This meditation will help you achieve greater ease in your body-mind and a softer heart.
If meditation is new to you, start by practicing a few minutes each day and slowly build up to the 15–20-minute range, as recommended in the instructions below.
What’s neat is that these practices have been around for thousands of years. In the recent 50 years or so, science has been “catching up” and “proving” the benefits that have been known and passed down for generations by those practicing heart or “Metta” meditations.
(Read my blog post on HeartMath’s biofeedback research and technology to help you accelerate the connection and coherence to your heart.)
To begin, sit quietly and relax.
You do not have to sit cross‐ legged if this is not a comfortable position for you. The important thing is a relaxed body, so that the mind can be free from any signals of discomfort. Work for a moment with visualization.
Picture a person who you love very much. Choose just one individual who is very dear to you. After you have determined who will be the recipient of your loving energies, focus all your attention on the area of your chest and heart. Now, slowly replace your loving thoughts about this person with the real sensation of feeling pure love (FEEL IT, DON’T THINK IT).
Continue the “feeling part of the exercise” for 15‐20 minutes and try to avoid thinking about or visualizing “Love”.
Remember, you are focusing on the real sensation of pure love, which may bring warmth and delicate vibrations, or perhaps a hint of heaviness or pain in your chest area.
With this exercise, it is common to feel many different sensations in the chest area. The most frequent sensations are warmth, tingling, vibration, expansion, heaviness and discomfort. All indicate the movement and concentration of energy.
Pain demonstrates that your physical body needs time to adjust to the higher vibrations of your heart chakra. You may also suddenly feel that tears are coming to your eyes. Allow them to flow, as they indicate a much needed release. As the heart exercise is repeated, the awareness of unconditional love comes more and more frequently and brings you an intense and wonderful sense of tranquility.
Repeat this exercise every day, sending your love to people close to you, those who you love and of whom you are fond.
After 10‐days, gradually switch to those for whom you care very little, and then to people you dislike.
With the latter group try to build up friendly feelings step by step before you start this meditation. Think about their better qualities and characteristics. The person you are focusing on may have a nice smile or lovely eyes, or you may admire the way he or she moves or dresses. Try to find something positive, and from this basis, build up friendly and accepting feelings.
After several days of doing this exercise, you will see these people differently; they will seem much less hostile and much more likeable. At this point, it will be much easier to send acceptance and unconditional love to them.
As long as there are unfriendly vibrations in your heart center, it will be difficult to pass the energy through it.
Your heart chakra needs to be thoroughly cleared and open in order to play an important role in the external energy fluctuations around your body.
It has been found that the first part of this practice, sending loving vibrations to someone we love, is simply an enhancement of everyday life. Since we do it quite often, it does not have a dramatic impact on the change of vibrations in our heart chakra. However, the second part, sending love to people with whom we have problems, can literally change our lives.
