Loving kindness meditation guided by Dr. Jud Brewer (7 minutes)

Have you noticed that when trying to change any habit, especially with anxiety or self-judgment, we can be extremely hard on ourselves? We have a hard time accepting ourselves; we beat ourselves up for not being able to deal with our emotions. We compare ourselves to others or do any number of things. One of our Unwinding Anxiety community members put it this way: “Anxiety is a scared child inside me that needs love.”
Let's focus on an exercise that can help teach you to go easy on yourself when you contract and pull the anxiety knot tighter by judging or beating yourself up. This practice may also help you move more in the direction of expansion.
Loving Kindness*
This is a practice called Loving-kindness. This practice can help us start to soften and to accept both others and ourselves as we are. This helps us let go of what has happened in the past, and learn from it so we can move forward in the present. My lab has even found that loving kindness meditation changes our brain!
Loving kindness isn’t positive self-talk or a pat on the back when we’re feeling down.
Loving kindness is different. It’s a capacity that we all have and can draw upon at any time. You might be thinking, I don’t have this, which means that you probably just haven’t tapped into it in a while. It’s probably in the back of your mental closet, and just needs a little dusting off.
Loving kindness is a genuine well-wishing that we offer to ourselves and others. And when we practice loving kindness, we also learn to see more clearly when we’re doing the opposite -judging ourselves. This gives us a nice contrast so we can see what we actually get from self-judgment. And when we see more clearly how the judgment is not helpful and even painful at times, it helps us to drop this and build the kindness more because kindness feels better.
There are three parts to the loving-kindness practice:
1) Some loving-kindness phrases to help you stay centered.
2) The image of the being you are sending loving-kindness to.
3) The feeling of kindness that might arise in your body as you do this practice.
Get mindfulness exercises similar to Loving Kindness through the Unwinding Anxiety program: smart.link/ssn...
Unwinding Anxiety® is an evidence-based app program proven to reduce anxiety by 67% after 2 months of use. You'll learn how to feel relieve anxiety and calm stress with daily lessons, mindfulness exercises, a supportive community, and anxiety tools.
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