The loving kindness exercise was confusing. One of the confusing things was the loved one who is “suffering” is this suffering mental or physical or a combination and what if I think the loved one is suffering but they think that they are happy and healthy? I practiced loving kindness in the physical and mental at the same time by demonstrating love and kindness and silently sending the same thoughts as the exercise lead. Another confusing thing was taking in the suffering of a stranger and extending loving kindness. If the person is a stranger how do you know what they are suffering if indeed they are suffering at all. A stranger is by definition some one that you do not know. I find it extremely egotistical to think that I should know how some one that is a stranger is feeling or that some stranger may think that they know how I am feeling while sitting comfortably in my home.  Daily I pray and meditate on happiness and health for the world in general but never have I presumed to know what a specific individual is feeling.

The only part of this exercise that I found beneficial was the beginning when loving kindness was projected toward the person doing the exercise. I have practiced this in a very different form without the irritating distraction of static that is meant to sound like the ocean. I think that an exercise like this should be undertaken without distractions especially if someone is new to such a practice. I personally did not find this exercise beneficial. I would encourage anyone to try this exercise but caution them that while this particular way of doing this exercise may not be what they need that they should keep trying until they find the way that is beneficial to them since no 2 people are alike there is no right way to find an inner path to loving kindness just the way that works best for you.

According to Dacher (2006) “Mental Workout” means utilizing contemplative practices to help tame the mind’s constant mental activities and train it along with opening one’s heart, expanding consciousness, and progressing towards psychospirtual flourishing.  The goal is for progressive development of an expanded consciousness and healing within the mind, body, and spirit.  There are two contemplative practices; they are loving-kindness and subtle mind.

The concept of mental workout is the use of contemplative practices to tame the mind's constant mental activity, open one's heart, expand the consciousness and move toward psychospiritual flourishing( Daches2006). For me this means that to achieve this goal it is necessary to spend time working on the muscle that is the brain with mediation aimed at expanding the subconscious mind in awareness and accepting while challenging the conscious mind with new and challenging tasks very much like mental calisthenics. The research has shown that those who do this increase the neural pathways increasing the brains abilities and prolonging mental health or at least delaying processes such as dementia. This is the same as exercising the muscles of the legs so that you can walk or doing cardio so that the heart remains strong.