Sharon Salzberg offers a foundational lovingkindness meditation suited for the holiday season—a time marked by complex relationships, competing expectations, and emotional strain. The practice invites practitioners to direct loving-kindness toward themselves first, reciting the traditional phrases "may I be safe, be happy, be healthy, may I live with ease," before extending those wishes to others. This brief video distills a core insight: self-compassion is not selfish but essential, especially during periods when cultural pressure to perform gratitude, togetherness, and joy can obscure genuine inner experience.
Why Lovingkindness Matters During the Holiday Season
The holiday season arrives with a familiar paradox. While marketed as a time of joy and connection, it often brings forward unresolved tensions, unmet expectations, and exhaustion. Family gatherings can resurrect old wounds. Social obligations multiply. The pressure to be cheerful, grateful, and present—all at once—can feel overwhelming. Salzberg acknowledges this directly: the holidays are "a time of year of many complex relationships and expectations" [0:09–0:14]. Rather than dismiss these difficulties or urge forced positivity, she offers lovingkindness as a practical tool for self-preservation during emotional complexity.
Lovingkindness (metta in Pali) is a Buddhist meditation practice that cultivates unconditional friendliness toward oneself and others. Unlike gratitude practices that can feel forced when circumstances don't warrant thanks, or visualization techniques that ask practitioners to imagine ideal scenarios, lovingkindness is about generating goodwill and care—a basic human warmth that can coexist with difficulty, sadness, or anger. It doesn't deny the holiday stress; it offers a way to hold it with kindness rather than self-judgment.
The Structure of Salzberg's Lovingkindness Practice
Salzberg's holiday meditation follows the classical progression of lovingkindness, beginning with oneself. She guides practitioners through four phrases, each resonating with a fundamental human wish:
- May I be safe [0:24]—Safety addresses the underlying anxiety many carry during holidays: fear of conflict, judgment, or loss of control.
- Be happy [0:26]—Happiness here means contentment and ease, not forced cheer.
- Be healthy [0:29]—Health encompasses physical wellbeing but also mental and emotional resilience.
- May I live with ease [0:33]—Ease (sukha in Pali) refers to a state free from struggle, where one's burdens feel lighter.
The order is significant. By starting with "may I be safe, be happy, be healthy, may I live with ease," Salzberg centers the practitioner's own wellbeing first. This is countercultural in holiday contexts, where self-sacrifice is often valorized and self-care dismissed as selfish. But Salzberg's framing suggests the opposite: that tending to your own safety and ease is foundational, not indulgent. You cannot genuinely wish others well if you are depleted, frightened, or running on fumes.
Self-Compassion as the Foundation
One of Salzberg's most important contributions to contemporary mindfulness is her insistence that loving-kindness for oneself is not a luxury—it is the prerequisite for authentic care toward others. In the holiday context, this becomes especially vital. Many people arrive at family gatherings having already betrayed their own boundaries, overcommitted to obligations, or suppressed their genuine feelings to maintain harmony. The lovingkindness practice begins with an invitation: "I invite you to take a moment to practice loving kindness for yourself as well as for others" [0:14–0:18].
The word "invite" is deliberate. Salzberg does not command or shame. She offers an option, a gesture toward kindness. This tone acknowledges that many practitioners arrive at meditation already depleted by "shoulds" and external demands. A further invitation to perform perfect loving-kindness could feel like another obligation. Instead, the practice is framed as a moment of genuine care—a break from complexity, not an addition to the to-do list.
Extending Loving-Kindness to Others
After establishing loving-kindness for oneself, Salzberg opens the practice to include others [0:18–0:21]. The same four phrases—safety, happiness, health, ease—are then directed toward others: family members, friends, acquaintances, and eventually all beings. This expansion is not forced in Salzberg's brief video, but it is implied. Lovingkindness practitioners understand that once one has established a foundation of warmth toward oneself, extending it to others becomes more natural, less performative.
This is particularly relevant during the holidays, when family dynamics can be fraught. By first securing your own sense of safety and ease through the practice, you create internal stability from which to navigate difficult conversations, old patterns, and competing needs. You are not expected to suddenly love a difficult relative; rather, you are cultivating the capacity to wish them well—safety, health, ease—even while maintaining boundaries or declining certain requests.
Lovingkindness as Antidote to Holiday Overwhelm
The holiday season brings specific stressors that lovingkindness directly addresses. Travel logistics, financial pressure, time scarcity, and the need to "perform" normalcy in front of in-laws or estranged family members can all trigger the nervous system into a state of hypervigilance. When safety is threatened (even socially or emotionally), the mind narrows, and reactivity increases.
By repeating "may I be safe," practitioners signal to their own nervous system that safety is possible, even in a chaotic environment. By wishing oneself happiness and health, one momentarily steps out of the problem-solving, goal-oriented mode that dominates holiday logistics and reconnects with basic human needs. And by wishing oneself ease—a state free from forcing, striving, or performing—one creates an internal sanctuary that cannot be taken away by external circumstances.
Salzberg's practice is intentionally brief. At under a minute, it is accessible to busy holiday-makers who may not have time for a longer sitting meditation. The short format also makes it repeatable—you could return to it several times a day, during tense moments, before difficult family dinners, or when overwhelm begins to creep in.
The Wisdom of Simplicity
Salzberg's video closes with "lots of love, Sharon Salzberg" [0:33], a signature warmth that models the very practice she teaches. She does not overcomplicate lovingkindness or demand intellectual understanding before engagement. The practice is accessible to anyone—no prerequisite beliefs, no requirement to be "good" at meditation, no need to clear the mind or achieve a special state. You simply repeat the phrases and notice what arises.
This simplicity is key to the practice's effectiveness, especially for people new to meditation or skeptical of spiritual language. Lovingkindness requires no belief in karma, no religious framework, no special props or clothing. It is a repetitive act of wishing—something humans can do anywhere, anytime, in any circumstance. During a stressful holiday dinner, in a car on the way to family, in bed on a sleepless night before a difficult conversation—the practice is always available.
Where to Go from Here
If this brief introduction resonates, Salzberg has developed extensive teachings on lovingkindness. Her book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness offers deeper exploration of the practice's psychology and application. The Street Lovingkindness video series (referenced in the video description) provides additional practices in the same accessible format. Many meditation apps now include lovingkindness practices, often using Salzberg's foundational structure.
For those wanting to extend the holiday practice, consider sitting for ten to twenty minutes with the four phrases, spending roughly five minutes on each recipient: yourself, a benefactor or loved one, a neutral person, and eventually all beings. Many practitioners find that even a few minutes daily during the holiday season significantly shifts their emotional resilience and capacity for genuine connection.
The core invitation remains Salzberg's: that the holiday season, despite its complexity, is an ideal time to practice loving-kindness toward yourself and others. Not as a performance or an obligation, but as an act of genuine care in a season that often forgets to extend care inward.
