What happened when I did 40 days of Lovingkindness Meditation for The Difficult Person

A dear friend came to me on January 1st and said, “I want to do a 40 day lovingkindness practice. Will you do it with me?” You’d think that would be something I’d jump at, but you’d be wrong. I knew I should, but I can best describe my ethos going into the first practice as “kicking and screaming”. Almost literally. And yet somehow I just completed 40 days of the practice!

The most interesting part to me was the part where I offered the phrases to The Difficult Person. I’ll let you know who that was in a moment.

If you aren’t familiar with this practice it’s a pretty interesting one. Similar to mantra, some phrases are repeated in this practice but they are offered to a progressive series of beings, starting with oneself. I usually go with the following phrases:

May I be happy.

May I be healthy.

May I be safe.

May I be free from fear and worry.

May I live with ease.

(Replacing “I” for “you” when offering to another person.)

For my 40 day practice, I decided to eliminate the 4th phrase and to only offer to the following beings: myself, someone I love, The Difficult Person and all beings everywhere. I was only doing 9 minutes per practice so I needed to condense things. 

On my first day of practice, with my friend sitting next to me, I was fascinated at how much things changed as I offered these phrases to the different people, especially The Difficult Person. (Side note - some traditions even call this person “the enemy”. I don’t necessarily subscribe to that notion, but it’s nice to know even monks understand that relationships with others are not always easy!) When I got to The Difficult Person, I felt my whole body tighten up as if to say “I don’t WANT to offer happiness to this person!! Look at what they’ve done!!” I especially noticed my lips tighten as if trying to form the snarl that I felt inside.

This sensation persisted for the next several days. But I quickly found myself thinking, “If this person was truly happy, healthy and safe, maybe they wouldn’t be so awful! Maybe we need everyone to do this practice for them!”

With those thoughts, my body began to soften. I still wasn’t entirely happy about doing the offering and I certainly didn’t notice the same heart connection I did as my practice progressed with the person I chose as the person I loved, but there was an ease coming in.

Then The Difficult Person did something, yet again, that I didn’t agree with and that endangered hundreds if not millions of people and animals. 

The physical sensation of tightness in my body returned, apparently reflecting the tightening in my mind and heart. 

But it was different. Noticeably so. It was maybe 50% as tight as it was when I began the practice. 

Not long after this I found this passage about the Difficult Person in Sharon Salzberg’s book Lovingkindness:

“In the same way that cultivating lovingkindness toward a benefactor is easy, feeling kindness toward an adversary can be just as difficult. In order to begin to develop Metta toward a person with whom we have problems, we must first separate our vision of the person from the actions they commit that may upset or harm us. All beings are deserving of care, well-being, of the gift of lovingkindness. In developing Metta, we put aside the unpleasant traits of such a being and try instead to get in touch with the part of them that deserves to be loved.”

As I’ve been talking about in classes recently, the great ones from all the world’s great traditions tell us that we are Love, we came from Love and we will return to Love. All of us. That can be hard to fathom when we find ourselves face to face with the actions of a person that we’ve labeled as anything but Love. That’s true whether they are living in our home or we see them on television on a regular basis. But as Sharon says above, instead of separating them from us, we have to be willing to separate the actions from the truth inside and recognize that we are the same. And in some situations, that’s no easy task.

As I finished my 40 days of practice I started to notice outside of my practice that my reactions to The Difficult Person had softened when I heard about him or what he had done on Facebook or TV. I still don’t agree with him, I still wouldn’t have lunch with him, and I still wouldn’t vote for him, but I think I’ve begun, just the tiniest bit, to separate the actions from the being inside. 

I know this isn’t going to change anything for The Difficult Person, but it has changed something for me. They say anger is like holding a hot coal and expecting the other person to feel pain. I’ve managed to give myself the gift of a little less anger through this 40 day practice. That seems like a pretty powerful gift to me.

