i sit at the head of the massage table. dropping into stillness. emptying out. listening with my hands to the body of the client before me. listening with hands and heart. entering into a state of deep, loving presence.
this is, of course, a recurring scene in the life of a massage therapist. it happens in every single session, and has been happening, for years on end.
but this time, something is different.
this particular moment of presence stirs something inside. i realize that i have been reserving this state for my clients while categorically denying it to myself. rushing around. carrying stress around with me everywhere i go.
i become aware of some powerful barriers of my own construction. i see that the model i’m using is fundamentally broken. i realize suddenly how absurd, how illogical, how untenable it is. i cannot only allow myself to access a state of true relaxation when i am giving treatments. i cannot offer this gift to others while denying it to myself.
this moment was years ago. in the throes of the darkness and chaos that i felt while fumbling my way through being a new mom. it was a crystallization. a dawning of awareness.
i saw my ability to choose, and how the pattern i had set up was a pattern of not choosing myself. writing myself out of the equation, so to speak. i was, as we are, adept at generating an endless list of reasons why i had to be stressed out, depleted; out of whack.
and yet, at the end of the day, this was a habit i had cultivated. it was how i was choosing to be, not who i actually was. it wasn’t set it stone. it was a pattern. and patterns can change.
this moment marked a sea change for me. a point of no return. this barrier i had created became flimsy… a vestige of the past. i got rid of it.
many a client has recently shared with me that they find it far easier to show love, care and kindness to others than to themselves. in action, in speech, in their daily movements.
can anyone relate?
the complex stories behind this collective blockage is a topic for another post, another day.
but suffice it to say, just for starters, that if we’re talking about real love, true love ~ it doesn’t “run out.” it doesn’t favor some at the expense of others. that’s not how it works. love is a state, and an expansive one at that. it’s not a thing.
thich nhat hanh shares the buddha’s teachings on the 4 elements of true love in this beautiful interview: loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness.
i love how he speaks to the expansive nature of love. by definition, it is not limiting. go ahead, try to contain it! if it is true love, how can you possibly?
love is a state. a healing state, even. love is our source. many traditions reveal that it is our essential nature. the ultimate unifier.
all the wisdom traditions beckon us to practice with love. the heartmath institute has beautifully laid out the healing benefits inherent of practicing with the “heart qualities” i.e.: love, compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. their work underlines how embracing these practices elicits generative changes in our physiology ~ that is to say, the opposite of degenerative.
at a certain point on the healing path, it becomes clear that the goal is not to get our hands on some magical method or elixir that exists “out there.” the answers, the greatest pharmacy in the world; the healing state itself lies within. we are born with it. we are it.
rumi said: “your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
if our essential nature is love, it becomes less and less tenable to maintain that we can have it for others but not for ourselves. we are love. time to root out the barriers.
in love, there is inclusion. spaciousness. room for our whole selves. the dark and the light aspects. the developed and the undeveloped. the skilled and the struggling and all the parts in between.
health and wholeness come from the same word. we can’t heal without letting love in; all the way in; shadows and all.
i don’t know who first said this, but it strikes a powerful chord: “healing isn’t becoming the best version of yourself. healing is letting the worst version of yourself be loved.”
what if you were to practice receiving the depths of the love you have felt and offered to others? receiving with your whole self. allowing yourself to be held in the embrace of an unconditional love. an act of surrender. nothing to do but receive. for some this is the biggest challenge of all.
so interesting how we think of loving as something that we “do” but the truth may be that it’s less about doing and more about a receiving, on the deepest level. from the universe. from ourselves. receiving a state of being that is already there.
for this kind of love, courage is required. i love how brené brown, in her work on leadership, shame and vulnerability, reminds us of the original sense of the word courage. the root of the word, coeur, means heart. an act of courage originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”
it requires courage to love our whole selves ~ faults and all. it begins, i’ve found, with willingness. willingness is a veritable superpower. you only need a shred.
say it with me: “i am willing to show myself love. i am willing to love even the most awkward, challenging, painful parts of me.”
the alternative is, well, degenerative. our words matter. bruce lee said “don’t speak negatively about yourself. even as a joke. your body doesn’t know the difference. words are energy and cast spells. that’s why it’s called spelling.”
in a tale from the pacific islands made famous by robert fulghum’s book all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten, trees that are too large to be cut down are encircled by the villagers who hurl insults and negative statements at it every day for 30 days.
