The photo received a large number of responses from fans on both Instagram and Twitter.

Prior to Super Bowl Sunday, Jennifer Lopez posted a selfie to Instagram showing off her toned body and abs.

The photo received a large number of responses from fans on both Instagram and Twitter. Many expressed their love and admiration for Lopez through heart and fire emojis.

RELATED:15 Things Jennifer Lopez Does To Stay In Shape

Earlier this year, Lopez expressed to HELLO! that exercise is essential to her life. "I am 100 percent convinced that working out is part of what makes me so happy," she said. "Dance has always been a huge part of my life and taking the time to move my body and do something that's so good for me is key to my happiness."

Lopezs personal trainer Dodd Romer told UsWeekly that the performer, stays away from processed foods and gets her nutrients from whole sources.

In an article published in People, another trainer named Tracy Anderson went more in-depth about Lopezs strict diet. I have her eating very clean because she needs really good fuel for all the things that shes doing, he told People. Its all organic and its all very well thought out, with the balance of very high-quality proteins and a lot of nutrient-dense food.

RELATED:Here's What It Takes To Get Jennifer Lopez And Shakira 'Super Bowl Ready'

Last summer, the trainer also gaveO Magazine a step-by-step breakdown of her ab workout. The routine consists of 3 sets.

Set 1: 50 ab raises, 50 rope crunches, 50 sit-ups with a 45-pound plate

Set 2: Set 1 + 35 reps

Set 3: Set 1 & 2 + 21 reps

According to an article published by People, Lopez shared what she ate in a day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Lopez shared her secrets following the launch of a fitness competition that encouraged women to feel happier in their own skin back in 2015. The competition was titled #BeTheGirl Challenge, a 10-week fitness competition that encouraged women to be happier and healthier. Participants received healthy and easy recipes from Lopez, along with a fitness plan.

In the article, Lopez said, Throughout the years Ive learned the importance of maintaining a healthier diet. I still eat some of the foods I love, but in moderation. I dont deprive myself.

Breakfast: In the morning, Lopez will have a smoothie that consists of strawberries, blueberries, cup raspberries, greek yogurt, cinnamon, honey, fresh lemon juice, and ice cubes.

Lunch: For lunchtime, Lopez has a Kale salad with queso. To make this dish, the ingredients included 1 bunch of kale, large stems removed and leaves finely chopped, toasted pumpkin seeds, crumbled queso, fresh lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil, and a large shallot, minced.

Dinner: For dinner, the meal would consist of a boneless, skinless grilled chicken breast with sauted brussels sprouts and baked yams with sea salt.

RELATED:15 Photos of Jennifer Lopez That'll Make You Want To Hit The Gym

In 2019, along with fianc, A-Rod kicked off the No-Carb, No-Sugar Diet, where they completely cut out carbs and sugar. The diet went viral when Lopez announced the 10-Day challenge and encouraged other celebrities to join her. The challenge gained traction on the Today show. Lopez and A-Rod shared their meals for the day on Instagram.

According to CheatSheet, these foods were banned from her diet:

Here is the list of foods that are allowed while on the diet:

JLo is a superwoman... enough said.

NEXT:15 Sweet Things Macauley Culkin Has Recently Revealed

Melissa Joan Hart Threw A Reunion Party For The Cast And Crew Of 'Sabrina The Teenage Witch'

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Jennifer Lopez Shows Off Her Insanely Toned Abs... Thanks To Her Workout Routine - TheThings

Licking Memorial Health Systems Published 2:10 p.m. ET Feb. 19, 2020

Compared to other developed countries, children in the United States consume more saturated fat and have higher cholesterol levels, which are key contributors to heart disease the nations leading cause of death. Heredity also is an important factor in heart disease if there is previous history in the family, a child may be at future risk. Other factors that may further increase a childs risk of heart disease include:

Heart disease may be unavoidable; however, parents can teach their child to live a healthy life through a heart-healthy diet, exercise and regular visits to a physician. Parents should consider the below recommendations for their family:

While shopping for food and preparing meals, involve children to teach them about healthy foods and reading food labels. Observing the cooking process will teach children kitchen skills and show them that healthy foods are delicious.