Oh. And if you haven’t already figured it out, My Difficult Person is the current president of the United States.

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Hiking and Yoga Reflections

Have you really looked at our logo for our Yoga and Hiking series? If you look closely you’ll see that what appears to be the air pathways in the lungs are actually upside-down trees! I purposely had this created (thanks Laurie!) to reflect a vision I had while driving back from one of my own hikes one day.

We talk about it in yoga all the time - the idea that we’re all one, all connected, all part of a bigger whole. I think we often think about other people in that context, but we don’t often think about all the other living beings that surround us.

As I looked at the trees around me on this drive home, I suddenly noticed how much their underlying structure - the trunk, limbs and branches - looked exactly like the illustrations we often see of human lung tissue and the pathways the air travels through in order for us to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. It then wasn’t a big leap for me to consider how that without these trees and their ability to photosynthesize, that life-giving oxygen I breathe would not be nearly so readily available. And if we take it one step further, the carbon dioxide I exhale feeds the trees and gives them the raw materials for their own life sustaining needs. And so the cycle continues.

It’s this kind of realization of our connectedness to nature and each other that I hoped our Yoga and Hiking Series would allow people to start to experience. Over the course of our 9 week series we had such a wonderful time taking in so many beautiful spaces within a 30 minute drive from the studio in Milford. We made new friends, took the time to really notice our surroundings and our own bodies, were inspired by the beautiful words of many great writers and poets (thank you Iris for your beautiful readings!) and saw pieces of Mother Nature that we may not have noticed without the awareness we cultivated through our yoga practice.

Thank you to everyone that joined us over the course of the summer! If you haven’t heard, we’re cooking up some ideas for continuing these experiences through the fall and into the winter, so stay tuned for more!

Here are a few pictures from some of our outings.

In Praise of Repetition

It’s an interesting phenomenon in the world of yoga. Perhaps you’ve found this in other places, but it seems like we’re always trying to do a “new” pose or a “new” sequence. I certainly know as a new teacher I tried to create something “new” week after week. But if we look at the practice of yoga as a discipline just like any other, we have to acknowledge that the key to learning anything is repetition. 

The definition of “a discipline” is a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education. Having lived in the world of higher education for a whopping 9+ years, I feel pretty confident in saying that yoga is certainly up there with any branch of knowledge one might study in a university. Not only for its content, but also for its depth and breadth. It would be easy to study yoga for many lifetimes and still only scratch the surface of what’s there for us to examine.

By coming back to our mats over and over again we get the opportunity to connect to this discipline of yoga much more deeply. Each time we come back we make that scratch in the surface of this knowledge just a little deeper.

Strength and flexibility in the mind or the body only develop with time and practice. With attention and discipline. With the commitment to come back to it over and over again. With each repetition, we continue to lay down the neural pathways we need not only to find the coordination to put that front knee over the ankle with precision, but to truly understand what it means to do so physically, energetically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We develop not just coordination in the movement of the front leg back to down dog or forward into a lunge, we get to explore what that means in the body we’re living in at that moment. 

As a teacher, I have seen the difference this idea of repetition has brought to the practice not only for myself but for my students. Just like learning my scales when I was playing bassoon, I can see what a difference that continued attentive repetition creates in all the aspects above in myself and others. For those that have been practicing with me, I hope you can see/feel that too. 

I’ll continue to dedicate myself to creating a curriculum of practice that helps you explore this branch of knowledge we call yoga, with all the depth and breadth that it provides for us on this amazing journey we call life. You just need to continue to show up. 

Meditation: It’s a muscle we have to build and grow

There's a lot of conflicting information out there about meditation. The common misconception is that when you are really and truly meditating, your mind will be blank and you'll be free from all those crazy thoughts we all have day in and day out. While that's a lovely goal that some beings may be able to achieve, for most of us meditation is really more about the exercise of doing it. I like to think of it as a muscle you have to exercise, just like any other, in a way that's appropriate for that muscle.

