Ep 34: Love Thy Self – The Ultimate Feminine Embodiment

Firstly, I want to share with you how today’s topic came about.

I was teaching a workshop on Tuesday and I was going around the room and asking questions, just wanting to know…

Why are you here?

What’s brought you?

What are you really yearning for?

What are you aching to let go of or heal or awaken or embody?

This beautiful woman put up her hand and she said, “You know, I really struggle with a feeling of unworthiness. I’ve really noticed it and I want to do something about it.”

And I could have answered her with information. I could have answered her with a story about a client who’s transformed their unworthiness. But instead, what I did is I honoured her question with this…

I said to her, “Okay, just for a minute close your eyes.”

And I took her and everyone in the room through a process (and I want to take you through a similar process today). I took her through a process where she got to feel the fullness of who she is as a feminine soul, as a human being, as a woman

And as we went through this process I could feel and see her face relaxing and softening, and then when the process was over and she opened her eyes, I asked her the question:

“So now when you think about that feeling you were having of unworthiness, having just experienced your fullness, is it even a question?”

And she just looked at me and said, “No, not at all. It’s not even a question anymore.”

And that remembering is the antidote. It’s the medicine in the truer sense of the word. It’s the healing balm for any feeling of unworthiness. It’s impossible to feel unworthy when we are in contact with, when we are feeling and knowing and trusting and being that innate fullness that we are.

And there’s a Sanskrit verse, which I won’t share in Sanskrit but in English the rough translation is “From fullness comes fullness. When you take from fullness, only fullness remains.”

There is nothing that can take away from the fullness you are. It’s not possible. The fullness that you are is innate; it’s the very essence that lives and breathes you. It’s not possible for it to be depleted.

The mind, however, would tell you something different, in accordance with what you were told by family, by friends, by society.

And really, that’s going to be the work today, is to begin to explore what might be in the way from your moment-by-moment remembering that you are fullness itself, from this moment-by-moment remembering and trusting and embodying this fullness you are.

And that is at the core of Loving Thyself.

And Loving Thyself is the ultimate feminine embodiment, the ultimate feminine practice, because Love is what you are. Yes, there are different flavours of feminine love; different textures, colours, right? But Love is essentially what you are.

So the question is how do you cultivate this feeling that this woman experienced in the workshop last week on a regular basis? Regular enough that you begin to remember it? Regular enough that becomes your habit, your habitual way of being?

So essentially, what these women experienced was the state of being that fullness. This reminded them, re-minded… so their mind thought, “Oh yeah… I’m that!” They recognised it. Re-cog-nised it. Okay? Notice how I’m using these words to describe what is happening in the mind, because a lot of the time it’s the mind that gets in the way of you experiencing this love you actually are.

I want to say this here and now, and I invite you to feel it, not just hear it, not just sense it but feel it fully for a moment. Let this drop into every cell.

There’s nothing, and I mean nothing, that you’ve ever done or ever said that could possibly make you unworthy of love. Nothing.

No matter what anyone else has ever told you – your culture, the society, your family, your best friend in primary school, your teacher in fifth grade, your parents – nothing. There’s nothing that you could have ever done that makes you unworthy of love. And I want you to just take a moment to let that seep in.

So here’s why this exploration is so important. If not self-love, then what’s in its place?

Self-kind-of- like? “I kind of like myself.”

Is that how you’re talking to yourself?

Is that how you’re treating to yourself?

If not self-love, then what?

Self-criticism?

Self-hatred?

Self-abuse?

If not self-love, then what?  What is in its place?

So then you have to start asking yourself…

How do I talk to myself?

How do I treat myself?

How do I feel about myself?

Because without self-love something else is going on and at worst it’s self-loathing, self-abuse, and in ways that you may not have even recognised up until now.

It's important to recognise the ways you might have been abusing yourself, rejecting yourself or denying yourself. For example, when you’re tired do you deny yourself the rest you need?

I do that sometimes. I have a tendency to push on. But then if I recalibrate into this remembering that I’m worthy of love, I have to ask myself…

What act of love do I most need to give myself right now?

So you want to ask yourself:

What do I dialogue in my head?

How do I talk to myself?

How do I feel about myself?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the story or heard the story of Anita Moorjani.  She’s a woman who… long story short… had a near-death experience and she documented it.  It's worthwhile listening to and reading.

Out of the whole story there’s one moment in her story that struck me. So she had stage four cancer, she was rushed to hospital, pronounced clinically dead. She had this near-death experienced and then was able to share it.

And when she found herself in this near-death experience state, beyond the mind, one of the realisations she had was just how incredibly harsh she’d been on herself. How unkind and how judgemental she had been.

And how she’d given herself such a hard time about not being enough of this and being too much of that.  She realised this when she was in this place beyond her mind, where there was no judgement, where there was no wrong or right, there was just love.  And that’s the way she describe that near-death experience, a place where there was there only this feeling of love.

