Heart Centred Practice

With heart centred practice, we’re working on qualities like compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and love for ourselves and others. In the same way we can improve our concentration and awareness, we can intentionally cultivate these aspects of the heart and mind.

How we see ourselves and other people, or how we interpret situations is directly related to how we’re feeling inside. By continually working with our heart and cultivating states like acceptance and gratitude, they begin to seep into our daily life. Gradually the things that used to bother us are no longer a problem because they’re seen from a more open place, one that's grounded in the heart rather than in the stories in our mind.

The effects go beyond external circumstances as well. Within most forms of internal work, it’s common for difficult memories or emotions to surface. If we’ve spent time developing these positive mental qualities, we can let these things show up without as much resistance, allowing us to see it from a different vantage point and begin to work with it in a more constructive way. This can be profoundly healing as we slowly learn to let go of these old patterns and tension that we’ve been holding on to for years.

Loving Kindness

Loving Kindness Meditation

Loving kindness, also known as “Metta” practice, is one of the most widely used forms of heart centred practice and a perfect counterbalance to practices that focus on high concentration or deconstructing experience. It’s typically done by intentionally cultivating a warm, pleasant feeling in the body, and repeating a set of phrases. These phrases and the positive feelings are first directed to yourself, then towards other people in your life, and eventually to all beings.

This practice works in subtle ways. It’s a pleasant practice in itself, but with consistent practice, the feelings of warmth and goodness will colour your day to day experience. Over time, it influences how you perceive people and situations, as they’re all experienced from a more loving and expansive place.

The resources below offer guidance from a few different teachers but the practice is generally the same, so you can explore and find a teacher or style you connect with most.

Metta Retreat - Rob Burbea

This is one of the most widely recommended resources for Metta or loving kindness practice. It has a variety of lectures about working with the heart, and 5 different long form guided sessions. If you want to jump straight into the practice, click the second link below.

All retreat audio
Metta Instructions and Guided Meditation 1 (Practice begins at 17min)

Metta For Everyone - Annaka Harris

This series by Annaka Harris includes an introduction, and 5 guided sessions, with each session directing the feeling of Metta towards a different category of people in your life.

Annaka Harris’ Website

Four Immeasurables - Ken McLeod

This practice focuses on feelings of equanimity, loving kindness, compassion, and joy. Ken has included all the phrases, and detailed instructions on how to guide your own meditation session.

Unfettered Mind Website

Embodied Metta - Tara Brach

In this guided meditation Tara Brach takes a more somatic approach to the practice. Rather than using phrases, she focuses on finding the sense of a “smile” and spaciousness, and carrying that quality throughout your entire body.

YouTube Link

Gratitude

Gratitude Practice

There’s a lot of similarities between the various heart-centred practices, but each touches on different qualities. In the case of gratitude practice, we spend time cultivating a feeling of gratitude so that it becomes more accessible to us throughout the day. Continually touching into this feeling allows it to show up more easily throughout the day, helping us appreciate people or experiences in the moment.

This could be gratitude for our health, our friends, our family, the kindness of a stranger, an experience you’ve had, something you did yesterday, or even your next breath. There is nothing too big or too small. As you continue to practice, you’ll naturally expand the scope of what you’re grateful for, and realize that there is just so much in our day to day lives that is worthy of gratitude.

There are two main ways to train this quality: Through a seated practice similar to loving-kindness meditation, or through journaling. As with all this work, the more often you can do it the more effective it will be. When you’re starting out, try and do this every day, even 5 minutes per day can help develop these positive qualities.

Seated gratitude practice:

1. Sit on your meditation cushion or a chair. Take a few deep breaths, keep your spine upright and relax your body. Spend a few minutes allowing your body to breathe naturally, and your mind to settle.

2. Bring to mind one thing you’re grateful for. Start with something easy like your pet, your partner, or someone who’s had a positive impact on your life. Spend a minute thinking about it, and silently repeat the phrase “I’m grateful for…”. Visualize the person or situation if that’s helpful for you. Really try to draw on that feeling of gratitude and see how it feels in your body.

3. Repeat this with 1-4 more things that you’re grateful for. Spend a minute or two with each, and really focus on the feeling of gratitude in your body.

4. Once you’re done, return your attention to the breath and allow your body to relax for a minute before getting up.

Journaling gratitude practice:

Every morning or evening, sit down and write 3-5 things you’re grateful for. They can be short or long, that doesn’t matter, but be specific.

Before you move on with your day, pause and take a minute to reflect on each of the things you’ve written down. Just like with the seated practice, you want to feel the sense of gratitude in your body.

Additional Prompts by Tim Ferriss:
If you’re stuck trying to come up with things you’re grateful for, here are four prompts or categories suggested by Tim Ferriss.

1. A relationship that really helped you, or that you value highly.

2. An opportunity you have today. Perhaps that’s just an opportunity to call one of your parents, or an opportunity to go to work. It doesn’t have to be something large.

3. Something great that happened yesterday, whether you experienced or witnessed it.

4. Something simple near you or within sight.

Taking & Sending

Taking and sending, also known as “Tonglen”, is a Tibetan Buddhist practice used to develop compassion. The technique involves breathing in the suffering or difficulty of others, and breathing out relief, care, or ease. Spending time in this practice helps to shift our relationship to our own pain and the pain and suffering of others.

Taking & Sending

Tonglen Instructions by the user “Shargrol” from The Dharma Overground forum:

1. Find some aspect of your present experience that is lacking, is difficult, is suffering, etc.

2. Feel that experience. It can help to name it.

3. State the intention: "if there are any other beings out there that are experiencing this and having too much difficulty with it, may I experience it for them. May their experience come to me. May I fully experience it with no resistance. May they find relief."

4. Feel that experience again. Soak in it, dwell in it. Also imagine the joy the other feels being free of it and how they can gain perspective/insight because they now aren't overwhelmed by it. Go back and forth between you and other.

5. After a period of time that feels right, drop the intention and say, "May all beings be free from suffering, may all beings awaken, may all beings be happy."

And then repeat the whole cycle again when it feels right.

The benefit of this practice is you are not taking on anything new, you're experiencing what you are already experiencing, but you are taking on what you are already experiencing with a much deeper intention that goes beyond yourself. And it ends with a reaffirmation that we're all worthy of peace, awakening, and happiness.