The text below comes from an interview I did with the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in 2016. You’ll find the original article here.

Q. We hear all the time that meditation is good for us. How exactly does it benefit one’s health?

A. The benefits of meditation are so vast that whole books have been filled on the subject! Meditation practice can have direct physiological and psychological effects such as the lowering of blood pressure, reduction in perceived stress level, relief of anxiety and depression, relief of temporary and chronic pain, improvement in the ability to concentrate and pay attention, and a general sense of greater well-being. Meditation is also shown by current scientific studies to be a key factor in the phenomenon known as neuroplasticity, where the brain, even at later stages of life, can actually rewire itself and create new pathways when needed. Meditation helps create pathways that can be beneficial to health, such as helping you stay the course with those New Year’s resolutions!  



Q. It seems there are as many techniques for meditating as there are yoga styles. How does one sort through the maze of options and get started?

A. That’s so true! It really can be overwhelming! But I’m reminded of a portion of the book “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass. He quotes the great Lao Tsu, who said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” He then asks, “But where do we begin? The answer is simple: You begin just where you are.” Do you see mention of a technique somewhere that appeals to you? Give it a try! But don’t just try it once and decide it isn’t for you. Meditation, like so many things, is something that you have to build a relationship with. Choose a method, and commit to trying it for a week. If you’re new to meditation in general, start small. Even 2-5 minutes has been shown by many studies to start to bring about beneficial changes. Practice two to five minutes of your chosen technique for seven days, every single day and at the end of that time see how you feel. If it just isn’t working for you, try something else. If you aren’t sure, try another seven days. It’s more important to dive in and take that first step in giving it a try, than to agonize over the choice. You can always try again and you can always try something else. Once you find something that works for you, stick with it; 40 days is a traditional time period for committing to a practice. After that time you may want to try a different technique. Or maybe you’ll continue with the same technique. It’s all up to you! 



Q. It seems like the thoughts in the head are never-ending. How does one know they’re meditating?

A. This is such a great question because I think there’s so much confusion and mystery around meditation. That question of “how do I know if I’m there” is so prevalent. People think that meditation is this mystical place you only can get to if you have some kind of special gift and you can make your thoughts stop. I used to struggle with this so much early on in my yoga teaching career. I always thought, “I’m a yoga teacher for crying out loud! Why can’t I do this?!” And then I’d get frustrated and give up. Then I had the good fortune to meet a wonderful teacher named Sharon Salzburg and her workshop totally turned my relationship with meditation around. Here’s the thing — you can’t stop your thoughts. Your mind is meant to think! That’s what it was designed to do! What you can do, is bring the mind to a single point of focus. That’s what most meditation techniques are asking us to do. We use a technique — such as following the breath or my personal favorite, repeating a mantra — as a tool to help bring the mind to that single point of focus. The moment of meditation is that moment when you notice that you are not with that single point of focus any more. That moment that you notice that you’re actually thinking about how much laundry you have to do later or what’s on your to-do list for that afternoon or that argument that you had with your spouse yesterday — that moment is the moment of meditation. Because that moment is the moment when you have this amazing choice to make. You can either give up and tell yourself you’re terrible at this meditation thing and just go back to your day, or you can let go of whatever it was you were thinking about, and draw your mind back to your point of focus, i.e. your meditation technique. That’s it. That’s the whole game. When you keep noticing you’re gone and you keep drawing yourself back to your point of focus, that’s when you know you’re meditating.  