Children also should exercise for at least one hour each day and should reduce time spent on sedentary activities, including watching television and playing video games. Visiting a physician once a year helps to detect any potential health issues and can identify if any needed changes in diet and exercise.

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Active Fit: Lowering the risk of heart disease at an early age - The Newark Advocate

Save your life but harm your heart? Health experts are sounding a warning as potential side effects of a growing number of breast cancer treatments come to light.

In its first statement on the topic, the American Heart Association Thursday, Feb. 1, said women should consider carefully the risks and benefits of any therapies that may hurt hearts. Not all treatments carry these risks, and there may be ways to minimize or avoid some.

We want patients to get the best treatment for their breast cancer, Dr. Laxmi Mehta, a womens heart health expert at Ohio State University who led the panel that wrote the statement, said. Everyone should have a conversation with their doctor about what are the side effects.

There are more than 3 million breast cancer survivors and nearly 48 million women with heart disease in the United States.

Most people with breast cancer fear death from breast cancer. Even after they survive that, they still fear it, but heart disease is more likely to kill them, especially after age 65, Mehta said.

Some treatments for other types of cancer may pose heart risks, but they are growing more common for breast cancer patients and the statement addressed only that form of the disease.

Here are some questions and answers:

Q: What are the problems and which treatments can cause them?

A: Side effects can include abnormal rhythms, valve problems or heart failure, where the heart slowly weakens and cant pump effectively. Symptoms may not appear until long after treatment ends.

Herceptin and similar drugs for a specific type of breast cancer can cause heart failure. Sometimes its temporary and goes away if treatment is stopped, but it can be permanent.

Radiation can affect arteries and spur narrowing or blockages. Other drugs can lead to abnormal heart rhythms or artery spasms, which can cause chest pain and possibly lead to a heart attack. Still others can damage DNA.

Some research suggests that powerful new drugs that harness the immune system to fight cancer may, in rare cases, cause heart damage, especially when used together.

The problem is, no one has this on their radar, so patients are not routinely checked for it, Dr. Javid Moslehi, head of a Vanderbilt University clinic specializing in heart risks from cancer therapies, said when a study reported this problem about a year ago.

Q: What can be done to avoid harm?

A: If heart failure develops early during breast cancer treatment, sometimes therapy can be slowed down or altered.

Certain chemotherapies such as doxorubicin, sold as Adriamycin and in generic form, might be less risky if given more slowly, rather than all at once. Some research suggested that a drug called dexrazoxane may minimize damage if given to women with advanced breast cancer who are getting high doses of doxorubicin.

Q: What can patients do?

A: Women should make sure doctors are monitoring their heart before, during and after breast cancer treatment.

The diseases share many common risk factors such as obesity, smoking and too little exercise, so reducing these can help.

Make sure youre working on your diet, exercise, managing your weight, following up with your doctor on your blood pressure and cholesterol, Mehta said.

Marilynn Marchione can be followed on Twitter:@MMarchioneAP

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Doctors warn of heart risk from some breast cancer therapies - Valley News

Filiz Mustafa Freelance Writer

Filiz is a freelance film and TV journalist with a flair for everything related to reality soaps and showbiz. When she's not busy creating entertainment news content she loves spending time in nature, reading non-fiction books, eating comfort food and travelling.

ITV has brought series 2 of Save Money: Lose Weight with Dr Ranj Singh and Sian Williams this year.

The show focuses on people who want to achieve a healthier lifestyle by losing weight and saving money in the process.

In episode 5 (February 20th), viewers were introduced to the metabolism reset diet which helps people to rejuvenate their bodies in one month.

So what is the metabolism reset diet about? Heres everything you need to know about it, including cost and case study.

Save Money: Lose Weight, metabolism reset diet

The metabolism reset diet is based on physician Alan Christiansons book of the same name. Dr Christianson promises that the diet helps you to lose weight naturally and repair your liver.

