breath to flow in and out, like the gentle movement of the sea; flowing in and flowing out. Let yourself be a part of this limitless, boundless flow. Breathing in and breathing out.
- Now let go of the meditation and focus on your body as a whole. Allow yourself to feel whatever you feel; to be exactly as you are in this moment.