Every day, and especially in times of stress, meditation brings equanimity. Numerous types of meditation and other mindfulness practices help relieve stress, clear the mind, and allow us to live more presently and without judgment in the moment. But simply living in the moment at this time in our history may be anything but calming. As we grapple with the fears and sorrows associated with the Coronavirus pandemic, we may need something more, something different, to bring comfort and cultivate compassion. There may be no better time than now to begin a loving-kindness meditation practice.

In the best of times, everyone needs to receive and offer loving kindness. But these days, when the people of the world are experiencing a collective anxiety yet coping with it largely in isolation—when we feel entirely out of control and helpless—it may be more important than ever. Some of you are already experiencing trauma, and the added emotional burdens of the pandemic and social isolation may be crushing. You need loving kindness. Your family members who miss you need it. Individuals on the front lines—healthcare professionals, first responders, hospital staff of all kinds from maintenance people to administrators, who not only are facing fear, and, sometimes, hopelessness, but also compassion fatigue—need it. Grocery store workers and delivery people need it. Everyone needs it.

Loving-kindness meditation, also called metta meditation, is a way of offering love and acceptance unconditionally to oneself and all other beings. There are many types of loving-kindness meditations, but each is essentially similar. You begin by sitting in a comfortable position in a quiet spot. Close your eyes, relax your body, and take some deep breaths. Then you’ll repeat a series of phrases offering loving kindness, directing them first toward yourself. You might say: May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be free from harm. May I live with ease. Then you’ll gradually broaden the practice to embrace others with loving kindness. You might think of someone you love and hold their image in your mind as you offer them loving kindness: May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be free from harm. May you live with ease. Then you’ll similarly offer those wishes for someone you have neutral feelings about. Then to someone from whom you’re estranged or with whom you have a difficult relationship. Finally you’ll open wider and include your neighbors, your community, the earth, and, ultimately, the universe.

It’s a practice that enhances your ability to develop acceptance, forgiveness, empathy, compassion, and—even though you must be physically distant—your capacity to feel connection to others. But it has additional benefits. Researchers have found that loving-kindness meditation may reduce pain and anxiety, increase positive emotions, decrease depression, alleviate self-criticism, and improve one’s ability to resolve conflicts. Best of all in a time of quarantine, it can increase perceptions of social connection.

Get an introduction to the practice in the video below, with a guided meditation from Jack Kornfield, an author, Buddhist practitioner, and leading mindfulness teacher. And look on our home page for a video by Sharon Salzberg, another leading mindfulness teacher. To learn more about loving-kindness meditation and find additional guided meditations, search Google and YouTube for Kornfield, Salzberg, and as well as renowned teachers Tara Brach and Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Look here for more articles on self care and return to our home page for article about other issues related to genetic identity.

Do your thoughts keep traveling on the same groove, driving you deeper and deeper in a rut? Maybe you can’t stop thinking about lies you’ve been told or wondering whether you’ll ever figure out where you came from. Or you can’t tear yourself away from the computer because the answer to your search and all your urgent questions may be just a few keystrokes away. Or worse, your thoughts become so oppressive that in order to blot them out you find yourself eating or drinking more, burning through cigarettes, relying on prescription or recreational drugs, or picking fights with those around you.

Although not always recognized as such, loss related to separation from family or discovery of misattributed parentage can be a form of trauma. And trauma, according to Sarah Bowen, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Pacific University, plays a trick on your mind. It’s hard to find relief from it. “When anything traumatic has happened, whether it’s loss- or fear-based, you can’t get away from it. It’s in your face. If it’s fear, sadness, grief, whatever, it’s easy to go down rabbit holes.” But obsessive thinking locks you into feeling the feelings at the same time that it intensifies them.

It’s easy, Bowen says, to get caught in rumination cycles. While sometimes it’s helpful to think things through, often it’s the thinking through that causes intense distress. You get stuck in the same loops of thought, and catastrophizing and obsessing isn’t actually very useful. Those obtrusive and persistent emotions, she says, may manifest in many ways. “It might be engaging in ruminative thought patterns, picking up a drink, yelling at your partner, or eating, but the function is the same.” Those behaviors arise because you can’t handle what you’re feeling, so you engage in something that you think will make you feel less bad, she explains.

Urge surfing is a simple technique to allow you to slow down and acknowledge your feelings without acting on them. This evidence-based intervention was developed to help prevent addiction relapse by the late G. Alan Marlatt, PhD, who was director of addiction research at the University of Washington in Seattle. The concept came to him when he was trying to help someone stop smoking. It’s based on the understanding that urges — impulses to act in some way on negative feelings — rise like waves, getting bigger and bigger until one feels compelled to give in and indulge the urges. Trying to suppress these feelings tends to make them stronger and more insistent. Urge surfing helps individuals learn to ride out the wave without giving in and to understand that the urge is impermanent. Marlatt and his colleagues found the technique effective in addiction relapse prevention, but its applications go well beyond substance use and abuse. It’s simply a way of applying mindfulness to feelings that seem intolerable, says Bowen, who worked with Marlatt as a graduate student at the University of Washington.

The concept and practice are based in large part on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction program. As defined by Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally.” Learn more about mindfulness in this short video by Kabat-Zinn.

Urge surfing is not a way of solving or figuring out the problem. It’s about backing up and observing your feelings, says Bowen. It’s a way of asking, “What if I noticed what’s happening in my body, what my mind is doing now, instead of having panicked reactions?”

To ride the waves, you’ll learn to recognize when your thoughts and feelings are leading you to react in habitual, impulsive, and unproductive ways. Perhaps your urge is to log in to Ancestry.com constantly to see if you have new DNA matches. Of course, it’s helpful to monitor your matches, but checking 10 times a day can only increase your distress. Instead of flipping open your computer, sit quietly with your uncomfortable feelings without judgment. Acknowledge the thoughts that arise and the accompanying sensations and tensions in your body. Bring your attention to your breath as you follow the wave of the urge until it crests and subsides.

As with all mindfulness techniques, urge surfing requires a dedicated practice to strengthen your ability to react mindfully instead of in your default mode. Stopping and sitting with your feelings in this way each time they arise, combined with practicing mindfulness-based techniques on a regular basis each day when you’re not feeling the impulses, will make you better able to choose constructive responses.

Listen to Bowen guide you through an urge surfing exercise in this sound file.

It’s natural to have a powerful urge to escape feelings associated with or arising from trauma. Urge surfing, Bowen explains, is a way of learning to sit with the feelings and ride them out, learning to live with them without them overtaking your life. Through urge surfing you’ll be able to recognize that the feelings probably will come back, but you’ll become aware that you can feel things you don’t want to feel and still be okay.

Whether it’s through urge surfing or other practices, “mindfulness is useful in that it illuminates how our minds mean well but end up trapping us in cycles of anxiety, worry, and suffering,” says Nick Turner, a clinical social worker in the Clinical Road Home Program for Veterans and Families at Rush University Medical Center. “It provides us with a practice that accepts the mind as it is and allows us to be more present and effective.”

It’s often enough for individuals to break thought patterns and negative behaviors by developing a regular mindfulness practice — urge surfing or mindful meditation — but sometimes it may be beneficial to seek help. “If someone is to the point where they are obsessing about something and it’s decreasing their quality of life, working with a guide such as a therapist or teacher can be helpful.”

Look for more on mindfulness techniques coming soon in Severance.