This specific diet is a 4-week fasting plan which substitutes two of your three meals a day with a protein shake.

The fasting diet recommends regular and fresh meals cooked from scratch. The diet also encourages unlimited vegetable snacks during the day such as carrot or celery sticks.

On Save Money: Lose Weight, the 28-day diet cost around240.

Its certainly one of the cheapest fasting plans out there.

Peter on Save Money: Lose Weight, metabolism reset diet

In Thursdays episode (February 20th), the case study was health and safety consultant Peter. He is 63 years old and weighed 22 stones and 6 pounds (around 141 kg) at the start of the challenge.

He used to skip two of his regular meals, eating one main dish in the evenings. Using the metabolism reset diet, Peter started cooking more homemade meals and incorporating protein shakes as part of his diet.

Peter was also encouraged to do light exercise during the day such as walking the dog in the neighborhood.

By week 2, Peter was enjoying the metabolism reset diet as he didnt have any drastic cravings. He also added that hes had the lowest blood pressure for a long time.

By week 4, Peter managed to lose 30 pounds (13 kg) and came on the leaderboard for saving the most money per lost weight.

He managed to save 8.05 for every lost pound. Impressive!

WATCH SAVE MONEY: LOSE WEIGHT SERIES 2 THURSDAYS AT 8.30 PM ON ITV

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A diet rich in fruit and veg, olive oil and fish boosts bacteria in the gut linked to healthy ageing and reduces bacteria linked to inflammation, experts from five countries said. Photograph: PA/PA Wire

As the global population is projected to live longer, we need to find ways of helping people live healthier into old age. Exercise and diet are the best ways of maintaining good health as we age. But recent research has started to look at the role our gut specifically our microbiome plays in how we grow old. The gut microbiome is a complex community of millions of microbes that live in the intestines. These microbes help to break down dietary ingredients, such as resistant starch, that humans cannot digest. They also help prevent the growth of disease-causing bacteria.

Researchers from the APC Microbiome Institute at University College Cork, along with colleagues in Europe, set out to see if diet could alter the gut microbiome in a way that would promote healthy ageing. They looked at 612 people aged 65 to 79, asking half of them to change their normal diet to a Mediterranean diet for a full year. This involved eating more vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, olive oil and fish, and eating less red meat, dairy products and saturated fats. The other half did not change their diet.

Although there were minimal changes to the microbiome, those who followed the Mediterranean diet had better cognitive function and memory, less inflammation, and better bone strength. Many of the participants were also found to be pre-frail, meaning their bone strength and bone density were about to decrease, at the beginning of the study. Those who followed their regular diet became more frail over the course of the one-year study, while the Mediterranean diet group reversed this trend.

While the obesity crisis is considered the foremost public health issue in the west, malnutrition is a growing concern. Malnutrition occurs when a person is deficient in nutrients, such as protein, vitamins and minerals, or they are not eating enough calories. Under-nutrition is linked to increased frailty, delayed wound healing, and higher mortality. There is clearly a need for us to be proactive in dealing with dietary issues in older people.

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The Irish Times view on the Mediterranean diet: good for the gut - The Irish Times

In Partnership with Chronomics' Breakthrough Evolution for Preventive Healthcare

HONG KONG, Feb. 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- S-CELL, in partnership with Chronomics, is the first company in Asia to introduce Healthspan, the most advanced epigenetic testing service in the world. Chronomics was established in 2017 and later officially launched the epigenetics testing kit in hopes to lead a revolution on preventive healthcare.

The biological aging wellness calculator comes with a simple test procedure. Starting with a provided test kit, a saliva sample shall be conducted in the comfort of the individual's residence and will be sent back for researchers to process DNA methylation data. Chronomics then provides detailed and organized results on overall health status, including specific lifestyle and environmental biomarkers that contribute to the current results. Within 6-8 weeks, data can be accessed through an official digital platform for the users to track and personalize health management with the guidance of their health experts.

