Metta meditation is a Buddhist technique that involves focusing on feelings of love for oneself and others through repeating positive phrases while sitting in a quiet area. It aims to promote relaxation and unconditional love for all people. Novice meditators can start with a few minutes a day and work up to an hour. The technique can be practiced at home or in group settings.
Metta meditation is a form of relaxation and spiritual technique that originates in the Buddhist religion. A practitioner of this type of meditation typically focuses mental energy on feelings of love for themselves and other people. Typically, this is accomplished through repeating positive phrases while sitting in a quiet area.
Meditation practice in general aims to relax and invigorate the thoughts and actions of its practitioners. Metta meditation is a particular form of meditation, where positive phrases are essential to the technique. Metta is a word from the Pali language of Southeast Asia, where this form of meditation originated as part of the area’s Buddhist tradition. The word translates into English as “loving-kindness,” a concept that is intrinsic to people who practice metta meditation.
Typically, a person new to the metta meditation technique first finds a quiet, relaxing place to sit. He then takes a few slow breaths to further relax, before speaking a few key phrases aloud. These key phrases focus on the meditator first and generally include simple wishes such as those for happiness, safety, and love. These positive wishes are called metta and each meditation session generally begins with metta. Unconditional love for oneself and for others is the goal of the meditative process.
After personal metta, the person offers metta for another important person in his life. After these metta have fallen naturally into the meditation routine, other people can be involved in a daily metta offering, until the person can apply the positivity offerings to all people. Although a novice meditator may devote only a few minutes each day to meditation, he can then work up to one hour of metta meditation per day. Attention to affirmations and forgetting one’s surroundings are also important to the metta meditation technique.
Even people who are disliked by the meditator can be included in the technique, in order to test the boundaries of unconditional love of the meditation process. While performing the relaxation, the person may experience feelings such as anger or pain, which is a normal occurrence while trying to experience feelings of unconditional love. The technique is appropriate for home use, or meditative institutions may offer courses or retreats in group settings.
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