Yoga Pathways

Last week in my meditation habit journey we’ve been exploring metta—loving-kindness. I set everyone the usual homework: write a letter full of love, silently bless the people you pass, beam goodwill like a cosmic Care Bear. Easy.

By Friday I was practically levitating with benevolence, off to London to celebrate my youngest’s 18th. Heart open, humming Om Shanti under my breath.

Then we arrived.

It was the day of the “freedom of speech” march. By 10 a.m. the pubs were spilling drinkers into the streets. England flags everywhere. Police sirens screeching through the streets. Chants and slogans that weren’t just crude—they were racist, anti-immigrant, deliberately cruel.

At one point, we had to wheel our bikes straight across the march—150,000 of my “fellow sentient beings,” the very people I’d been sending loving-kindness to all week.

I wasn’t rolling my eyes. I was scared. Angry. My body went rigid. These people felt utterly other. Every fibre of me wanted to shut my heart, to separate.

And that, uncomfortably, is the practice. Metta isn’t about sprinkling fairy dust on those who already make you feel warm and safe. It’s the hard, unglamorous work of finding the thread that binds us when everything in you screams “not like me.”

I’m back on the cushion now, reminding myself that loving-kindness isn’t a mood—it’s a muscle. And a muscle only strengthens when it meets real resistance.

What about you?
When was your last metta muscle moment—the time your heart wanted to close but you tried, even briefly, to keep it open?