The word "Metta", from the Pali language (also known as "Maitri" in Sanskrit) is defined as "loving-kindness". A Metta Practice can be done as a formal meditation, and can also be applied throughout a yoga class, or just during your regular day.
To experience the formal practice of Metta meditation take a comfortable seat, or rest on your back (in Savasana). Close your eyes, and allow yourself to completely relax, beginning to notice and smooth out your breath. After a few moments, begin to bring your attention to the center of your heart and allow these phrases to emerge: May I be healthy, May I be happy, May I be safe, May I live with ease. Let yourself gently repeat these phrases, drawing yourself back to the breath and the sensations that may arise as the mind wanders.
Take as long as you'd like with those phrases, and as you feel ready, begin to bring to mind someone in your life for whom you feel great love. Get a feeling for their presence, and then direct the phrases of loving-kindness to them: May you be healthy, May you be happy, May you be safe, May you live with ease.
From here, bring a neutral person to mind (the mail man, a neighbor you don't know very well, a fellow dog-walker) and send them the same phrases: May you be healthy, May you be happy, May you be safe, May you live with ease.
After the neutral person, bring someone to mind for whom you feel anger, or with whom you are in conflict right now. With the same tender open-heartedness you had for yourself, send them the phrases: May you be healthy, May you be happy, May you be safe, May you live with ease. This part of the meditation can be the most challenging, so if you find it very hard to stay present, apply ahimsa (non harming) to yourself, and just breathe! Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Stay with the phrases, and the presence of the person, and see what shifts and softens.
Finally, allow yourself to gradually extend the phrases outward, like ripples in a pond, to include unconditional and unattatched loving-kindness to all sentient beings.
These Metta phrases can also be used as an intention to move through your yoga practice, your day, and your life, with loving-kindness. It helps to synchronize the phrases with breath; visualize flooding the body (particularly places that need attention) with Metta as each breath pours in.
Metta practice can give you a systematic way to shift your inner narrative from one of a wandering mind, or a critiquing commentary, to embodying a place much more available to send and receive love, forgiveness, kindness, strength, and joy. This practice can be used both during a restorative class, and a more vigorous flow by mindfully and kindly setting the intent to release tension and sending Prana (breath) and Metta coursing through your body.
Consciously infusing your yoga practice with loving-kindness can give you greater access to it throughout life--even when that life is not going precisely the way you'd like! Metta practice helps us not just understand, but FEEL that we are woven into a great web of relationships, which we can light up through the power of our attention. And it helps us shift our focus from getting love to creating it, from improving our bodies to cherishing them, and from fixing life to embracing it.
~May you be healthy, May you be happy, May you be safe, May you live with ease~
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