The Need for Kindness

On New Year’s Day of 2020, I taught a yoga workshop called Perfecting Your Vision in 2020! And yes, the pun of perfect vision being 2020 was intentional! In this workshop I talked about the necessity of self-study. In the yoga sutras, self-study is called swadyaya and is one of the 5 codes of personal conduct. It is through self-study that we experience the nature of the self, who we are, what we are, what we are trying to do, how we are trying to do it. Not as an intellectual concept, but as an understanding at a cellular, primal level.

I never dreamed that I would have so many opportunities in 2020 to engage in self-study!! Not only to gain a better understanding of who I am, what I am, what I am trying to do and how I am trying to do it, but I have also had many opportunities to study how I faced, and continue to face, some pretty significant challenges during 2020.

Early in the year, I sold my yoga center that I ran for 23 years. That transfer of ownership occurred two weeks into the pandemic shut down in Ohio. Instead of spending the last couple of weeks enjoying the conclusion to my hard work and transitioning to simply teaching a few classes per week for the new owner, I was swallowed up by chaos.

I had to close and transfer all classes to the virtual reality of online teaching. Hours and hours each day were spent orienting everyone involved to running a virtual yoga business instead of a brick and mortar. The transition process for the new owner became a “shared screen” experience rather than in person. The party students had planned for my retirement had to be online.

Now don’t get me wrong. Many people had many more challenges and far more difficulties than I did. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. My point is that we never know what’s waiting around the corner. We frequently have plans and imagine how they are going to be actualized, but then when that time comes, the reality does not even resemble our expectations. It then becomes an opportunity for self-study. A time to watch reactions and feelings. A time to truly evaluate likes and dislikes. A time to be grateful for the simple things in life.

As the curve flattened, and we began to ease back into our lives a bit, I found I was enjoying more time at home. I was enjoying more time alone. I was enjoying more time to be who I am. Who I truly am. Not who I was running a small business seven days a week for 23 years and all that entails. I was rediscovering parts of me that had been placed aside for safe keeping and now I was enjoying bringing them out of hiding and holding them near.

But time keeps marching on, on through the elections, on through the divisiveness and into a place of suffering. The pandemic curve that was flattened is now spiking upward at a record-breaking pace. One million new cases in the last 5 days. The first million took 100 days from January into April. As I am recording this, 2 people are dying of Covid-19 every minute! Every minute! Someone’s loved one is dying every 30 seconds! And they are dying in isolation without the comfort of family or friends.

I am upset. As an anesthetist for 25 years, I not only did anesthesia for surgery, but I was responsible for putting tubes into people that needed a ventilator. I can’t imagine what it is like to be in the thick of it providing healthcare these days. My heart is breaking! It is breaking for those who are dying and for those healthcare providers who are risking their lives, working endless hours, isolating from their own families, and doing whatever they can to ease the suffering of those in their care.

And yet some claim this is a hoax. Some feel their freedom is being taken away if they are required to wear a mask and follow public health guidelines. Some are mounting an anti-vaccine campaign based on nonscientific propaganda.

In the meantime, people are dying. People are out of work. People are waiting in lines for food like they did during the great depression. People are about to be evicted from their homes. People are suffering.

It is TOO MUCH! TOO MUCH SUFFERING! And the heaviness of all of this suffering is weighing us down. We MUST start caring for each other. It is time to make a concerted effort to care and to put that caring vibration into the world.

It is time for metta.

Metta is a word from an ancient language in northern India, called Pali. Metta means to generate a positive energy of kindness. You may have heard about metta meditation or loving kindness meditation. Metta is an antidote to selfishness, anger and fear. And it is something to embrace during this time.

We need to heal ourselves, as well as those around us, of selfishness, anger and fear. These three qualities are at the very foundation of our lives right now. Selfishness, anger and fear. When we are upset about what’s going on around us, the upset stems from it happening to ME and that brings up anger, often from the fears we are facing. We need to generate loving kindness toward ourselves and others. To the whole world that is suffering at some level.

Scientific studies have confirmed that regular practitioners of metta, loving kindness, experience an increase in their sense of well-being and enhanced feelings of empathy. It can even build resilience to face our challenges and help us develop compassion to all, even those who may be thinking much differently than we are.

I have to keep reminding myself to offer some loving kindness to them as well. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, or even like them, but I need to realize that they are suffering too, or they wouldn’t be the way they are.

So now I’m going to go through the stages of the practice of metta, or loving kindness, in the way that I practice it. I will outline it and then guide you through a short practice. There are two things to remember. The first is that it’s more important to practice for a short time consistently than putting it off for when you can do a longer practice. And two, if you are driving, you should put it off and do the practice when you are able to be still and quiet.

This is the outline.

You will sit comfortably and settle your mind into the natural spontaneous breath. Take a minute or two to simply follow the breath as it moves in and out of the body.

Then bring the awareness to the center of the chest and feel the breath expanding and releasing the space of the heart. In that space try to visualize a small flame with no source. With each inhalation, see that flame fill the chest with light and with each exhale, it returns to the small flame.

Next you will offer yourself positive intentions. Silently offer to yourself:

“May I be happy.”

“May I be safe.”

“May I be healthy.”

“May I be at ease.”

And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received.

You then bring to mind your family, keeping the awareness of the light in your heart, and again silently offer the positive intentions.

“May you be happy.”

“May you be safe.”

“May you be healthy.”

“May you be at ease.”

And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received by them at some level.

Sit quietly for short time, connecting again with the light in your heart and then bring to mind neutral people. Acquaintances, coworkers, people that you see regularly but don’t know deeply, and again offer them the positive intentions.

“May you be happy.”

“May you be safe.”

“May you be healthy.”

“May you be at ease.”

And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received by them at some level.

Now bring to mind a person or people that you find difficult. Someone you find yourself agitated with or annoyed by. Connect again with the light in heart and offer them the positive intentions, recognizing that this person or people also seek happiness, safety, health and ease.

“May you be happy.”

“May you be safe.”

“May you be healthy.”

“May you be at ease.”

And sit quietly for a short time, knowing this message is received by them at some level and continue to connect to the light in your heart for as long as you feel it is appropriate to do so.

This practice should not be hurried but it doesn’t have to take very long either. It’s important that the intentions are not said in a perfunctory or mechanical way, otherwise this becomes and intellectual pastime of thinking about loving kindness but not actively projecting it into the world. Over time, the goal is to generate the bhava, the feeling, of loving kindness.

If you believe, as we do in yoga, that every action yields a reaction, and if you believe that we are all connected at some level, then try this practice and see how it affects you and the relationships with those around you.

Now I will guide you through a short practice.