If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the pain, uncertainty, and suffering in the world right now, here is a practice to find courage, peace, acceptance, and connection.
Many of us are carrying the weight of the world’s suffering right now. How can we acknowledge the immense suffering in the world, including our own—and still tend to our hearts, minds, and bodies in a way that keeps us grounded and able to take compassionate action?
This week, mindfulness teacher and author Wendy O’Leary shares a guided practice that offers refuge and reminds us of our real and loving connection to one another.
There are three main parts of the practice. First, stabilizing or grounding. Second, settling back, softening, and soothing. And third, the one for me, one for you practice, which is based on the giving and receiving compassion practice from the Mindful Self-Compassion Program.
A Meditation For When the Suffering In the World Feels Heavy
Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.
- I invite you to get into a comfortable seated position. You can close your eyes or gently look down and soften your gaze. Whatever works best for you.
- Begin by directing your attention into your body, allowing it to gently move in and drift down as it drops all the way down to your feeling the connection of your feet on the floor. If your feet aren’t on the floor, simply notice wherever the feet are connected. That experience of contact and pressure. Or you might feel the contact and pressure of the backs of your legs on the chair or cushion. Connecting with this felt experience of being grounded and rooted, supported and held here on earth. As you feel the somatic experience of those contact points, the feet or the seat. Rooted, grounded, steady and stable. Connected and supported by the earth.
- From this place of steadiness and stability, bring to mind someone you know who’s having a hard time. It could be someone you know personally or more generally someone or a group of people you are aware of who are struggling at this time. On a scale of one to 10, choose an example of someone who is somewhere in the middle. So not the most difficult situation.
- As you allow them to more fully enter your awareness, check in with your body. Often, when we’re focused on difficulty, ours or others’, there can be a habitual tendency to contract, to tighten, and to even lean forward. Check it out to see if this is true for you. Counteract this tendency. I invite you to gently lean back, physically or even energetically, just a little. Settle back.
- Now, invite the body to soften and even widen, creating space to hold whatever is there. So we aren’t forcing anything here. It’s a very gentle invitation to settle back and soften. If it feels supportive for you, you can place your hand on your heart center as a way to care for and soothe the body, heart, and mind. Settle back, soften, soothe.
- Now begin to gently direct your attention to rest with the breath, feeling the flow of the breath moving in and out of the body. Just this in-breath. And just this out breath. Connecting with this experience of the breath, moving through the body like a wave moves through the ocean. And bringing back to mind this person or group of people whom you know are suffering.
- Check in with yourself to see what would best support you in being with their struggles. So that could be, for example, patience or calm, strength, acceptance. Whatever you feel would best support you. On the in-breath, offering that to yourself, and then gently releasing on the out-breath. If no word comes to mind, that’s totally fine. You can simply think to yourself, one for me on the inhale, and gently release on the exhale. One for me, and gently release.
- If it feels right for you, you can now consider what it is that they most need. It may be the same thing you need, or it could be something different. And again, if a word doesn’t come to you, you could think, one for you.
- Continue to take in for yourself what you need on the inhale, and offer them what they need on the exhale. Taking in one for me on the in-breath and one for you on the out-breath. One for me. And one for you.
- As you feel ready, open your eyes or look up as we close this practice. As we practice this more formally, it becomes accessible to us in our daily life, more available for us to use these practices when we come in contact with suffering in our lives.
Thank you for practicing with me and may our practice benefit all beings.