When the subject of "self-love" comes up, does it make you smile? Or cringe? Shrug? Cower? So many of my clients struggle with self-love. It's disheartening but not surprising — our culture of showy self-aggrandizement does not exactly encourage compassionate self-acceptance. 

I am also prone to harsh self-criticism and self-judgment, so I can empathize. And yet I have come to understand that self-love isn't necessarily: "I like all of my qualities and characteristics and condone all of my beliefs and behaviors." That is simply not realistic and frankly sounds pathological. 

Instead, my sense of self-love is derived from something I discovered in my healing practice, and I want to offer it as a useful reframe as well as a practical exercise I think anyone can benefit from. 

As I've written about before, I hold my clients in the energetic frequency of love. In this process, I see them through a lens that reveals the fullness of their humanity — messy, imperfect, flawed, unique, beautiful, and divine, just like everyone else. The inevitable result is that by the end of the session, I love them. Of course not in a romantic, emotional, or even relational way. There's no energy of attachment or attraction, and I feel no judgment, evaluation, or comparison. It’s just a glowy, rosy, expansive feeling of full acceptance.

What if we could all see ourselves through that loving lens? What would happen if we could hold ourselves in that loving energy, would we all begin to love ourselves unconditionally?

As they say in recovery, it's easier to act your way into right thinking than think your way into right acting. Holding yourself in love is a simple and practical way to begin loving yourself. Then it’s a slippery slope to treating yourself with kindness, recognizing your expansive, complicated humanity, and accepting your whole self with humility and compassion. I recommend this practice as a beautiful experiment. Conjure up the energetic frequency of the heart chakra, shine it on yourself, and let the message sink in: I am lovable, I am loved, I am worthy of love, I love myself.

Want to take this practice for a whirl? I have created a new free guided meditation that takes you through it in about ten minutes (password: chakragift). Working with this energy is a real blessing. While there is no implicit goal of changing or fixing anything, the transmission and reception of this uplifting frequency soothes, calms, and heals on a deep, unconscious level. I hope you’ll give it a try on your own, in a group, or in a session with me. Let me know how it goes!