This Quick Practice Will Make You Feel Lighter | Jay Michaelson

A guided loving-kindness meditation from Jay Michaelson that ditches the phrases and uses visualization instead. If you've done traditional metta (loving-kindness) practice before, you know it involves bringing people to mind and repeating phrases like "May you be happy, may you be healthy." It's a great practice. But sometimes the words can get you stuck in your head—thinking about what would actually make this person happy, or getting into stories about their suffering. This version takes away the verbal element. Instead, you work with a visualization: imagining a warm, golden light in your heart center that you can extend outward. Fair warning: this involves imagination. If that makes you roll your eyes, that's fine. But as the Beatles said, "The love you take is equal to the love you make." It's worth a try. Jay Michaelson https://www.jaymichaelson.net/ is our Teacher of the Month for February. Find more guided meditations and live sessions with Jay throughout the month in the 10% with Dan Harris http://app.danharris.com/ app. Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Happy Sunday, party people. How we doing? Today, we've got a guided meditation from my friend Jay Michaelson, who's our Teacher of the Month for February over on the new app that we just launched, 10% with Dan Harris. Normally, you have to sign up for the app to get the meditations, but we're dropping this one for free. It's a loving kindness practice, but with a twist. Instead of phrases, you'll be working with a visualization here. Please do not worry if you find any of this stuff barf-tastic at first. As Jay says, just fake it until you make it. And the fascinating thing is, even if you're skeptical, the way I was at first with this practice, it still works. I mentioned my new app. Just want to quickly remind you,

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  you can get it if you head on over to danharris.com. We've got a lot of stuff going on there, growing body of guided meditations from amazing teachers like Jay and also Joseph Goldstein, Seven A Salassi, I could go on. And we do weekly live video guided meditation and Q and A sessions. Join the party. We'll get started with some meditation with Jay Michelson right after this.

• 1:28Speaker 01

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• 2:27Speaker 03

  This guided meditation is a variation on the classic meditation practice of loving-kindness. If you've done that practice before, you know that it involves bringing someone to mind and repeating a phrase as if you're speaking to them. A phrase like, "May you be happy, may you be healthy," and so on. This is a great practice, and I recommend it, but sometimes I like to take away the verbal element. The words can sometimes bring me into a story of what would make this person happy, or compassion for when they're feeling unhappy or unwell, and it can be a little heady. Sometimes, I just like the quiet. So I also like this version of loving-kindness practice with more of a somatic element and

• 3:11Speaker 03

  fewer words, taught by my teacher's teacher, Venerable Ayakima, who was a German-born nun in a Sri Lankan Buddhist lineage. She taught this to my teacher, Lee Brazington, and he taught it to me.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  So first, let's allow your eyes to close, and we'll take a moment just to ground in the body, feeling the body in stillness.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  If you're seated, maybe you're feeling the weight of the body on the chair.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  And in that stillness, we notice the feelings of the breath coming and going.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Here, let's direct our attention to the chest in particular, because for this practice, while we won't be focusing on the breath, we will be doing a kind of visualization, using the heart center of the body. Not necessarily the physical organ of the heart, but we could say the center of our embodied being.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  So, we're resting the attention on the center of the body.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  The practice is to imagine that in your heart, there is a golden, warm glow of light.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  This light doesn't take any effort to cultivate, it's already there, and best of all, it has no limit.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Of course, this is an imaginative exercise. If thoughts come up about visualizing a warm glow of light, I encourage you to just let those go and see if you can have the experience. As the Beatles once told us, "The love you take is equal to the love you make." We cultivate this feeling of loving-kindness in the form of this warm, nourishing light, and then it's actually possible to feel it. It's the ultimate magic trick, something out of nothing. And don't worry, you can fake it at first.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  So let's come back to the heart center and this golden, warm glow of light. Now let's imagine this light filling your whole body, head to toe, with warmth and light and a feeling of contentment. Again, you can fake it till you make it. This light, if you imagine it, can fill and surround you with warmth. And it can grow. Imagine someone for whom it's easy for you to feel loving-kindness. That could be a family member, or a friend, or a pet. Maybe not someone with whom you have a complicated relationship,

• 5:52Speaker 03

  but someone for whom it's just easy to feel love, or "meta," the Pali and Sanskrit word for loving-kindness. Just imagining this person in your presence, and now enlarging this golden field of light to include them as well. There's plenty of this light. It doesn't diminish as you do this. In fact, it increases. The more you spread it, the stronger it gets. And this warmth, this warm light that you're radiating, is the light of care and compassion, of well-being and contentment. And you can imagine it emanating from your heart to this person or being with you.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Así que de nuevo, estamos sentados y quietos. Imaginamos que en el corazón está esta luz dorada y calientadora y está llenando tu cuerpo y se está extendiendo a esta persona con usted.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Encílenlos con este regalo libre de bienestar, de amabilidad. Incluso puede sonreír si le gusta, nadie lo está viendo.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Ahora, hay mucha luz calientadora por ahí. Así que puede imaginar uno, dos o tres otras personas o seres uniendo en este abundante campo de luz calientadora.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Personas de su vida por las que fácilmente puede extender esta luz calientadora de amabilidad. Por ejemplo, un hermano o un esposo o un amigo. Quien sea que se acerque, no es un contesto. El círculo de personas crece mientras más personas entran en él. Y sin embargo, la luz no diluye o se vuelve más espesa. Sólo se expande. Hay sólo más de ella.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  La siguiente vez podemos expandir esta luz calientadora de amabilidad a personas que han sido maestros o benefactoras en su vida.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Tal vez un mentor o un padre. O alguien que les ha ayudado en su vida laboral o personal. Puede ser un terapeuta. Todos ellos son bienvenidos porque hay mucha luz por ahí.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Así que con gratitud, imaginamos que esta luz calientadora se extiende también a ellos. Incluyéndolos en este campo.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  We can re-center back on the source of light in the heart center, and then expand it outward.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  And because there's no limit to the amount of warm light that you can radiate out, we can include people for whom we don't have strong feelings, but who we encounter in our day-to-day lives.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Sometimes this is called "the neutral person," someone who we see at a store, or a colleague, or an acquaintance.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  You might not feel the same intensity of loving-kindness for this person as for the first ones, but that's part of the point.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  We want to extend this feeling of well-wishing to these neutral people as well. And it's the same loving-kindness, the same sense of well-being and contentment. And it's experienced as the same warm light coming from the heart center, now including people close to us, our benefactors, and those in our lives to whom we may feel neutrally.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  And in your heart, this warm light continues to glow, perhaps even more as you do this practice. And it has such a warm glow that it can include even people with whom we have difficult relationships. Let's not jump to the hardest ones or the public figures with whom we disagree the most, just people with whom we have a little friction in our lives. All we're doing is extending this warm light, visualizing the light, including them as well.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  The light is not about judgment or forgiveness. We're not saying that everything is okay, or that every action is okay. It's not an evaluation. We're just extending loving-kindness in the form of this warm light, even to people in our lives with whom we have difficult relationships.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  You're welcome to stay here for a while. And when you're ready,

• 13:11Speaker 03

  you can open your eyes. This is the practice of loving kindness.

• 13:25Dan Harris?

  Thank you, Jay, and thanks to you for practicing with us. And if you want to do more meditation with me and all my friends, you can sign up for my app. It's called 10% with Dan Harris. And you can get it at danharris.com. In fact, there's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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