and then the tree keels over.
want to degenerate something? insult it, repeatedly. want something to thrive? do the opposite.
in this article, the most powerful word in your life, the author cites findings that genes reducing physical and emotional stress can be switched on with words like “love” and “peace.” and this article on the impact of positive words on child development cites more impressive research on this topic from mark waldman’s book words can change your brain.
words of love and encouragement have been shown to positively affect the growth of plants, and people who receive a combination of positive visual reinforcement and verbal encouragement exhibit an increase in muscle strength.
any tendency to neglect ourselves, engage in negative self talk, repetitively voice criticism about certain parts of ourselves, or fall into patterns that cause us harm in one way or another is just that ~ a tendency. like so many things, it is learned over time.
at the end of the day, it is a habit. and, the verdict is in, folks: we can change our habits.
instead of making definitive statements like “i’m not good at xyz (loving myself, taking good care of myself, etc.)” try working in the phrase “i have a habit of… xyz.” then, use the power of language to reinforce a shift: “in the past, i had the habit of xyz…”
now, run your habitual language through a new filter of sorts. when you find yourself veering off into self-talk that is explicitly or even subtly unkind or unsupportive, ask yourself: is this how i would speak to my (child, grandchild, pet, students, etc.)?
inside every one of us is a child that just wants to be loved, cared for, to feel safe and supported. if we didn’t experience that from the folks we looked up to earlier on, it is even more essential to adopt this supportive role, starting now. create a new habit. shower your tender inner child with the words of love, compassion, and acceptance they require. this is the essential nourishment that we all need to grow and thrive.
flip the script. choose a simple phrase to start that expresses kindness, love and encouragement. throw in a dash of willingness.
what have you got to lose?
finally ~ bring it into your tissues. find an area that hurts. something that’s off; that causes you pain. when things go off balance in our bodies, it is so common to generate negative feelings about those areas. annoyance, frustration, unkind remarks. and worse.
now practice treating this area as you would a child. start with kindness and compassion. hold some loving space. use your hands. give yourself a sweet rub. that kind of loving touch we naturally extend to a youngster who hurt themselves. make it a practice to start offering the most painful parts of yourself consistent, loving touch.
there is no combination of words ~ at least in the english language ~ that can serve as a substitute for the gift of loving presence. and this quality of presence is at the foundation of healing.
(i should interject here that there is a profound practice in the vedic texts of performing daily self-massage with oil. it’s called abhyanga.
this is one of ayurveda’s core longevity-promoting practices, having a profoundly calming effect on the nervous system, increasing oxytocin and a host of other benefits too numerous to list.
the sanskrit word for oil? sneha. the same as the word for love.)
loving ourselves does not mean thinking that everything we do is amazing, refusing to take ownership for our mistakes, or thinking of ourselves as greater than another. it’s not pretending everything is groovy all the time. it’s about finding more kindness and compassion for what is.
paradoxically, with love we can make room for our whole selves, allowing ourselves to be exactly as we are, while telling the truth about where we still need to grow. being totally curious about how we can evolve. finding love for our potential as well as our current state of affairs. giving ourselves permission to love our dreams. like the velveteen rabbit teaches us, love ~ and acting with love ~ can literally bring a thing into existence.
when i started practicing unconditional love for myself (a continuous practice, to be sure), the context for my basic self-care habits drastically transformed. i discovered am experience of balance and rhythm i had never known. without forcing, things began falling into place.
showing myself love looks like:
taking a little time to prepare something wholesome, delicious and simple for myself in the morning, so that i don’t have to reach for some lesser-quality item out of convenience later in the day when i’m too hungry to wait.
going to bed at a decent hour. leaving breathing room in my schedule.
slowing down. listening to myself. being honest. saying “yes” to what lights me up, and “no” to what doesn’t.
just as i came to see the impossibility of the model i had created ~ switching into that deep, calm, loving space for clients and essentially turning that state off for the rest of the time ~ we can all choose to start noticing and lifting the barriers we have placed in our own way.
open the gates. find some little way to express love, kindness, and compassion to yourself. don’t fool yourself with a model of unworthiness or undeserving. that’s someone else’s voice. and in the end, that’s not how love works.
a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
what gesture of love will you offer yourself; what barriers to love will you start to remove, today?
want more guidance? want to go deeper? let’s have a heart-to-heart about your visions, your challenges… your big picture. i’m here to help you bring more love in. schedule it here.
