Many meditation products are designed to help people who are new to meditation. Sometimes these products are simply an aid for even those who have a lot of experience meditating. These products range from CD’s for guided meditation in the Zen tradition, Mindfulness meditations, Loving Kindness (Metta) meditation, and others.

Meditation

One of my goals is to start making podcasts for visualizations.  These visualizations can be listened to while seated in meditation or while lying in shavasana.  I plan to post these podcasts here on my blog, on my website, and on my Facebook Business Page (Yoga by Fran Gallo).  It is a matter of figuring out how to use my new microphone and figuring out how to do/post the podcasts.

For now, I have written out the  Loving Kindness Meditation (also known as Metta Meditaiton).  Personally, I love the Metta Meditation based on the Insight (Vipassana) Meditation tradition. In this guided meditation, the listener is instructed to visualize a progressively larger group of living things, beginning with oneself and ending with the universe, while emanating love and kindness toward all. The person doing the meditation sends the following Loving Kindness phrases below to various groups:

May I be filled with loving kindness
May I be safe from harm
May I be well
May I be peaceful and at ease
May I be happy

After having said the words above, you then start over and replace “I” with the following:

my family/ my partner/spouse/children

my friends

my acquaintances

people who are difficult to be with or difficult for me to accept or love

all human kind

all sentient beings, including all animals, trees, flora and fauna

the entire planet earth with her rivers, sky, air, land, forests, plains, fields, seas…

the entire universe

I think it’s pretty inclusive of everyone and everything! Don’t you think so, too?  I hope you will have time to try it!

We are always so pressed for time!!  Why is that so?  This whole weekend, I thought I would have time to finish a whole list of chores that I can’t get done during the busy work/teaching week. But, in reality, I got to about three things on my list!  My weekend is now winding down and I am ready to simply relax.  I keep thinking about a documentary I watched this weekend, Naked in Ashes.  It is about India’s sadhus who renounce all worldly things (except FOOD which they need to feed their physical bodies).  There are 1.3 billion people in India and there are 13 MILLION holy men or sadhus.  I find that number  quite mind boggling, even if the number 13 million represents only 1% of 1.3 billion. It is amazing that this many people renounce the physical world, their families, the comfort of home, all that is part of the modern world, and they venture forth to devote their entire existence to meditation and devotion in search of the divine!  And all I want to do is carve out 20 minutes of my day to devote to this simple Loving Kindness Meditation!  Put into this perspective, it should not be so difficult.

It’s strange, but there is the side of me that fantasizes about living like the sadhus.  But always, I think to myself, “Yes, I could do that for a year at most.”  Isn’t that lame?  I put time limits on myself. I could only do it for a short while.  I guess I am too attached to my worldly comforts. But since Jeanie died I think about what it would be like to give up a WHOLE lot and live like a sadhu for a short time. Something to think about…but the most important thing right now is to be fully integrated with my work as a yogini.  To practice what I teach, to practice loving kindness, and to continue to be REAL, which to me means to be fully integrated into this very life I live out day. I think it is a challenge we all face  day to day: how to be the best we can be, how to make the most of this life, how to be close to God while we have our feet firmly planted on this earth.

Yes, something to think about!