Metta Loving Kindness Meditation: The Practice That Builds Emotional Power from Within

A True Story of Change

A woman I’ve been working with recently was struggling with intense emotional residue from long-term trauma. She told me about auditory flashbacks that she was suffering from where she felt like she was reliving the worst moments of her past. She felt like she was trapped inside them, and they were coming at an increasing rate, causing a lot of suffering and mounting anxiety.

I’d already given her the Metta meditation to work with for issues around self-worth and self-love. The Metta meditation is an ancient practice, originally taught by the Buddha for building a sense of appreciation and love for oneself and others. My client had been using it for the past 6 weeks with some incredible success. But as these new auditory episodes intensified, I suggested that she should try using the practice in a more focused way, by sending Metta, or loving-kindness, directly to the auditory experiences. That’s what she then did.

She adapted the practice that she had been using up until that point to make it her own. She visualised love rising from her heart and wrapping around her head like a soft pink hood, what she now calls The Pink Hoodie Technique. That one session gave her six hours of complete relief. She had not experienced that level of peace in some days. The next day, she used the same method and described a dramatic drop in the intensity and frequency of the experiences. I was really pleased that she’d given it a go and that it had worked so well. I was also pleased that she’d adapted the practice in a way that made it uniquely her own.

Why Metta Is More Than Just Kindness

Metta practice isn’t about being nice in a sort of fluffy, cuddly way. It’s not there to make you feel better in the moment or help you gloss over pain. It’s about transforming the relationship you have with yourself and everything that lives inside you.

Metta sharpens your emotional presence. It brings warmth into cold places and connection into the parts of you that were never given enough love. It trains your attention to hold steady under pressure, and it slowly rebuilds the inner scaffolding needed to feel whole again.

The kind of Metta I teach draws from Buddhist tradition, psychological insight and real-life experience. It’s emotional training. It’s spiritual clarity. It’s practical, learnable, and capable of lasting impact. And it’s very powerful.

Why It Matters: Self-Love Trends in 2025

A recent article in Psychology Today highlights a major shift: more people than ever are searching for how to love themselves, how to rebuild inner worth, and how to develop emotional strength that actually lasts. Terms like “self-worth practices” and “how to love yourself” have surged in popularity throughout 2024 and continue to rise. This isn’t about pampering or superficial affirmations. It reflects a deeper collective need to feel whole again.

People are waking up to the fact that resilience doesn’t come from performance or perfection. It comes from a steady, lived relationship with your own heart.

That’s exactly what Metta loving kindness meditation develops. It’s not a mindset trick or a mental exercise. It’s a daily discipline that teaches you how to return to yourself with warmth, patience and clarity, even in the moments when it feels hardest.

Metta invites you to feel your way into strength. It restores emotional stability not through force, but through consistency. Moment by moment, it helps you repair your inner world from the inside out.

Metta Loving Kindness Meditation: The Blazing Practice That Burns Through Trauma and Transforms the Heart

This new blog goes deeper into the story above and shows you what Metta really is, not just conceptually, but in lived, grounded practice. It explores how the practice works, why it’s often misunderstood, and what makes it such a radical tool for emotional transformation.

Whether you’ve tried Metta before or are new to it, this article will show you a different side of the practice, one that isn’t fluffy, vague, or soft around the edges, but precise, powerful, and profoundly real.

Read the blog here.

Upcoming Events

Looking to deepen your experience and explore the energy of self-love in a very focused and powerful way? Here’s what’s coming up:

These weekends are open to those who want more than surface-level understanding. Whether you’ve trained with me before or this is your first step, the invitation is the same, show up fully, and bring your whole self. Check them out at my courses page on my website.

As John, Paul, George, and Ringo once said: “All you need is love.”

All the best,

Steve