Loving-kindness meditation: wishing everyone well

Loving-kindness meditation, also called metta meditation, means silently repeating a few kind wishes. You offer them first to yourself, then to someone you love, then to a neutral person, and finally to all beings. It takes 10 to 20 minutes and a quiet place to sit, and you don’t need to feel warm for it to count.

Why people do it

People use loving-kindness practice to feel calmer and more connected to others. Many also use it to soften a harsh inner voice. The phrases give a wandering mind something steady to come back to. By widening the circle step by step, you practice extending goodwill to people you would not usually think about.

The practice is old. Loving-kindness is the usual English word for metta in Pali, or maitri in Sanskrit. Accounts of Buddhist and Indian texts trace the idea to the Upanishads, which came before Buddhism, and to Jain texts and the Pali Canon. The Pali Canon includes a well-known discourse on metta called the Karaniya Metta Sutta.

Loving-kindness meditation engages three parts of a person. For the mind, it trains attention and makes room for positive emotion. For the soul, it centers compassion and connection with others, a theme explored across the soul hub. For the spirit, it is a contemplative discipline that has been practiced for centuries in Buddhist and Indian traditions.

What the evidence says

Loving-kindness meditation has more research behind it than many contemplative practices, though the research has clear limits. A 2015 meta-analytic review in Frontiers in Psychology pooled 24 studies with 1,759 participants. It found medium effects on daily positive emotions. Programs focused on loving-kindness showed medium effects, and programs focused on compassion showed small ones. The review also found that the amount of time people spent meditating did not change the size of the effect. A 2008 laboratory study in Emotion found that a few minutes of loving-kindness meditation increased feelings of social connection and positivity toward strangers, compared with a matched control task. Reviewers have flagged small samples and low-to-moderate study quality across this field, so the findings are encouraging but not settled. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) describes meditation as generally low-risk, but notes that its possible harms have not been studied well.

Variations

• Loved one first. If wishing yourself well feels hard or hollow, start with someone you love easily, then come back to yourself. Many beginners find this a gentler way in.
• Adding a difficult person. Many traditions include someone you find hard, placed just before all beings. Add this step once the basic sequence feels steady.
• Two-minute version. Choose one phrase, such as “May you be happy,” and repeat it for a couple of minutes. This suits a busy day or a pause between tasks.
• Compassion phrases. Instead of wishing happiness, you wish freedom from suffering, for example “May you be free from pain.” The 2015 review compared programs built around each focus.
• Pairing with writing. Some people follow a session with a few lines in a gratitude journal. The two practices share a habit of noticing what is good in others.

Common mistakes

• Forcing a warm feeling. The feeling may not come, and that is fine. Hold the intention and keep saying the words. The practice still counts.
• Starting with the hardest person. Beginning with someone who hurt you can stir up more than you expect. Follow the usual order and leave difficult people until later, once you have some steadiness.
• Rushing the phrases. Racing through the words turns them into a list. Say each phrase slowly, leave a short pause, and let it land before the next one.
• Giving up because it feels awkward. The phrases often feel stiff or artificial at first. That is common, and it usually eases with regular practice, so give it a few weeks before you decide.
• Fighting distraction. Drifting off is part of meditation, not a failure. Notice where your mind went, then return to the words.