Q. What exactly happens when one is meditating?

A. What happens is that the process I described above goes on over and over again. Through that process, we start to train the mind to be here in this moment, rather than somewhere else. We develop the compassion to treat ourselves with love each time we release a thought to come back to our chosen technique. That’s a big one! Have you ever noticed how you speak to yourself? For most of us, it isn’t with love. We teach ourselves that we can always begin again. We corral that busy, busy mind that is always pulling us elsewhere, rather than being fully present in the moment. Maybe that doesn’t sound that profound, but when was the last time you actually paid attention to what you were eating, rather than talking on the phone, watching the TV, and checking your email? When’s the last time you actually sat with a loved one and fully heard what they had to say, rather than listening to, responding, or looking at Facebook? There are so many small but beautiful moments that we miss in life because we are being pulled in so many directions at once most days. Our lives are so hectic and so filled with anxiety. Meditation gives us a tool that helps us deal more skillfully with the challenges of daily life. It’s a muscle we have to build and grow like any other muscle. It takes practice, but it’s so worth it.  



Q. How did you get started meditating, and what motivates you to continue your practice?

A. I was never a meditator in the traditional sense until I started yoga teacher training where a traditional practice was a required part of my training. I think yoga was my meditation before that — and is certainly a valid form of meditation in and of itself. The process of linking breath and movement and becoming fully immersed in the sensations of the body was an entry point for me. Training to be a yoga teacher gave me more of a traditional practice. What motivates me to continue? So many things! I have so much to learn. Compared to some of the great spiritual teachers like the Dalai Llama, I’m just getting started! Who knows what else I may discover along the way. I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression since I was fairly young. As we move into the deep darkness of winter, that struggle becomes more difficult for me. My mediation practice has smoothed that bumpy road. It has made me less reactive, which makes me a better wife, daughter and friend. It’s also a professional commitment. I’m a better teacher if I can speak about the practice from a place of authentic experience. I hope to be a guide on the path for others who are struggling to begin like I did. It’s a key element in my spiritual practice as well.  



Q. Anything else you would add to this discussion?

A. I was once told by a teacher of mine that there was a study done that took brainwave scans of people while they were meditating. The scans showed the difference in brain waves when one was meditating versus when one was just going about daily life. One of the study participants told the scientists after one meditation session, “Don’t even bother looking at my scans for today. My mind was all over the place!” They decided to look at them anyway and were amazed to discover that even though the subject didn’t feel like they were meditating, the brain wave scan showed activity that indicated that the person was, in fact, meditating! I found that incredibly liberating! So, if you’ve tried meditation before and you gave up because you thought you weren’t “getting it,” try it again now that you’ve read what I’ve written here. Spend some time with it. Build a relationship with it. Give it a solid commitment of time. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Be here now

As I'm writing these words, a rough week for many of us has just come to an end. And not a very satisfying end. An end that has more of a question mark on it then ever. Many of us have been forced to relive our own traumas that we may have set aside for years. Many of us may have engaged in heated debates with friends or family members. Many of us are feeling worn out and dragged through the dirt thanks to media in many forms.

I don't care what side of the debate you stand on. What I care about is that you take care of yourself in the best way possible right now. One strategy I've been using and I'd like to offer to you is being fully present. How can that help in times like these? Read on.

This may seem like the exact WRONG time to be talking about being present. How do we do that when the present is just almost too much to bear? I’ve asked myself this question a lot this week. I’ve wondered how do I stay present with what’s happening, keep being an informed citizen and yet not loose my mind as I watch horrendous suffering come to the surface in others and old traumas rise in myself as well? How do I do any of this when all I really want to do is run and hide?

First, I have to know my limits. I am only human. I can do my best and my best has to be enough. My limits may not be the same as yours. I have to accept that. My limits may not be the same as those of my family and friends. I have to accept that and I have to call upon them to respect my limits and respond in ways that honor my boundaries. I may need to speak clearly about my limits to others. I may have to accept that they will not appreciate my limits. I will need to honor them anyway the best I can, perhaps without their help or support. No one else can know your limits. Only you can know where your boundaries are. Be clear in protecting your limits. And when you’ve reached that limit, turn off the TV, put down the paper or turn off or put away whatever it is that all this was coming to you through, or ask the person you’re talking to to allow you to change the subject or simply walk away. It’s more than ok to make it stop for awhile.