"By bringing advanced epigenetics into the mainstream, this is the start of true and personalized health management," says Chronomics CEO, Dr. Tom Stubbs, who holds a PhD at the University of Cambridge in the epigenetics of aging. He is a specialist in Epigenetics, Machine Learning, and Computational Biology.

A core point of Healthspan and of which sets it apart from other health tracking methods is the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS). It is an advanced technology that enables researchers to look into biological systems in a next-level capacity than ever made before. Through DNA sequencing, experts of the Chronomics team are able to interpret highly accurate data and expand the knowledge into recommendations to meet the personalized health goals of the patient.

"It allows us to expand the range of things that we quantify beyond biological age," said Dr. Daniel Herranz, CSO and co-founder of Chronomics on the utilization of next-generation sequencing. He also has great expertise in computational epigenetics from acquiring a PhD at the European Bioinformatics Institute. "At the moment people are really obsessed with biological age as the only thing to be measured and it's a great start but our vision in Chronomics is to actually break down the different resources that make up your biological age and by doing this, we can act on more specific aspects of your biology," he added.

John Gong, founder and chairman of S-CELL, also talked about the benefits of the technology towards aging. "Healthspan's cutting edge technology allows us to accurately know and understand key factors that are influencing our Aging and how diet, exercise and health supplementation can slow Aging and improve our Healthspan." This partnership helps in emphasizing the significance of understanding epigenetics for a sustainable healthcare system. The biological wellness solution in the form of a highly accurate test kit puts customers on a new level of ease and opportunity for personalized health management.

There have been discussions on the current burden of non-communicable diseases. The stated fact that we are living longer, yet sicker is a huge concern in the healthcare and epigenetics industry. Chronomics stated the need for a paradigm shift in medicine - switching the focus from the treatment of one disease into the prevention of multiple diseases. S-CELL and Chronomics push biological wellness to a new level through this cutting edge technology.

About S-CELL

S-CELL Health & Beauty aims to improve people's quality of living through the creation of breakthrough cellular health supplements that support wellness and aging. S-CELL offers solutions for healthier skin, brain, vision, joints, weight management, and more extended health benefits. Products are made from the breakthrough synergy of the finest natural ingredients from both sides of the world together with the latest advancements in technology.

Press Contact:Email: cs@vita-sc.com Phone: +852 63542288

About Chronomics

Chronomics is an epigenetics testing company headquartered in Norwich, England. They also specialize in the capability to analyze deep and advanced biological data for continuous evolution in the preventive healthcare industry.

Press Contact:Email: chronomics@agencybrazil.com

SOURCE VITACELL INTERNATIONAL CO. LTD. S-CELL

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S-CELL Becomes the First in Asia to Introduce Consumer Epigenetics Testing and is the Most Advanced Test in the World - Yahoo Finance

An illustration of a strand of DNA. Does it hold the key to effective dieting? (Photo:Zephyris)

DNA diets, also known as gene-based nutrition interventions, are being touted as the latest sure-fire way to lose weight. It makes sense right, using your own DNA to tailor a diet to your body?

But the diet is based on sketchy science at best, and may be no more than another fanciful and expensive diet scam at worst.

Numerous companies have sprung up claiming to use DNA analysis to personalize a diet. But experts say, when it comes to diet advice, its misleading to say that the blueprint is our genes.

DNA is important, but it plays a pretty minor role in making personal decisions about food, says Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.

And now more scientific evidence backs that up.

Scientists released a new studythe most rigorous so far that found no difference in weight loss between overweight people on diets that matched their genotype and those on diets that didnt.

Knowing genetic risk information doesnt have a big impact, Timothy Caulfield, a University of Alberta scientist told Scientific American magazine.

Simply put, diets cant be matched to genotype, the new study shows.

For basic healthy living, its not about your genes, its about your behavior, Mozaffarian says.

The study was conducted by researchers at Stanford University Medical School. The results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It randomly assigned 609 overweight adults, aged 18 to 50, to either a healthy low-fat or healthy low-carb diet.

