In a world where we are taught to push, push and push some more – to keep striving, to keep bettering ourselves, to be ambitious, we’ve also developed a very bad habit. We believe that if we speak harshly to ourselves, that somehow it will make us work harder, work better, work smarter. When I speak to people about reducing critical self thought, they first thing they say is, “If I don’t push myself like that, how will I get anything done?” It may seem counter-intuitive, but my personal experience and now even the science is showing there is an incredible power in practicing Self Compassion.
At the beginning you may be thinking: “You want me to take 15 min of my precious time to sit down and do nothing but give myself love? I have SO MANY other better things to do with my time!” Those were my exact sentiments 7 years ago! Actually, if you want wellbeing, to live longer and be happier, these 10-15 maybe be the best time you’ve ever spent on yourself! Let’s even start with a 5 min meditation which you can download here. Over time should you feel inspired to, you can continue to increase the time week by week. Slow and steady always wins the race!
BENEFITS:
Now let’s look at the benefits of Loving Kindness. Studies are showing that indeed such meditations increase one’s positive emotions and reducing negative emotions significantly. They’ve even found that there is increased vagal tone in the body (the physiological marker for wellbeing) People who suffer from schizophrenia-spectrum disorders have found significant changes in their ability to manage negative self talk as well.
Not surprisingly, research labs have also found a significant reduction in critical self-talk and thereby a reduction in the symptoms of depression. For those of you who are brainiacs out there, get this- it even increases the grey matter in your brain! This is very difficult to do in any other way…the game of ping pong actually does that too. So what if your grey matter increases? Well that’s where we are able to emotionally regulate ourselves. So when that area increases in size, so does our capacity to control our emotions, which is an incredible super power to have!
This simple meditation also has many health benefits that have been found in research labs. It’s been known to reduce the occurrences of migraines and even reduce the intensity of their pain. Loving Kindness mediations also reduce overall chronic pain and for people who suffer from PTSD, it also can reduce the symptoms. As someone with C-PTSD, I’ve absolutely noticed a huge reduction in the symptoms that would obstruct being productive in my day. My ability to manage the symptoms of PTSD are largely due to a consistent practice of Loving Kindness.
We all want to live long healthy lives and guess what? Loving Kindness meditation can help you live longer too! They found in a study of women who were long term meditators, the length of their telomeres had increased. During on-going stress our telomeres can shrink in size which this contributes to the affects of again. So go ahead and throw out all your anti-aging creams, and just reach for the cushion and send yourself and others some love!
Isn’t it interesting that the simple power of sitting still and generating Love has such a transformative power on our lives. It’s as if the universe is telling that kindness is indeed what makes the world go round.
