Another approach to loving kindness practice

Here's a process for practicing loving kindness meditation as suggested by Jon Kabat-Zinn in Wherever You Go There You Are:

TRY: Touching base with feelings of loving kindness within yourself at some point in your meditation practice. See if you can get behind any objections you may have to this practice, or behind your reasons for being unlovable or unacceptable. Just look at all that as thinking. Experiment with allowing yourself to bathe in the warmth and acceptance of loving kindness as if you were a child held in a loving mother's or father's arms. Then play with directing it toward others and out into the world. There is no limit to this practice, but as with any other practice, it deepens and grows with constant attending, like plants in a lovingly tended garden. Make sure that you are not trying to help anybody else or the planet. Rather, you are simply holding them in awareness, honoring them, wishing them well, opening to their pain with kindness and compassion and acceptance. If, in the process, you find that this practice calls you to act differently in the world, then let those actions too embody loving kindness and mindfulness.

Pay attention to Kabat-Zinn's advice, "Just look at all that as thinking." What he's saying is to treat your inner obstacles as thoughts -- that you can notice, accept without judgment, let go and then bring your mind back to the practice.