SELF-LOVE IS AN INSIDE JOB
Self-love is the practice of reconnecting with our most authentic selves and aligning with the true divine nature of our hearts. It extends beyond self-care, even though I highly recommend taking a bubble bath and uncovering the love we seek so we feel empowered, aligned, connected, and whole. Self-love is a practice that requires accountability and commitment, and this practice can be uncomfortable and unfamiliar at first, which is why we tend to reach outside of ourselves to fill what is already within us.
When we tune in and choose ourselves, we impact all our relationships for the better like a ripple effect. By doing the inner work, we strengthen our relationship with ourselves.
When you cultivate self-love, you no longer depend entirely on your work, relationships, or external experiences to give you the validation and love you seek. Together, we will learn the practice of self-love by becoming aware of why we reach beyond ourselves for something that is within. And in doing so, we will cultivate and strengthen our alignment, empowerment, and wholeness.
When we came into this world, we not only separated from our birth mother but also from our deep knowing of oneness, wholeness, and connection to source. Or whatever word resonates with you (Higher energy, sacred spirit, divine nature). We embodied this way of seeing ourselves as separate, giving us the illusion that love exists outside ourselves.
When we began to identify with our body and mind, emotions, and all the experiences that color our unique human journey, we separated our mind from our heart. We forgot that we are innately infinite, boundless, connected, and one.
SEARCHING FOR LOVE EVERYWHERE BUT WITHIN
The beautiful thing about this human journey is that we all seek love. And that’s an incredible thing we all share. From our initial experience of separateness to the generations before us and how our society teaches us, we all seek love in different ways, shapes, and forms. And yet, collectively, we tend to reach outside ourselves for connection and love that resides within us. Our human nature desires connection, but when we only seek outside ourselves, depending on external circumstances to create a sense of worth, wholeness, connection, love, joy, and validation, our desire for connection becomes an issue.
We search for love in other people, relationships, material things, and our identities as parents, children, teachers, leaders, or partners. We begin to feel alone, depleted, and unsatisfied because we continue to reach externally for what is truly within us. These feelings of aloneness and depletion are the heart calling us to make that U-turn home. Communicating to us the best way it knows how, saying, “Hey, come back, tune in, choose me.” You can’t pour from an empty cup. Instead, find balance in nurturing yourself while sharing this love with others,
Filling your cup through practices of self-love to then pour out into the world is a balance of mind and heart, give and take, uniqueness and oneness. We grasp these fleeting versions of external love and worth when the practice of self-love becomes uncomfortable and unfamiliar. In her book Journey to the Heart, Melody Beady says that self-love means loving and accepting yourself, your thoughts, beauty, emotions, faults, imperfections and flaws, strengths, wit, wisdom, and your peculiar and unique way of seeing the world.
Self-love means we love unconditionally all the pieces of ourselves, all our emotions from anger to grief to joy to happiness to sorrow. All our thoughts: the inspiring, creative ones to the destructive and violent ones. All of our body and sensations that come with it: the painful and numb ones to the easy and comfortable ones. These thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations often need to be acknowledged and accepted, seen and heard, and loved for who we are in this moment. Sometimes, this can not only be uncomfortable to do but also painful.
SIGNS WE NEED TO MAKE THE U-TURN HOME
We often need the guidance of a therapist or teacher and the support of our loved ones to take this journey within. Self-love is a practice of choosing ourselves every time we hear the call from within through the feeling of our unmet needs. The signs to make that U-turn home and practice self-care can come in the form of a judgmental thought, a negative narrative, a complex emotion, or feeling fragmented, imbalanced, and not in alignment.
Identifying these cues and understanding the language of our heart calling us back home gets easier each time we become aware and tune in. With practice, we learn how to feel our feelings and sit with all these pieces that make us who we are and who we are not. Little by little, we learn that we can give ourselves what we need without going beyond healthy boundaries or relying on the whim of external circumstances. Self-love is a constant practice that requires accountability and commitment.
TOOLBOX OF SELF-LOVE
By gaining a toolbox of practices to experience self-love, we can nourish ourselves with breath, movement, journaling, and compassionate, kind words. It’s a practice of reconnecting and coming back: when we get out of balance and feel off, we catch ourselves and check-in. We become aware and get back into our body through somatic movement practices. We might get fragmented and notice a negative emotion or sensation in the body, and we tune in and choose to meditate, listening to our inner wisdom.
Sometimes, we may feel abandoned or rejected, realize our unmet needs, and decide to choose ourselves, telling ourselves kind and compassionate words, remembering that we can never abandon ourselves because this love within us is always available.
Trust yourself. The human journey is a constant reconnecting and remembering, continuing to fill our cup with love to share with the world and community around us.
We are multifaceted human beings with a diverse array of experiences. Each time we choose ourselves and tune in, we strengthen the muscle of self-love within our heart and the inner wisdom of knowing and understanding that we are greater than our mind, body, identity, emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
TOOLBOX OF SELF-LOVE
We are strong and spacious enough to hold space to experience all of it without needing to change, repress, or fix anything. So let’s practice together. We’ll use the breath as our guide, taking a hand to your heart.
You can close your eyes. Feel your hand holding your beautiful heart, and take a deep breath into the heart space. Exhale, feel that breath releasing and emptying, dropping into your heart space. Allowing whatever you feel to be as is, as you remember your true nature, holding space for all of it.
Begin to breathe into the heart as if the heart was the one breathing in. Breathing out from the heart as if the heart was the one breathing out.
Sense how you feel in this moment.
No right or wrong way to be, no judgment.
FILL YOUR CUP
Every time we choose to practice self-love, we cultivate this space of refuge, our inner sanctuary, where we are allowed to not only be our most authentic self, feeling whatever we feel in that moment but also connect with our divine source within, the love that we seek and desire.
Take time throughout your day to practice self-love and strengthen this innate wisdom and connection within yourself. Join The Practice membership for a free week and gain access to a library of on-demand classes in movement, breathwork, meditation, journaling, and deep rest, and make self-love a daily practice.
Choose yourself because you are so worth it. You are divine and incredible. Choose self-love. You already have by just showing up, listening to this, and practicing with me. Remember your true nature. Everything you need is already within you.