A powerful mindfulness exercise that I do is to practice love.
“Wait a minute,” you might say. “Isn’t love something you either feel or not?”
I’m glad you asked! The answer is that every feeling you have is either a derivative of love or fear. The more you shift your thoughts towards love, the more you love your life–and allow love into your life.
When you consider that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed, doesn’t it make sense to begin to shift any fear-based catabolic emotional energy more towards love-based anabolic energy? In other words, to practice love?
I usually do this exercise just before going to sleep, but it really can be done any place you can sit quietly, relax, and focus.
To begin, bring to mind something that you totally and completely love. This may be your spouse or partner, pets, children, etc. Sit a moment and envision them totally enveloped in love. Get creative here. See them in a warm golden light, a big hug, or whatever feels like being embraced by the biggest expression of love you can imagine.
Then bring someone or something else that you love into the picture. As you stay in that feeling of love, start to include more and more people and things—and even places—that you love. Eventually you want to work up to having the entire planet embraced in your vision of love.
For me, this may look something like this:
I envision my husband being surrounded by a warm, golden light that is pure love. That light expands to include our pets, our families, and our friends. It spreads to include our home and everything in it. It expands to include my job and all the people I work with. It grows and encircles our town, and all the places where I have ever lived. It expands to cover the states where I have lived, and spreads to the whole country. It then moves around the world embracing everyone and everything. It encompasses the planet itself and everyone and everything is enriched and enhanced by this feeling of love.
You can make the exercise last a long time, or just a few minutes. Practice this daily and watch for examples of more love coming into your life.
Together we can do it!
Photo by happykanppy / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Goss Coaching 
I do this in meditation, it’s like taking a small vacation too 🙂
Absolutely! Thanks for sharing!
Hanna,
Nice post. This is something similar to doing the visualisation relating to gratitude. You ” see” every person and aspect in your life to have taught you something and thus to be grateful about. To me Gratitude is anabolically more empowering.
With gratitude……..
Shakti
What works for you is what is best! Thanks for commenting.
Hi Hanna,
Love this post. I’m currently listening to Pema Chodrin’s talk “Awakening Love” and the very first chapter is about a meditiation to learn to “expand your love”. You start by visualizing somone (or an animal) you already love – send them love and wish them to be free of suffereing, then move to a neutral stranger (someone you can visualize and is part of your life), then move to someone who is “difficult” and that you typically have negative feelings for…and then move to the whole world. I have trouble getting past step 4…turns out that person is probably my greatest “teacher” in this exercise. 😉
Cathy
Absolutely. If they continually throw you out of your love space, put them in a little later in the chain. Fill up your love space so fully that by the time you get to that person, it’s easier to see them without judgement. And if they still throw you out of your love space, practice being in your love space consistently so that it feels really powerful and then try inviting them in again. There is no one way to do this.Practice this so that you are successful at getting to the place of loving the world and then go back and embrace the scoundrels! There is more benefit in being in love then butting up against some practiced catabolic energy. The more you do it, the more successful you will be. Make sense?
Totally! Good advice coach!
Another great post! I’m going to try this one!
Awesome! Let me know how it works for you.
Thanks for sharing. This is super helpful.
So glad! Thanks for commenting.