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Cultivating Loving Kindness
383 Plays2 years ago
Loving Kindness is all about treating others, and ourselves, with compassion, kindness, and acceptance. It's not "tolerance" because that implies you simply are putting up with someone else, while (mentally or otherwise) rolling your eyes or gritting your teeth.
It's not about sappy, moon-eyed, fake affection, either. Rather, it's a somewhat radical idea: understanding that everyone, yourself included, is doing the best they can, and everyone has both sorrows and joys to deal with... so why not do our best to accept that no matter who they are, or who we are, we will make mistakes in our choices?
Even though that may sound like a pie-in-the-sky sort of thing, there are definite, scientifically-proven benefits to the individual who practices loving kindness. Quite a few, in fact, and I talk about some of them in this episode.
Also, as a sort of bonus, there is a guided meditation that goes along with this episode, and I encourage you to download it after you listen to the podcast. This guided meditation is designed to help you achieve an attitude of loving kindness.
Oh, and by the way, some of the music in this episode is Creative Commons sourced music. Here is the attribution for that particular piece of music:
Blooming Melody by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
It's not about sappy, moon-eyed, fake affection, either. Rather, it's a somewhat radical idea: understanding that everyone, yourself included, is doing the best they can, and everyone has both sorrows and joys to deal with... so why not do our best to accept that no matter who they are, or who we are, we will make mistakes in our choices?
Even though that may sound like a pie-in-the-sky sort of thing, there are definite, scientifically-proven benefits to the individual who practices loving kindness. Quite a few, in fact, and I talk about some of them in this episode.
Also, as a sort of bonus, there is a guided meditation that goes along with this episode, and I encourage you to download it after you listen to the podcast. This guided meditation is designed to help you achieve an attitude of loving kindness.
Oh, and by the way, some of the music in this episode is Creative Commons sourced music. Here is the attribution for that particular piece of music:
Blooming Melody by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Transcript
Introduction to Healthcare.gov and coverage options
00:00:00
Speaker
Did you know you can get comprehensive coverage at a low cost with healthcare.gov? The health plans cover doctor visits, prescription drugs, preventative care, and more. Health plans at healthcare.gov are provided by well-known private insurance companies. Due to the new law, more people can find quality plans for lower prices.
00:00:21
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Four out of five customers can find a plan for $10 a month or less with financial help. Call 1-800-318-2596 or visit healthcare.gov to enroll before the final deadline of January 15, 2023.
Valentine's Day and the essence of love
00:00:39
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Well, here's another St. Valentine's Day week.
00:00:44
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It's the week when we are, above all other weeks, supposed to express our love and affection to those we care about, those who are special to them. Of course, it's all very commercialized, just as most other holidays have been. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter. Most of us feel a need or even a compulsion to buy a card.
00:01:10
Speaker
or flowers or candy or take our special someone out to dinner. It's been ingrained into most of us from the first time we gave out little red cardboard hearts in grammar school that said, be mine or the little candy ones that tasted like sugar flavored chalk with similar emotions imprinted on them.
00:01:33
Speaker
I guess that's okay. Well, not really, but I don't want to go there right now. But shouldn't we be showing love for our special ones all year round instead of trying to focus it all into one day? And more than that, how about showing some loving kindness to everyone around us? I mean, most of the major religions and some of the less well-known ones enjoin us to love our neighbors,
00:01:58
Speaker
to have compassion and love for those around us, even as we love ourselves. Of course, sometimes that's a whole different problem because there's so many people who either don't love themselves or even feel that such self-love, well, is a bad thing akin to idolatry or egotism.
Loving kindness meditation explained by Dr. Burden
00:02:21
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Today's episode of Full Spectrum Holistic Help is all about loving kindness.
00:02:27
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and more specifically about loving kindness meditation, and about the health benefits of it, physical, mental, and emotional. So let's get started. The Full Spectrum Holistic Health Podcast is all about holistic health, what it is, various holistic and alternative health therapies and practices, and how those may help you to be a healthier person. I want to thank you for choosing to listen today.
