On Self Love

The self love journey looks different for each of us. Capitalism tells us that self love equates to buying things that make you look or feel good. That you’re not adequately equipped with regulation tools to cultivate happiness from the inside. Perhaps we were told in our family lineage that happiness is found in belief systems, being successful in our line of work, or making money. So I contemplate often—who’s truth is that? Mine, or yours?

The practice of yoga at its core is the practice of liberation. Liberation from thought patterns that keep us tethered to our wants and desires, expectations of others, cultural belief systems, and demands of the world… however we don’t ask ourselves enough: what does liberation mean to me. Less from our minds, more from our hearts.

For years I thought self love meant relaxing only when to-dos were checked off—oftentimes when I was already burnt out. I thought self love was making myself look pretty for others; that self love was defined by the love I received from others. I thought loving myself meant feeling good, therefore striving to reach and maintain this euphoric state.

What I’ve learned is that self love isn’t something that is prescribed to us from outside of us, but rather, cultivated from with us. Self love asks us to love not only when we’re at our best, but more so when we’re at our worst. Relationship with ourselves needs presence, commitment, inquiry; just as we’d offer a friend or a lover. It needs us to nurture and embrace the parts of ourselves that pain us the most. Self love asks us to resist systems in place, and to focus on us first. To choose discomfort over escapism, because within discomfort uncovers the very real layers of our truth—our truth that makes being human the most dimensional, sometimes messy yet intentional pattern of life that makes us whole; just as we are.