Dietitians guided the volunteers on healthy low-fat diets (eat less oils, fatty meats, full-fat dairy, and nuts) and low-carb diets (reduce cereals, grains, rice, starchy vegetables, and legumes).

Both groups were instructed to eat lots of vegetables and very few foods with added sugars, trans fats, or refined flour.

A year later, the two diets produced near identical results: an 11.7 pound weight loss in the low-fat group and 13.2 pound loss in the low-carb group. The difference was not statistically significant or meaningful in real life.

The researchers then analyzed weight loss among people whose DNA matched or clashed with their assigned diet.

No significant difference in weight change was detected among participants in matched and mismatched diets, the researchers found. There was also no DNA/diet interaction for waist circumference, body mass index or body fat percentage.

Diets mostly come down to factors other than your genes, Mozaffarian told CNN. Its your age, how much extra weight youre carrying, how you respond to eating starch or sugar, and potentially even your microbiome, that are much more important, he says.

He says cutting back on snack foods and junk foods that contain lots of refined starch and sugar is good advice for everyone. But, he says, there are significant differences from person to person in blood glucose responses after eating these foods.

Of course, a number of companiessuch as Habit, Profile Precise and Nutrigenomixhave sprung up pushing DNA-based diets, and a number of media outlets have blithely touted their claims.

Even specialized publications like Health.com, which should know better, have promoted the diets.

The companies provide customized meal plans, grocery lists, recipes, and even exercise routines, typically based on AncestryDNA or 23andMe DNA results.

But dieters should beware, especially if the meal plan eliminates entire food groups. If the recommendation is based on DNA, it has no basis in science.

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DNA Diet Hailed as Key to Weight Loss, But Don't Bet Your Genes On It - Celebrity Health & Fitness

Mike Parrys Damascene moment came when his daughter asked him for a football and a tennis racquet for Christmas, and it occurred to him that he was in no shape to kick or hit a ball around. Up to that moment, the 47-year-old hadnt given much thought to his health.

Despite the fact that I was creeping towards my late forties, it didnt occur to me to be worried. It just wasnt something I was particularly interested in, and there wasn't any reason to make time for it, he says. Every morning, hed head straight to his desk job, skipping breakfast. His evenings were taken up by client appointments or a decompressing drink at the pub.

But major lifestyle overhauls are rarely easy. Knowing he wouldnt be able to do it alone, Mike signed up with a personal trainer at Ultimate Performance gym in Manchester. It was nine miles away, and everybody said I was mad to go there every day. Having not stepped in a gym for over 20 years, I was also concerned about whether I would even fit in, whether it was something I could actually do, whether I would be embarrassed. It was pretty much a new world for me.

Parry was also managing existing injuries to his elbow and shoulder, so his training had to be accordingly. There was always something the trainers could come up with that would allow me to do exercises in a certain way without affecting existing or historical injuries.

The major changes to his diet and routine were tough for the first few days. "I was on a low-carb diet to start with, and I did start to feel a bit tired, which apparently is common," he says. But within a week, I started to feel more alert, less sluggish. I was a lot more active, and I was actually sleeping seven to eight hours a night.

Now, more than five stone lighter, he still finds his transformation somewhat baffling: You often see these before-and-after pictures on social media and you think, Yeah, OK. I didnt consider that it could one day be me. All I wanted to do was be in a position where I could play sports with my daughter. His confidence has also improved hugely: "I am able to buy clothes that fit me properly, that look good as well, that allow me to go out and socialise in places that I wouldnt have necessarily gone before."

As for his daughter's verdict? She said how incredibly proud she was and that I should carry on no matter what.

Parry trained three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In order to recover faster in between sessions and further improve his cardiovascular system, he also had to perform 10K walks in between sessions. Here are some of his go-to supersets, from trainer Anthony Paulhe.

1A: Static Lunge x10 Parry started with 10 reps, building up to 15, eventually adding weights when he was confident with the movement.

1B: Diverging Row x10 Lunges were paired with 10 reps of this posture-improving back exercise. After 10 reps, go back to the lunge, for three rounds total.

