Transcription
All right, welcome to this guided meta meditation. This is another day where we'll strengthen this capacity for self-love and to love everyone around us, rewiring the brain in a very pro-social, positive way.
There's one study that I mentioned yesterday that I want to recap, which is where expert meditators were found to show less activity in their default mode network, this network of the brain that's associated with self-referential thinking, when they practiced the meta meditation compared to beginners. And what this suggests is that there's a selfless way of generating the loving kindness or the meta. As it becomes more natural, we kind of get out of the way. The kind of mini-me who's doing a lot of work thinking about generating the loving kindness eventually kind of dissolves, and it becomes automatic. And in fact, it kind of helps loosen our sense of self as it spreads out to others.
But it's helpful to actually begin the meditation by sending the meta towards ourselves. Paradoxically, I gave this analogy before, but it's kind of like on an airplane when they ask you to put on your own oxygen mask before you help the person next to you on either side of you. Because you need to feel secure, secure yourself, you need to uh, take care of your own safety before you can really help others.
So please allow yourself to get comfortable with an upright spine again. It helps to remain still for the meditation, and it doesn't matter if you're sitting on the floor, on a couch, on a chair, somewhere comfortable. And allow yourself to fully relax in both your body and your mind. I'll invite you to take a few deep breaths, filling up your belly and all the way up into your chest. And then as you exhale, you can extend your exhale and let any tension flow out of your body with your exhale. Breathing in deeply and exhaling long and smooth. And if it feels right, you can smile, turning up the corners of your lips, which will help to gladden your mind.
The feeling that we're going for here, more and more, is kind of like coming inside after on a cold, wintry day and warming up. It's a relief of not having to do things. You can enjoy that feeling of relaxation, like, ah, I can just take this time to enjoy my mind, enjoy the present without needing to do anything. And this light, playful, and joyful attitude will help the meditation.
How we can begin to kindle that feeling of unconditional love of meta. And uh, there's three ways to do this. You can use whichever works best for you. You might use a phrase like, "May I be happy? May I be content?" using the phrase to prime the intention of loving kindness towards yourself. "May I be happy? May I be at ease?" Some people even like to picture themselves as a young child in their mind's eye. They just imagine a very innocent version of themselves, because often we're hard on ourselves. "May I be happy?" You can also try picturing a cute animal or a baby. Send them some loving kindness. So meta, it's a very pro-social, natural feeling that we all have. We all have this ability to feel love. In fact, many mammals have this, and it's felt often as a, a kind of warm, glowing feeling in the chest area.
Then finally, a third way to bring up this feeling is to picture a friend, somebody who it's easy to feel meta towards, somebody who's maybe naturally joyful, a good person. So pick whichever of those tools works best for you. Stick with that one, and you're just priming the mind.
Once you have this feeling of meta, then you can kind of sink into it or surf it. Allow it to spread out over your body. Allow it to flow out if it wants to. And after sending it to yourself, after securing your own oxygen mask, you can simply let it shine. Let it expand out to others. Let it be open to everybody.
And then if your mind gets completely pulled away from that feeling, which is kind of the, the home base, then you can use the four Rs to skillfully let go of the distraction. So you recognize the mind's distracted. That happens automatically. The mind kind of wakes up out of its thinking or whatever took it away. And then you release by no longer feeding it your attention. You don't have to push it away or stomp the distraction down or beat it up. It's there, whatever it is, maybe an itch or just another thought about what you're going to do next, or a doubt, "Am I doing this right?" There's many distractions that will come up, and they're all teaching us. So you just let that go. Let it be. Relax any tension you feel in your mind and your body from the distraction. You might notice a subtle tension. Then you can come back to your smile and relish, relish this feeling of meta.
If you've been gone for a while, you might need to use the tool like the phrase or the cute animal or baby or friend to bring back up the meta. And once you have the feeling, you can remain. And in this way, we're rewiring the brain. We're changing our habit of mind. It's often talked about the attention span, how can, how long can you focus on one thing? This is what my friend Bante Ananda has called our happiness span. How long can you be happy before the mind gets distracted? How long can you stay with meta? And maybe just a few seconds, that's okay. We work with where we're at. And then use the four Rs. Might start to recognize sooner and sooner when the mind is gone. The more you can take time to release, relax, then really relish in that feeling of meta, which the mind enjoys being with because it feels good. Then you'll find longer and longer you can send out this wonderful feeling and be in a positive state of mind.
It's okay if some other thoughts are there, but when your mind is completely gone, you recognize, release, relax, relish. Relish is like really enjoy. And that helps you remain. The physical feeling of meta is your object of meditation here. You want most of your awareness going into that feeling, and a smaller percentage with the phrase or the image, just to bring up that feeling. If you're having trouble, that's no problem at all. It took me actually quite a bit of time to, to really get this feeling going when I was learning. It's very normal. And we'll explore actually tomorrow a technique that can help kind of unblock the heart and open this part of the mind.
Wonderful. You're doing really well. And I encourage you to keep sitting for 20, 30 minutes or longer, um, really as long as you can continue to enjoy without pushing or straining yourself. The longer you sit, the more benefits you'll get because meditation is dose-dependent, um, just like working out or training at any kind of sport or skill. And, um, what's beautiful about this practice and actually kind of essential about it is that you can bring the meta into your daily life. And whenever you're dealing with somebody, whenever you're interacting, or whatever you're doing, you can have this feeling with you. Then when your mind inevitably gets distracted, whether it's been an hour or two hours or even five hours that you've forgotten that, "Oh yeah, I was going to plan to meditate all day today while I'm working and doing my activities," then that's your opportunity to recognize, release, relish, and remain.
So you might notice how your mind feels now, and hopefully it feels good and comfortable. And it's nice to feel this way as much as we can. Um, we're retraining the, the brain by doing this work, and it's really a lifestyle, the fit mind lifestyle, that you can bring into every aspect of what you do. Thank you for taking the time to train your mind for your own benefit and for everyone you interact with. Our mission at the Fit Mind nonprofit is to make mental fitness accessible for everybody. And we think that, uh, these tools are so powerful and can change the world that we live in. So thank you for being part of this. Please let me know if you have any questions, and I'll see you in the next lesson where we talk about how to have fun all day long.
[Music]