00:02:57
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I know there are many, many podcasts out there for you to choose from, and I'm glad you're here listening to mine. I am the host for the podcast, Dr. Anthony Burden. I am a Reiki master, EFT therapist, meditation teacher, and a shamanic practitioner. My goal is to help people be healthier in body, mind, and spirit, and that's why I'm here. A large part of what I do is educational in nature because so many people are unaware of the power
00:03:27
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and the efficacy of various holistic and alternative therapies. In these podcasts you'll hear information that will inform you, maybe enlighten you, and help energize and balance you.
00:03:41
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Of course, it won't always be just my opinions and ideas because occasionally I will be interviewing knowledgeable and interesting guests from a variety of areas of holistic and complimentary health practices. So kick back and relax, open your mind and listen.
Spectrum Holistic Health's practices in Georgia
00:04:01
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Spectrum Holistic is a complimentary health and wellness business located in Northwest Georgia, USA. Check out the website,
00:04:10
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www.spectrum-holistic.com for more information. What is loving kindness meditation? Loving kindness meditation is a type of meditation that encourages unconditional love and kindness toward both yourself and others.
00:04:35
Speaker
In the Buddhist tradition, it's called Metta meditation. Metta means benevolence, goodwill, friendliness, and loving kindness, at least as I understand it. If I'm wrong, some Buddhist scholar can contact me and correct me and I'll accept that. There are a lot of different types of such loving kindness meditation.
Benefits of loving kindness meditation on well-being
00:05:00
Speaker
Most of them involve some sort of mantra.
00:05:03
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But for beginning meditators, mantra meditation may be challenging. There are also guided meditations that encourage meta or loving kindness. And honestly, I often recommend guided meditations, not only for beginning meditators, but for people with any level of experience in meditation. But why would a person practice meta or loving kindness meditation?
00:05:33
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Well, first of all, loving kindness, meditation, is good for our own health. Emotional, physical, and spiritual. There was an article in psychology today, and several benefits of loving kindness meditation were noted. All of them were backed up by scientific research. And here are just a few of them. There were several, I think like 18 or 20 benefits, but I just picked a few.
00:06:02
Speaker
First of all, it quiets the inner critic. You know, we are often our own worst critics. Even when we may deny it, we walk around with that little voice in the back of our heads. It says things like, you're never going to lose all that weight you gained during the pandemic. Do you really think you'd be able to run that marathon? Or, oh, you're never going to be any good at that.
00:06:30
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expressing loving kindness to yourself and to others will help you to realize that that inner critic is only playing sad, worn out recordings of untrue criticisms that we've heard from others. Maybe it was parents, maybe it was teachers, maybe it was coaches, maybe it was an ex-spouse or ex-lover, but they're just old sad, worn out things.
00:06:56
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Another benefit of loving kindness meditation is decreased negative emotions and increased positive emotions. There have been studies that have shown that this form of meditation
00:07:10
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increases feelings of love, joy, cheerfulness, appreciation, and amusement. And of course, these positive emotions contribute not only to our emotional well-being, but will help us to maintain good physical health, as well as speeding up healing from any sickness or injury we might happen to have.
00:07:34
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Another benefit that was noted is strengthened empathy and increased compassion. Studies show that loving kindness meditation is especially good at fostering compassionate and empathetic feelings toward others more so than some of the other meditation forms. Also, and here's a good one, loving kindness meditation has been shown to decrease migraine pain
00:08:05
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and the resultant emotional tension from those migraines. You know, this is something I didn't know until I started reading about it recently.
Role of ego in societal issues and meditation's impact
00:08:13
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There were 36 million people in the United States alone that suffer from migraine pain, 36 million. Now, I'm grateful that I do not suffer from migraines, but I know others who do, and they can be debilitating things.
00:08:29
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Chronic migraines especially can rob sufferers of a big chunk of their lives and their personal happiness. But studies show that loving kindness meditation can reduce the pain and the emotional tension from migraines even after only one session. And we're not talking about small decreases.
