Kindness

Hi, and welcome to day 1 of the kindness pack. Now whatever we choose to call it, whether it's kindness, compassion, we're talking about an inequality of mind. This isn't something that we need to kind of get from somewhere else. It's not some thing that lives somewhere in the future. This is something that is part of our mind. It's always part of our mind. It's always with us. But very often, it gets a little obscured. We might sometimes even forget that it's there. It's as though there's so much chatter in the mind and there's so many things that we're thinking about and perhaps we're often caught up with a sense of impatience or frustration and these things they all obscure this sense of kindness. And although it may sound like a strange face to begin, and we're going to focus very much over the next 10 days on kindness towards oneself. I think the temptation is to assume that we begin focusing on others. And it's a balance between the two. We are focusing on cultivating that sense of kindness towards ourselves with the intention ultimately of being kind to others. So it has a little bit of both, I would say. But it's really important because unless we have that sense of nonjudgmental, unconditional kindness towards ourselves, unless we're really familiar with that feeling, with resting in that space, it's going to be really difficult to apply that to our relationships. So that's going to be our starting point today, and we're going to use a visualization exercise for this. As always, I'll talk you through it as we go but if you haven't done visualization before, then do make sure you check out the visualization video just to get some extra tips and advice. Right now, though, if you'd like to, just make sure you're sitting comfortably, eyes open to begin with, just with that nice soft focus just aware of the space around you. And when you're ready, starting with some deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. And with the next out breath, just gently closing the eyes, feeling the weight of the body pressing down. Bringing the point of contact with the floor, the chair and in the arms on the legs. And just taking a few moments to settle back to notice the different sounds around you. And now just bringing the attention back to the body and just noticing how the body feels today. Sense of heaviness, lightness. Just a sense of stillness, restlessness, either way starting off at the top of the head, just gently scanning down through the body all the way down to the toes. And if you haven't done already just starting to become more aware of the breath noticing where in the body you feel that movement today. And just beginning to notice the rhythm, the natural rhythm of the breath. And just allowing the awareness of a breath continue...