Mindful Valentine’s Day

When Valentine’s Day comes around, sometimes showing love can be all about your sweet tooth, or red and pink. What if instead, it could be about your own sweet heart, or that of those you care about?

Here is a set of four valentine’s day cards that can be repeated indefinitely for a classroom, from teacher to students, or to friends and family.

Valentine’s Day, as problematic as it can be, is a great time to reflect on our own love and compassion. These cards include four basic mindfulness skills: generosity, kindness (or kindfulness!), gratitude, and loving-kindness (also known as sending kind wishes or sending kind thoughts).

Download the cards free, and print on GOOS (good on one side) paper! You could also, of course, use the ideas to make them yourself by reusing paper and other materials, and using the same sentiments.

While the celebration includes a lot of consumerism – exploitative chocolate, paper, pesticide-laden flowers, and more, these are many ways to make it green.

But even outside of the trappings of Valentine’s Day is the inner work: practicing our own compassion. Showing love for ourselves and our own development. Being truly loving and non-violent even in our speech and thoughts. Connecting with others whom we care about in an honest and kind way.

This Valentine’s Day, try a brief chocolate meditation, and then reflect on your relationships:
– with family – significant others, parents, children, siblings, etc.

– with friends, neighbors, and acquaintances

– with coworkers and colleagues
– with those you may have forgotten you know
– with those you do not like (or worse)

– with yourself, your work, your hobbies, your life

– with your mindfulness or meditation practice

Are these relationships kind, loving, gentle? How would you like them to be? How can you open to the possibility that they might change, or might never change? How can you be okay with your relationships, even as they are?