And she had this realisation that what mattered most was how she felt about herself. I always say to the women clients I work with, how you feel is not the problem. It’s how you feel about yourself when you feel it.

So I’d invite you to start noticing how you feel about yourself when you have strong feelings. For example, when you have strong feelings of vulnerability or anger or greed or lust or desire or fear;

How do you feel about yourself?

What do you say to yourself?

Are they loving thoughts or are they unloving thoughts?

Are they loving feelings?

Or unloving feelings?

So this exploration is important because how you feel about yourself matters. If you don’t love yourself, if you don’t give yourself this gift of who you are, then you deny yourself. And maybe you deny yourself in the ways that you were denied as a child. Maybe you deny yourself of rest, or the opportunity to speak your truth, or to be creative. So begin with recognising how you might be denying yourself.

Maybe you try and fit it in a box of other people’s expectations because then you get their love because you’re just forgetting for a moment that you are love. You forget that you don’t need their love in order to feel worthy.

This is a huge piece in relationship. Any moment, and this moment can be years in a relationship or it can be a brief moment, but any moment that you are needing love from your intimate partner, you are forgetting that you are love.

Of course you might desire love from your intimate partner, but if you need it to fill you because you’re forgetting that you are that love, that’s when you start trading and negotiating and binding. You give something away of yourself in order to get love.

For example women trade pussy for love. Women trade sex for love, women trade housework for love. Women trade I’ll be nice and I won’t rock the boat for your love, when really I want to be wild and free, when really I want to express my wrath at your lack of integrity… or whatever it is.

So not feeling and knowing and trusting this love you are and not loving yourself can cause you to compromise yourself. That alone makes it worthy of the exploration.

So you have to remember that when you feel unworthy you act unworthy. You act as if you are unworthy and therefore you don’t embody that which would allow you to inspire the respect that you desire and deserve from others. Does that make sense?

Like when you embody unworthiness, you inspire that from others. When you embody unworthiness to speak your truth and say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. When you feel unworthy to say yes or no when you really mean it, you inspire others to treat you like that.

And this piece around unworthiness is really important. Unworthiness is kind of like a rug that you pull out from under yourself each time you feel it.

Truly.  If you can think of the feeling of worthiness as this very solid foundation to stand on - there is no rug to pull out from under you. Don’t do that to yourself.

So begin to explore – do you love yourself fully, unconditionally in your actions? When you truly love yourself, you free yourself to live the life that is authentic to you, not the life that other people want you to live.

You free yourself to break out of that box of other people’s expectations and to embody the unique you. You shift from trying to make yourself be something, say something, do something, not do something into actually being and saying what you really mean in alignment with who you truly are.

So you are already innately fullness, wholeness, and by loving these parts of yourself that you’ve previously denied, put in the shadow, you begin to recognise your wholeness, remind yourself of your wholeness.

I often feel that the self-development world, the personal development world, perpetuates this you’re not enough. “…they say there’s nothing broken, nothing wrong with you, nothing to fix, but here let me fix you…”

Everything in the world, for example the media, says to you buy this and then you’ll be okay.  Well, what if you’re frikkin’ okay right now, as you are, dark and light?  What if you could love yourself even if your belly was a little bit bigger than another woman?  What if you could love yourself even if…even if…even if? As is?

So loving yourself – it could be tender love, fierce love, but there’s no shame or blame. There’s no judgement. There’s just love.

So the question is how do we do this? How do we navigate this right here and now, as women on this call?

So first step is get curious – get lovingly curious about how you really feel about yourself, what you really say to yourself, how you treat yourself. Get lovingly curious.

Don’t go in like a bull at a gate. Just get lovingly curious.  And notice – maybe create a journal, and begin to notice what your self-talk is.  What’s the mental dialogue going on? Are you replicating the voice of a critical parent? We often repeat the imprints, whatever is imprinted in our nervous system.

So if you had a very critical parent, even though you might know consciously that the criticism is not love. At the time, when you were child you thought that was love because as an innocent young being you assumed that that’s what love was.

So notice the little voice in your head, and ask yourself…

Who’s talking?

Is that the me that is love, or is that a voice from the past?

Is that a critical parent or is that my fifth grade teacher?

So really begin to explore –

What is the self-talk that’s going on?

What’s the mental dialogue?

The next step is, drop into the heart and ask…

… What are you feeling about yourself?  When you have a strong feeling, notice how you’re feeling about yourself while you’re feeling it.  And ask yourself, these feelings, are they loving or not?

And begin to know how you feel about the world and other people. That in itself could be, probably is, a projection upon the circumstance or the person based on how you feel about yourself.

For example, if you hate the part of you that is always late, or you hate the part of you or you feel ashamed of the part of you that gets angry, and you don’t consciously look at that, then undoubtedly you will make others wrong for embodying that trait.