2A: Hack Squat x10

Pause at the bottom for a second to strengthen the glutes and quads in the weakest position of the exercise.

2B: DB Shoulder Press x10 By alternating between upper- and lower-body, both body parts get more rest for greater quality of execution. Do three rounds.

3A: Prowler Push The prowler is a valuable exercise, requiring low skill and technique. Charge back and forth across the length of your gym.

3B: The Plank As well as building core strength, the plank teaches proper hip and shoulder positioning. Repeat for three rounds, or five if you're fit enough.

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How This Reader Lost 5 Stone and Built a Midlife Six-Pack - Men's health UK

For six hours, a circular robot flits up and down a wall, sketching out a lotus with myriad intricate designs embedded in each petal. Four marker pens color in the designs. It looks beautiful. But as soon as its complete, the robot reverses course, erasing the image and leaving the wall as if it had never been there.

Scribit-design

This is a mandala, reimagined. These complex patterns are meant to reflect the visions that monks see while meditating about virtues such as compassion, wisdom, and more, says Tenzin Priyadarshi, a Buddhist monk and the CEO of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT. To automate the elaborate process of creating and destroying them, an important tradition in Buddhism, Priyadarshi teamed up with Carlo Ratti, an MIT architect and designer of Scribit, a $500 write and erase robot that uses special markers to draw and erase art on a wall.

Traditional mandalas are sketched out by hand and then painstakingly filled with colored sand. Once the mandala is complete, it is destroyed, symbolizing the transience of beauty and existence. Scribit, however, isnt so delicate, and relies on pre-programmed images. There is no sand, no meticulous sketching, no fear that the mandala could be destroyed any second. Theres also the physical relief. It was easier on my back than creating these intricate mandalas, Priyadarshi says of the traditional 50-hour process.

But getting a robot to sketch a design on the wall seems counterproductive. Isnt it cheating?

Not at all, says Priyadarshi. He insists that a robot isnt a way to bypass the hard work of meditation via mandala; rather, its mesmerizing movements help one enter a relaxed state.

The robot mandalas also point to an increasingly intertwined future for religion and technology. Religiosity might be on the wane for younger generations, but smartphones are ubiquitous: Muslim Pro and Siddur are smartphone apps that notify devout users of prayer time for Muslims and Jews respectively, and mindfulness apps have found a role in Buddhist practices. Priyadarshi, who calls technology a blessing and a curse, thinks the future of religion involves adapting technology to worship in this way.

When asked if a robotic mandala achieves the same results as a hand-drawn one, Ganden Thurman, the executive director of Tibet House, a center of study for Tibetan Buddhism, says yes and no. He points to flags planted in mountain passes where winds are thought to carry prayers, or prayer wheels and drums stamped with wishes for the suffering. Those are vehicles by which a person is engaging with Buddhism, Thurman says, and the robot can likewise be compared to the intermediary of a canvas, brush, or pencil, all used with the intent to do good and be good.

But the robot cant benefit from the doing of the mandala, he explains. The robot is not a sentient being. Buddhism is concerned with the uplift and well-being of sentient beings, the ability to move and facilitate from pain to pleasure, which happens through self-awareness.

Still, a robot mandala can be as valuable as a human-made one in planting a future karmic seed, Thurman says.

To Priyadarshi, one major benefit is that a robotic mandala allows the average person to connect to religion at home, free from distraction. It also means that the person is spending less time worrying about the mandalas intricacy and more time in contemplationthe ultimate purpose of the mandala.

Its also an antidote to what Priyadarshi sees as an ever shrinking attention span in a busy world. Technology can cause positive nudges in individuals so that they can learn about focus, empathy, compassion, he says. Were trying to use technology as a tool to facilitate certain behavioral shifts.

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The robot does the hard work. Can you still attain enlightenment? - MIT Technology Review

For relationships to endure, we need to be loving not just on Valentines Day but all year round, a Buddhist teacher tells Marjorie Brennan

WHILE Valentines Day is a celebration of romantic love, amid the avalanche of red roses, cheesy cards and bottles of bubbly, the many other types of love we experience in our lives can be forgotten.

