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Loving-Kindness
Click Here to practice the Loving-Kindness Meditation
Description:
In different traditions it’s called metta or maitre or loving kindness meditation or sometimes just kindness meditation. This particular ancient practice has been brought into the current scientific studies by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson and colleagues without reinventing the wheel to increase positivity in people’s lives.
The benefits of Loving Kindness Meditation:
Cardiovascular benefits.
Yes, the experiences of connection cultivated through practices like Loving Kindness Meditation affect the physical heart, the real heart, in terms of the stable rhythms of healthy efficient functioning of the heart. It improves the cardiac vagal tone.
The cardiac vagal tone predicts the body’s ability to regulate heart rhythms, glucose, and inflammation.
The cardiac vagal tone predicts the mind’s ability to regulate attention, emotions, and social skills.
Immune benefits.
We have a forward looking immune system. It registers our recent experiences and anticipates from those recent experiences what the future is going to be like.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson’s studies have found that the molecular signature of health emerges in step with increases in positive emotions and positive connections that predicts shifts towards a reduction in pro-inflammatory gene expression and an increase in the antiviral and antibody synthesis.
Click Here to practice the Loving-Kindness Meditation
Scholarly References:
Cole, S. W. (2013). Social regulation of human gene expression: Mechanisms and implications for public health. American Journal of Public Health, 103(S1), S84-S92.
Fredrickson, B. L., Grewen, K. M., Coffey, K. A., Algoe, S. B., Firestine, A. M., Arevalo, J. M. G., Ma, J., & Cole, S. W. (2013). A functional genomic perspective on human well-being. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110, 13684-13689.
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7 (7), e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
Kok, B. E., Coffey, K. A., Cohn, M. A., Catalino, L. I., Vacharkulksemsek, T., Algoe, S. B., Brantley, M. & Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). How positive emotions build physical health: Perceived positive social connections account for the upward spiral between positive emotions and vagal tone. Psychological Science, 24, 1123-1132.
Kok, B. E. & Fredrickson, B. L. (2010). Upward spirals of the heart: Autonomic flexibility, as indexed by vagal tone, reciprocally and prospectively predicts positive emotions and social connectedness. Biological Psychology, 85, 432-436. DOI 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.09.005
Moskowitz, J. T., & Saslow, L. R. (2013). Health and psychology: The importance of positive affect. In M. M. Tugade, M. N. Shiota, & L. D. Kirby (Eds.) Handbook of Positive Emotions (pp. 413-431). New York: Guilford Press.
Thayer, J. F. & Lane, R. D. (2007). The role of vagal function in the risk for cardiovascular disease and mortality. Biological Psychology, 74, 224-242.
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