❤️ SELF LOVE 101 ❤️

Self love is one of the hardest things I find. The more I do breathwork journeys, workshops and sessions, the more I see I’m not alone in feeling this way.

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Self love is not just taking baths, getting a massage etc. It’s also about going into your darkness, accepting and loving those parts of yourself you don’t want anyone to find out.
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You might feel you don’t deserve to be cared for so you don’t do it for yourself when you do it so generously for others. You might feel seperate and lonely so you seperate yourself even more by abandoning yourself. You might feel you deserve good things only as a reward when you earned it. Or you might feel self-love is a weird narcissistic thing where you feel awkward to love yourself.
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Growing up, maybe you believed there was something wrong with you, maybe you felt you’ve done something bad and you don’t want anyone to find out. So you carry a shame keeping people at an arm’s length distance so they don’t find out. If they find out, they might shame you, reject you or abandon you.
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I have felt and done all the above. I still do them from time to time and continue to work on them.
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You’re not black or white. There are many sides to you. Sometimes you’re feisty, dark and sexual. Sometimes you’re loving, soft and giving. Accepting them as a part of you takes the power out of it. When you do so, it stops showing up so strongly because you listened and payed attention to it. It was a part of you just wanted to be heard and seen.
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Growing up, I believed anger was a bad emotion and I felt guilt and shame whenever I felt it, especially towards people I loved. Now I see, anger when integrated, coming from a higher place, is actually power and strength. It shows you where your boundaries are and what you care about.
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There are always two sides to things. Our pain becomes our greatest strength when we see the lesson, forgive and let go of the story. Our shame becomes compassion. Our fear becomes courage. Our grief becomes freedom.
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Here are few steps to accept and love parts of you you might struggle to accept and love:
- Close your eyes and take a deep breath.
- Take 4 more deep breaths.
- Go on then, one more 😃
- Ask, “What part of me I feel I can’t show to people?”
- Imagine that part of you infront of you
- Ask, “What do you need?” (Maybe just needs to be acknowledged and to be listened)
- Give them what they need.
- Tell that part of you, “I love you and accept you.” and imagine you hug that part as it integrates to your body.
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When you have your internal love and validation, any external love and validation would be extra, not a necessity. You receive love and validation when you let go of the need for it 💛
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Master this and practical side of what to do to cultivate self-love such as alone time, bath, movement etc is actually easy. My next post is about that ✌🏼
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Sending you love ❤️✨
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(Image is from this past summer ☀️)
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