empowering your mind 125
our bodies. We often pay attention to our bodies only when there
is a problem. We seldom thank our bodies for continuing to per-
form, despite the abuse that we visit on them. The Plum Village
Meditations CD contains a guided meditation in which we smile in
thanks to various parts of our bodies: “ Breathing in, I ’ m aware of my
heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart. ” Jon Kabat - Zinn ’ s series
1 CDs contain a body scan in which we bring our awareness to var-
ious parts of our bodies and any feelings in those parts. We imagine
that we are breathing into and out from each part in turn.
The second guided meditation that we regularly do is a loving -
kindness meditation. Loving - kindness is the desire and capacity
to bring joy to ourselves and others. You bring your awareness to
your breathing and then to your “ heart space ” in the center of your
chest. You then bring up feelings of joy, love, and kindness and
send these feelings to fi ve people: yourself, a friend or a mentor, a
neutral person (someone you ’ ve met or seen but don ’ t really know),
a loved one, and a diffi cult person. You then return to yourself, to
one another, if you are in a group, to all people, to animals and
plants and the earth and the Universe. The actual feeling may at
fi rst be diffi cult to bring up and even harder to maintain. If you
practice visualizing a person or a pet whom you truly adore, it is
obviously the best way to establish the knowledge and confi dence
that you can do this. We use these words to reinforce the feelings:
“ May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be peaceful, may I be
safe. And may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be peace-
ful, may you be safe. ” If you wish, you can coordinate the phrases
to your breathing: one phrase for the inbreath and another for the
outbreath.
Balance Your Brain
In 1968, psychobiologist Roger W. Sperry found that the human brain
uses two fundamentally different modes of thinking: the left side of
the brain is verbal, analytical, and sequential, and the right side is
visual, perceptual, and simultaneous. He would later receive a Nobel