Second, I can use what I know about the brain and yoga/meditation to stop the repetitive loop of past traumas playing out in my mind. Did you know that when you relive a memory, your brain doesn’t know if it is something that happened in your past or if it is happening right now? Many times the same chemical responses, such as the release of stress hormones, can be found when we recall an event. If we end up in the endless thought loop of remembering a trauma, we are basically putting our bodies and minds through the same experience over and over again. Sometimes we need to do this to make sense of the event, to find resolution or to simply fully deal with the trauma. But sometimes we can get stuck in a pattern of thought that just becomes harmful. This is why knowing your limits is first. If it’s time to get those negative thought loops to stop, being present is where we begin.

How? Start as above in step one and turn off the news, put down the paper or the social media or whatever it is that’s triggering you. Choose a technique you find calming. Your technique might be similar to one you use in meditation. You can follow your breath, you can look at an uplifting image or you can repeat a mantra. Whatever you choose, bring your mind fully to it. See it, feel it, experience it for all that it is. The more curiosity you can bring to it the greater the chances of stopping the cycle of damaging thoughts.

But what does that really do? It empowers us to reclaim the here now. And the here and now is actually pretty safe if we really look at it closely. If you are reading this you are likely sitting at a computer or looking at a device. If you take a deep breath and let it out the next breath is going to come. And the next. There is no one attacking you. There is no one hurting you. You are just here, reading these words and taking a deep breath. It’s all pretty simple right here and right now. The next moment may not be that way. But this moment is. This breath is ok. This breath is safe. In this breath all is well.

So you take this little vacation from it all and you live and breathe to see another day. To take action in another moment. You are rested enough and centered enough to do whatever is next. And that is all anyone can ask in these crazy times we live in.

And if you truly need help processing and dealing with it all, remember that yoga and meditation can only take us so far sometimes. Don’t be afraid to call and ask for professional help. There’s no shame in that. That’s also part of knowing your limits.

Just begin again

Why is it that when we become adults and the older we get, we seem to think that we can’t start over or start something new? It’s as if we think when we get to {insert the milestone of your choice here} that we’re done! Cooked! Finito!

How ridiculous!

What we don’t realize is that there are new beginnings every day. When we start to recognize those new beginnings, we can start to see that the power to just begin lies within and that power is so very important in all aspects of our lives.

One of my favorite meditation teachers, Sharon Salzberg, shares great wisdom in the quote below that I shared in class and in your newsletter recently:

The critical element in meditation practice is beginning again. Everyone loses focus at times, everyone loses interest at times, and everyone gets distracted over and over again. What is essential, and also incredibly transforming, is realizing that we have the ability to begin again, without blaming or judging ourselves, without thinking we have failed, without losing heart, we can, and need to, constantly be beginning again.

Sharon Salzberg

This is so key in meditation, in yoga practice and in life. If you’ve ever started a meditation practice and thought you “failed” because you couldn’t get your mind to be quiet or empty, you’ve just discovered the importance of beginning again. (Stay tuned for more about this idea in a future workshop.) You also probably did a fair amount of beating yourself up in the process. I know I have!

“I suck at this.”

“I’m a freaking yoga teacher and I still can’t do this.”

“Why do I even bother.”

“Look at everyone else! They look so peaceful! Why is this so hard for me?!”

Sharon really changed my relationship with meditation the first time I took a workshop with her by bringing the wisdom of the quote above to my attention. Not only could I just start over, I could understand that I wasn’t alone in needing to do so. After over 40 years of meditation practice she does it too! That gave me great hope and a great deal more understanding.

That’s all well and good, but what does this have to do with your life you might ask.

When’s the last time you started trying to do something and gave up because you “failed”, or got busy with the daily requirements of your life or because your family needed you or {insert whatever it was here}?

