Teaching Kindness

The title of the teaser in my Emotional Health e-zine emailed to me is "Can Love and Kindness Be Taught"? And it can! Oooh oooh, I thought, the world needs more of this and so does my family, so I rushed right over to find out the how of it. Do we set examples to follow? Is there a less offensive way to preach it? I read the article and discovered it's a self-taught method, by meditation.

Oh.

Not that I have anything against meditation but if you need to learn love and kindness would you necessarily know that? And would you focus specifically on those two things while you meditate?

Imaging technology shows that people who practice meditation that focuses on kindness and compassion actually undergo changes in areas of the brain that make them more in tune to what others are feeling.

"Potentially one can train oneself to behave in a way which is more benevolent and altruistic," said study co-author Antoine Lutz, an associate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

You can meditate to reduce your physical pain, studies have shown that. I believe that you can meditate to become kinder. As one doctor put it, though, how much do you practice until it becomes effective? I guess that part of it needs more study.

Now I need to figure out a way to convince members of my family to put this into practice. There was no useful advice there. Read the whole article here.

I was deeply affected by this song in 1971. I'm so glad that it's on youtube.