Saturday, July 11, 2020

Guided Meditation: Justice & Joy

I offered this guided loving-kindness meditation as part of a healing justice session for participants in the ACLU Trans Leadership Table (2020). 


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Begin by getting in touch with your body. 

Find a way to sit, lie, or stand where you feel stable and centered. Listen to your body, finding the balance: relaxed without slouching; alert without being rigid. It may help to take some deep breaths, or to stretch and relax. 


Take a moment to also feel your connection with the earth, rising up to meet your body, supporting and holding you. Bring your attention to your presence in this moment. Feel your body as a living process, right here and now. 

You have arrived in this moment across sadness and incalculable loss; across joy and innumerable gifts; through the love and concern of yourself and others; against oppression and hardship. You are here; you are really here

Center yourself now in your deep aspirations. How is it that you want to encounter this improbable and impermanent moment of time and space that you inhabit? What opens your heart and brings forth your love, your joy, your creativity, your fierceness? 

Feeling that, sustained by that, bring your attention to your breath and to the beating of your heart. If it feels natural, place a hand on your heart or belly. Take a breath, and simply notice if it is short or long. 

Now wish for yourself whatever good things support your well-being. Bask in the wonder of your existence, and bathe that existence in beauty, kindness, wisdom, and the fiercest, most joyful love. 

Joyfully recognize your worth, using words like these, or whatever words touch your heart: 


May I be safe. 
May I have food, shelter, and friendship. 
May I have health in my body. 
May I care for and appreciate my body. 
May I honor my own strength. 
May my heart be open and free. 
May my wounds, inner and outer, be healed. 
May I be generous, creative, and caring. 
May I receive the generosity, creativity, and care of others. 
May I be equal and free. 

Now call to mind this group, our shared experiences and commitment to justice and equality: 

May we be safe. … May we be equal and free. 

And again, calling to mind the vision of a transformed world, send this energy to all the members of our transgender and gender nonconforming family: 

May all of us be safe. … May all of us be equal and free. 

Pause for as long as you need to, savoring and being nurtured by this kindness, and our shared commitment to liberation and justice. 

When it feels right to you, bring your awareness back to your body and your breath. Feel the earth again, rising up to meet your body, supporting and holding you; supporting and holding us. 

Resolve to let this energy carry and sustain the tasks that lie ahead, embodying and co-creating a new world where all transgender and gender nonconforming folx can live with freedom, safety, and joy.