Loving-Kindness Meditation & Reiki: A Monthly Offering for Compassion & Community
Evergreen Healing Arts | Guided by Tara Mahady & Micayla Jean Gilligan | By Donation All donations benefit the Kearsarge Food Hub’s Food Security Program
Once a month, we gather at Evergreen Healing Arts for a practice known as Metta, or Loving-Kindness Meditation, a form of meditation that dates back over 2,500 years to the time of the historical Buddha in ancient India. We begin by offering participants Reiki to help generate this quality of loving kindness before offering it out in wider and wider circles.
In the earliest Buddhist texts, Metta is one of the qualities of heart cultivated for liberation: loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Metta Bhavana was taught as a method for dissolving fear, softening aversion, and expanding the field of care beyond the self to include all beings, regardless of kinship, belief, or background.
This is the meditation of friendliness, of offering goodwill... first to oneself, then gradually outward: to a loved one, a neutral person, someone we experience challenges with, and eventually, to all beings everywhere.
This ancient practice is alive across the globe. On any given day, millions of people, monastics, lay practitioners, healers, and seekers are practicing Metta across continents and traditions. When you sit in this practice you are part of a flow of energy spanning thousands of years and cultures... of those who have committed to cultivating peace from the inside out.
Why Offer This Practice Now?
We live in a time that desperately needs more compassion, not as a vague sentiment, but as a trained capacity. Metta Meditation helps us grow that capacity not by bypassing the pain of the world, but by facing it with a heart steady enough to stay open.
This offering is both personal and collective. We sit to nourish our own nervous systems, yes, but also to resource the wider field. In a time of disconnection, division, and scarcity, Metta practice is a quiet, yet radical, choice to root ourselves in kindness and offer it generously.
Cost
We offer this practice by donation, with 50% of proceeds going to the Kearsarge Food Hub’s Food Security Program, supporting access to fresh, local food for all, because food is a human right and because compassion should be both spiritual and practical.
The Format
Each session includes:
A brief overview of this particular meditation practice and instruction & Reiki
Participants receive Reiki
Guided Loving-Kindness Meditation (30 minutes)
Time for reflection or community sharing
No meditation experience is necessary. Just bring your presence and a willingness to participate in a quiet act of care.
Details
Location: Evergreen Healing Arts
When: Once a month. Monday, May 11, 2026
Donation-Based: All proceeds go to local food security
Guided by: Tara Mahady & Micayla Jean
