Self-Love and Radical Self Acceptance

In my years of teaching yoga, I’ve found Self Love to be an essential element of one’s evolution and enlightenment. The foundation of Self love is radical self acceptance. Self love is embodied and expressed in the delight to serve others. When we love ourselves completely and unconditionally, love infinitely pours into every cell of our body. Love is never finished, it is always in flow. So once you are being filled with the flow of self love, it begins to overflow and takes the form of loving kindness, compassion, playfulness, respect and nonjudgmental expressions of service.

My favorite self-love practice is forgiveness, forgiving over and over again, in every moment. Another great practice of self love is mindful speaking to myself and others. I listen to the language and tone with which I speak to myself and make certain that I speak to myself as I would to my lover or a child. It is an extremely helpful practice.

Loving self care is essential to Self Love! Taking care of mind and body – including eating good foods for my body and soul, dancing, clearing emotions with meditation, choosing positive thoughts and releasing negative ones, sharing time with people I love and laughing. Laughter and play are the most magical tools for self-love!!

To live a life you love, you have to have a sense of what you love, how you love and why you love. Our best possible selves must start with accepting where we have been and where we are now and where we want to go. There are always transitions in our lives. Everything changes everyday. We need to know how to work with these changes from a place of self acceptance and self understanding. We are the directors, producers, writers and actors of our own life. Once there is an understanding that we have the power within our own hearts and minds to create what we wish, then radical transformation can begin. Taking full responsibility of ourselves, our thoughts and our actions, is required. And self love starts the process.

Yoga is a process of balance and union of the different parts of our self nature. In its most simplistic terms, we are balancing and bringing into union the feminine with the masculine, the sun and the moon, the ha and the tha. Most of us have issues with one or both of parts of ourselves – so to love all the parts, just as they are without criticism or judgment, is a huge step towards enlightenment, aka the ultimate self love!