So I keep having an intuition that I should drop vipassana for a while and do metta. I feel I could do with getting off the ride for a bit and also that my reactions to things, people, work, life, future, friends etc etc, could benefit from a little more love in my heart day to day. 

Just wondering if anyone has done this (i.e dropped vipassana for metta practice, fully for a number of months) and if so how did it go? Or any other advice around this welcomed. 

thanks 

b man, thanks for this post. I've been reading up on metta also and just as recently have been trying to incorporate this into my daily meditation sessions. Plz continue posting. This interests me probably as much as it does you. I realized, after Cian posted a reply to me, that I needed to learn about this "thing" and try it out too. Great stuff :-)

you could try something like: 30 minutes metta practice, then 30 minutes insight, or whatever mix works. In the end, you may come to see the delineations blur, and that your insight practice will come alive even during metta (re: Nikolai).

I did that and don't regret the decision.
However, dropping Vipassana completely may be a bit extreme.

Is any of your metta practice towards yourself? Not always directed at others.

I like the idea (from the video) of remembering the feeling of holding a puppy, when trying to generate this loving feeling in the chest, if you are struggling to remember this feeling from a memory. 

I can't find any such feeling for myself, but I have been working on this feeling for others like family, friends, etc. Still learning what I can about metta, anger, and other emotions through study, podcasts, etc. This metta for oneself is very hard for me. Don't know if I'll ever get it

Thanks b man

....
I can't find any such feeling for myself, but I have been working on this feeling for others like family, friends, etc...

hi Don,

Yep, I'm pretty sure this is what he meant. i.e Use your love towards other people, animals, happy memories, whatever you can really, and feel that feeling in the chest of love, and then let it grow, focus on it, allow it to be warm and happy!

I think if you do that for a few weeks, then youll find the love for yourself will be much easier

Yep sure Don, good to hear it. A few more things to report then: 

1. Metta is getting much easier to do after having done a few days of it. The other night I had a really really beautiful session, which was almost blissful, I really felt some love that I haven't felt in a long time.
2. I have been sleeping loads. loads and loads. I pretty much slept all weekend and I'm going to go to bed again before 10pm tonight also. Just loving sleep. 
3. I keep noticing the warm feeling in my chest and its nice.
4. I have been trying bringing the warm, love, happiness feeling to other chakra points, with some pretty amazing results, pretty quickly and I am going to keep trying this. I also tried to bring that feeling to blockage areas and it's seemed to melt tension away that didnt seem to want to shift by itself when just observing the sensations in vipassana. 

Energy and Concentration

Energy and concentration work the same way as faith and wisdom: They must both be strong but must also be in balance. When this balance is right, the posture is straight and steady but not rigid, and the mind is bright and focused steadily on objects and their back-and-forth interplay. A willingness to play around with various combinations of energy and concentration produces the necessary personal experience to figure out what helps and what is too much or too little. Many of the problems in practice that meditators come to ask meditation teachers about relate directly to balancing energy and concentration, so engage with what imbalance might mean, and try to apply this little teaching to help you see clearly.
As with faith and wisdom, so issues of balance go for energy and concentration. Too much
energy is related to a lack of concentration, and vice versa.
When energy is deficient there is
 Sloth,
 Dullness,
 Torpor, and
 Tiredness.

When energy is in excess, the mind and body may be
 Restless,
 Jumpy,
 Strained, and
 Irritable.

When energy is in excess, one may even be unable to focus at all because effort itself is being overemphasized at the expense of the objects of meditation. When concentration is deficient, the mind won’t stay with an object and tends to become lost in thought. When concentration is in excess, one may become lost in one’s objects or be focused too narrowly and tightly for reality to “breathe.” It is common for people to forget these simple guidelines and forget to look back at these simple lists for help. Again, if after reading Part III you have trouble, reread this section and see if it helps. Simply pay attention to how your practice is going and adjust the levels of energy and concentration accordingly, knowing that balance takes time to find and may require regular readjustment. Sometimes it is helpful to be very gentle with our attention, as if we were trying to feel the wind on our skin from the flapping of a nearby butterfly’s wings. Other times it is helpful to use our attention like a machine gun.
Often we do just fine somewhere in between.

I dropped Vipassana nearly completely (for other reasons) 1.5 years ago and have been practicing Metta since.
I don't know how to combine them.
Metta practice stirs up lots of hindrances, and using some mindfulness to understand the nature of these seems key to be free of them, but that still seems to be quite different from pure noting.

I hardly practice the other 3, but on the few occasions I tried (mainly on retreat), I found that at least Mudita was strong from the very beginning, so I conclude that Metta is a good foundational practice for all the rest.