The consumerist nature of the day may be at odds with reflection and contemplation, but it does provide an opportunity to consider how we can nurture different kinds of love in our life, which can also help enhance our relationship with a spouse or partner.

On this theme, the Buddhist approach has much to offer in terms of teaching us how to love ourselves and in turn open our hearts to others.

Andrew Warr (pictured right), who is based in the English city of Brighton, has been studying and practising Buddhism for 36 years and regularly conducts meditation workshops at Dzogchen Beara Tibetan Buddhist retreat centre in West Cork.

Valentines Day is sort of acknowledged but I wouldnt say it is incorporated [in Buddhism], he says. From a Buddhist point of view, in a romantic relationship, you may think the other person is fantastic and everything about them seems wonderful but what everybody is hoping for is something that is enduring. So when things are difficult, when you lose the romance, you lose everything.

Buddhism is more about a good-hearted connection with the person that can endure beyond that romantic realm. If you are focused on one loving relationship, even just thinking in that way inhibits the capacity for that relationship to be at its best. If it is just weighted on one person, that is quite narrow. If we want to have a genuine, loving relationship with somebody, our heart has to be much bigger.

Warr refers to this as widening the circle of love which he says will enhance our relationship with our spouse or partner.

Buddhist meditations for cultivating love and compassion are really about starting with one person we feel affection towards already, then we use that as almost like an example of how we can extend love to others, to incorporate everybody, including ourselves. The idea is that as our heart becomes more attuned to feeling goodwill towards a wider range of people, that impacts on all our relationships, including those with our partners or spouses.

LOVING KINDNESS

Among the workshops which Warr teaches are ones centred on the Loving Kindness meditation, which has been practised in Buddhism for more than 2,500 years.

The meditation helps people develop a deep, pervasive and unconditional love that transcends our normal limitations. This process starts with developing a more healthy and loving relationship with ourselves.

There is an increasing realisation that a lot of unhappiness is due to the relationship we have with ourselves not being very healthy. Sometimes when things are difficult, we might be giving ourselves a hard time about it or we blame someone else, getting caught up with that before acknowledging were suffering in some way, says Warr.

This recognition that we are in pain and the showing of self-compassion are often the first steps towards forging a healthier relationship with ourselves, and then others, says Warr.

We need to be kind to ourselves and to speak to ourselves with some tenderness, as we would to someone who is suffering to say to ourselves Im suffering, this is difficult; to be a good friend to ourselves. The reality is we all experience suffering in our life that its something that happens, theres nothing wrong with us. The best way is to be with ourselves in that, not to immediately distract ourselves and not to do something which wont help alleviate it.

ROLE OF MINDFULNESS

Warr says that the now-popular concept of mindfulness can also be brought to bear in how we love, and relate to, others.

One of the gifts of mindfulness is to be more aware of other people. We can develop ways to actually notice people how they are oh, theyre enjoying themselves, how wonderful and actually relate to them in our hearts more as another human being with feelings, rather than as just an object we might regard favourably or unfavourably.

For people interested in learning about how meditation can improve their relationships, Warr says there are various avenues to pursue, including online research, apps, and courses and retreats.

There are meditations which are specifically designed to cultivate goodheartedness, often in the Buddhist tradition of Metta, often translated as loving kindness. There are different mediations on compassion which help to reveal the natural good-heartedness we all have so its not simply about being aware or mindful, its acknowledging that within us all we had a natural capacity for love and warmth.

The anger, the jealousy, the distress, those are all passing experiences fundamentally we all have good hearts, which is the Buddhist view of things. Meditations for love and kindness and compassion are, for many people, effective ways to get in touch with that good-heartedness and help us to release resentments and to feel and express warmth towards others.

Andrew Warrs upcoming retreats at Dzogchen Beara are Calm and Clear, May 29-June 1 and Peaceful Mind, Loving Heart, July 11-18; See dzogchenbeara.org/events/

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Open hearts: The Buddhist approach to love and loving - Irish Examiner