If you feel shame around a part of your sexuality, it’s guaranteed you’ll project that upon those around you. You’ll judge. So you can notice the mental dialogue, notice the feelings going on, and that’s the mental dialogue about yourself, the mental dialogue about others, the feelings about yourself and the feelings about others.

And then begin to notice, in that, how do you hold your body?

Does how you hold your body indicates self-love?

Does it indicate innate worthiness?

The path from self-denial, self-abuse is one where you transform all of that into conscious self-loving.

Much of what we do is habitual – you say to yourself, “God, I’m such an idiot!” Really?  Who told you that?  I have women in workshops who say to me, “I’m sorry. I’m crying. I’m so silly.”  Why?  Because one day you cried when you were a little girl and someone said, “Don’t be silly,” so you decided it was silly to cry?

What if it’s not?

What if it’s a beautiful way to express how you feel?

What if you could love yourself while you’re crying?

So this transformation into conscious self-loving requires you to:

• Become aware of how you are unconsciously unloving yourself
• How you are habitually unconsciously talking to yourself
• How you are feeling about yourself
• How you are acting in your body, holding your body and how you’re acting toward yourself – the actions you take with your body.

So I’m going to invite you right now to close your eyes (unless you’re driving a car – if you’re driving a car don’t close your eyes… you can do this meditation later).   But I want to bring you into a feminine embodiment practice, just for 5 minutes.

Feminine Practice

Feminine practice, close your eyes and become aware of your breathing. Breathe cool air through the nostril as you breathe in, and breathe out and notice the warm air as it leaves.

And as you do this, drop your eyes downwards, just gently behind your closed eyelids. And as your eyes drop downwards feel into your belly.

And as each new breath comes into your belly, feel your belly expand with the fullness of your breath. And let your belly naturally rise and fall, with each in and out breathe.

And as you do that, feel your feet on the ground, feel your legs into your buttocks, your thighs, your genitals, and your belly.

Continue to let the fullness you are arise from the feet,  the legs, the bottom, the genitals – all the way into the vagina.  Into your yoni, the sacred word for this gateway into this womanhood, this fullness you are,  all the way deep in your belly.

And keep breathing really fully and now just gently place your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

So as you continue to breathe naturally, feeling the fullness of each breath, allowing that fullness now to expand up from the belly into the chest and the breasts and the back and the spine and the shoulders, the arms, all the way to the fingertips, and up into the throat and the face and the head, until each new in breath brings in this reminder of your fullness. And as you breathe out you let go into this fullness.

Each in breath, feel the fullness.

Each out breath, relax open as that fullness.

Keep breathing really fully. Breathe in, feeling that fullness. Breathing out, relaxing open into that fullness, as that fullness, until you feel yourself wholly and completely as that fullness. It’s like you are this well of fullness and it arises up from the depths of your being, and overflows. Arises and overflows. You are a natural overflow of this fullness. Beautiful.

And then, begin to notice where you feel that fullness most in your body.  Maybe for you it’s in your heart. Maybe it’s in your yoni.  Maybe it’s in your belly or your toes, but just notice the sensation of fullness, and where you notice it the most.

And remember it, so that at any time in the future you can remember where that fullness resides for you. It’s like an access point. So maybe even touch that area of your body, just for a moment feel it, touch it and just know that you can return to this remembering at any time, at any time. Beautiful.

So when you’re ready, very gently wriggle your fingers and your toes and open your eyes.

So from that place it’s not a question – it’s just not even a question. The quickest way to remember the fullness you are is to feel it, to remember the love you are, is to feel it.

My invitation is that you create a ritual for yourself to practice the remembering, to practice the feeling of, to practice the embodying of this feeling of fullness, of love that you are.

The most powerful time to influence the unconscious mind is last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

So my invitation to you is to put a reminder by your bed, so that last thing at night or first thing in the morning or both, or when you brush your teeth or something that you do habitually every day, put a reminder there so that you take at least 3 breaths and remember that fullness and feel it.

And then stand on that foundation of fullness, of self-love.

And from that place move about in your world. From that place, notice where you are being unloving to yourself.

Notice where there is a dialogue, a feeling, a way of being, an action that is unloving, and then lovingly attend to what needs to be attended to, so that you can transform that into self-love.

When you truly love yourself from this place, this conscious self-loving, you’re more likely to speak, feel and act consciously. You consciously treat yourself well. You give yourself healthy challenge, healthy praise, instead of criticism. Not over-praise, not under praise. Not criticism, but healthy challenge and healthy praise.

Always coming back to the love you are. For me, I use the power of my breath. When I breathe consciously, I tend to feel and act more consciously.

So breathe consciously into this Truth you are, into the Love you are, capital ‘L’.  This is the path to your freedom.

...If you’re ready to fall deeply, madly, wholly in Love with yourself so you can create the life, love and intimacy you desire click here.