• A new eating habit

• A new exercise program

• A new business

• A new educational pursuit

• Finding a new job

• A new way of being in an important relationship

• A new self care habit

• Etcetera …

We all do these things. But our practice of yoga and meditation can show us that we do have that ability to start over. We do it every time we get on our yoga mat. Every time you step on your mat is a new beginning. The body is different. The mind is different. The experiences of your life, no matter how small, have changed you. You really have no idea what you might find on your mat today. But you step on and you practice and you start again, and again and again.

Each breath is a new beginning. With great faith we take an inhale in and trust that it will nourish us. We let go of the exhalation with great trust that the next inhale will be waiting. Beginning again happens with every breath we take.

So we can start over. We can begin again. We do it multiple times each day.

What we might need even more practice with is the being kind to ourselves part. The not loosing heart part. The not judging or blaming ourselves part. And so we can get on our mat or our meditation cushion and practice that too. Notice when it happens. Know it happens to all of us. Then just let it go and start over. It’s just another thought.

Just begin again.

What is Kirtan and why should you make it part of your yoga practice?

We are so fortunate at Forever Yoga to have International Kirtan artist Girish coming to visit us again at the studio in September! If you haven’t experienced a kirtan before or you’re wondering what it’s all about and why it’s such an amazing addition to your yoga practice, keep reading!

What is Kirtan?

Kirtan is a form of live music that often involves Sanskrit mantras. Each artist puts their own sound and creativity into the music, so it can be quite different from person to person or group to group. They may use different instruments from what you might see in a typical rock band to more traditional instruments like harmonium and drums or sitars. Beyond the music, a key element of Kirtan is that it is usually in Call and Response format. In other words, the leader of the group will sing a line, and then the audience will sing it back them. We all get to participate when we go to a Kirtan!

What are the benefits of Kirtan?

Vibration. Sanskrit is the science of vibration. When we chant Sanskrit sounds, we receive physical and energetic benefits. Kirtan makes that all the sweeter by, as Krishna Das often says, giving us something that makes taking the “Medicine” (the Sanskrit mantra itself) easier to “swallow”. Music just makes everything sweeter. Putting words to music has also been shown to make retention and recall better. That’s why you can still remember every word of your favorite song from when you were a teenager. Want to really learn a mantra? Do it through Kirtan!

Stress Relief. Singing has been scientifically shown to relieve tension and relax the body. But what if you feel like you don’t have a great singing voice? No one cares what you sound like! It’s just like when we’re in a yoga class, the only people that care about your down dog is you and your teacher! Everyone is having their own experience and if they’re really paying attention, they aren’t at all concerned with what you sound like. We’re all in this together. And if you really don’t feel comfortable singing, just being in the room with the sound and the others participating can bring you huge benefits.

Group Energy. Speaking of the others in the room, group energy is so important in so many of our practices. If you’ve ever done a yoga video at home, you know that it’s just not the same as it is when you do yoga in a class setting. When everyone is moving and breathing together, there’s something special that happens. The same thing is true in Kirtan. It’s just like when you go to see your favorite musical group live. Sharing that experience with others provides a kind of magic that you just can’t get when singing alone in the shower!

A sweet form of meditation. You know how you feel when your favorite song comes on the radio (or the Alexa or whatever it is you play music through these days)? Kirtan can give you that feeling in an even more beneficial way. The music we play in classes is often recorded versions of Kirtan. Just like so many other yogic practices, kirtan allows you to release stress, tension and anxiety in a way that is far more beneficial than sitting in front of the TV on a Friday night. Instead of simply distracting you, it actually draws you in to more conscious relaxation. How does it do that? Kirtan is a form of meditation practice! Really! As you chant along with a room full of friends your mind will wander, but it will wander a little less due to the group energy. When you notice you’ve wandered, you just come back to the chant. It’s that simple! You may find that this is the most fun meditation you’ve ever done!

I hope you’ll join us for our Kirtan with Girish this month or another Kirtan in the future. You won’t be sorry, I promise!

Bonus: My kitty who I named Kirtan because she loves to sing! :-)

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