00:08:52
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The studies show that on the average pain decreased by about 33% and the associated emotional tension by about 43%. That to me, that is a significant gain in loss of pain. Besides the migraine pain, they have also found that loving kindness meditation can help lower chronic pain of any kind. Seven researchers at Duke University
00:09:21
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conducted an eight-week study of randomized participants, all of them having lower back pain. And they found that significant reductions of both pain and emotional distress in those who practiced loving kindness meditation during the study. Now, I don't know about you, but I've had lower back pain. And believe me, there's a lot of emotional distress associated with it when you just can't do things like bend over and tie your shoes without grimacing in pain.
00:09:52
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Now some of the other results from a variety of studies showed that loving kindness meditation can decrease the effects of PTSD, it can lower schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and even slow biological aging. Now that's a thing. Those are all really good reasons, but honestly, what I think is a more important reason is this. We all need more loving kindness in our lives.
00:10:22
Speaker
Loving kindness meditation increases two extremely vital qualities in human beings. Compassion and empathy. I'm serious, look around you the next time you leave your home. Or watch the news for a while. I know, it's pretty depressing. Give it a shot.
00:10:44
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I know that every day, whether it's when I have to go buy groceries or when I look at the news, I see people treating each other with tremendous disrespect, acting like they have no concern or care whatsoever for the needs of others, acting out of fear and ego more than any other driving forces. Years ago, one of my teachers, mentors, told me something that has stuck with me.
00:11:13
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He said that all anger and violence is rooted in ego, in feeling that someone has not delivered the proper respect to you, to what you want, to your family, to your property, to your rights, and so forth. Now think about that. A man who rapes a woman is not doing it for sex. He's doing it because he feels he has a right to sex.
00:11:40
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and it makes them feel powerful and controlling. That's ego. The person who breaks into a house at night and takes things that belong to others is doing it because he thinks he has more of a right to those things than the person who owns them. That's ego. The person who gets cut off in traffic and goes into a rage and shoots the other driver does it because she believes that she has more of a right to that particular spot in the flow of traffic
00:12:11
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or to go at the speed she wishes than the person who cut her off. Ego. The woman who is told she must wear a mask to enter a store, who erupts in anger and spits at or slaps the store employee, does not do it because wearing a mask would hurt her physically, but because she feels her personal rights are being trampled, regardless of how it may harm others or even herself.
00:12:40
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Again, that's ego. You and I have both seen and experienced these things. And sadly, it generally escalates and snowballs into even more anger and violence. Like, how dare that person slap me when all I'm doing is my job. I'll show her. Or maybe I knew who it was that stole my cell phone. Wait till I see him. I'm going to kick his butt and that sort of thing.
00:13:10
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We, not just Americans, but people everywhere, need to find a way to inject more compassion and empathy into our attitudes. And loving kindness meditation is one very effective way to begin doing that. So, and honestly, I guess this is going to be a pretty short podcast episode, you know, I have written a
00:13:38
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short loving kindness guided meditation to go along with the podcast. The meditation will be posted after this episode as a separate recording. Download it, listen to it, share it with your friends if you like. The more loving kindness we can generate, the more compassionate and empathetic everyone can become, the better and more peaceful this world will be.
00:14:06
Speaker
I hope you take my words to heart. And if the guided meditation I give you here does not help, find another. Try to look for another guided meditation or another way of doing loving kindness meditation. There are a lot of these guided meditations that are downloadable from a variety of resources all over the interweb.
00:14:28
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If you have any comments from me, feel free to leave them here or to email me with the email addresses given to you on your favorite podcast platform where you're listening to this. Would you like what I say and agree with it or hate it and disagree with it? I'm interested in knowing what you think.
Health insurance options for Georgia residents
00:14:53
Speaker
Are you one of the 1.5 million Georgians without health insurance? Visit georgiaaccess.gov to connect with the resources to find affordable private and public healthcare options. You may be eligible for financial assistance programs, including Medicaid and peach care for kids. Even healthy people need coverage. An unexpected medical emergency can hurt you and your wallet. Open enrollment for health insurance plans ends January 15th, so don't wait. Visit georgiaaccess.gov today.