Self Love and Healing
What is self-love and how is it an important process of maturation, becoming whole to yourself, and also coming into better relationship with others? This article addresses these points. We use terms like "to thine own self be true" but often we don't know what that means. In one way of looking at injury, disease and psychological disorder, we find that the person has actually split off from the real or core self and is not living with self-love. Eventually this lack of self love or integrity will lead to dysfunction in some way. It's part of the human journey and it's the gate to coming home to yourself. The process of healing and transformation is one of finding a way back to who you really are. It is a process of maturation and owning your life for yourself. As we all grow, we increasingly choose things which bring us joy, happiness, health, wholeness and a sense of calm integrity.
Self love is not so easy and it has no road map. If we didn't feel much love from our parents, we might not quite know what self-love feels like. We often internalize love in the same way we experienced it and bonding with our primary parents, grandparents, relatives and significant adults in our early childhood years. Every human being, however, experienced love from someone along the way. In the therapeutic process it's important to remember those feelings and find ways to bond with others and with yourself in that way. The process of healing and maturation is a process in adult life of taking on the parent role to yourself so you can get what you really need. None of us had perfect childhoods, so each person must take the reigns for his or her self later in life. This act of coming home to your self is the path of self love, maturation into adulthood, healing yourself to wholeness, and resolving the deep child-split within. As the person owns these stages of adulthood, there will be another stage of sharing the full elder wisdom with others and embracing greater authenticity in one's own life.
Self love is a way of relating to yourself through doing things that bring you a sense of joy, peace, and inner fulfillment. When you are doing these special things, you feel nurtured through your own actions by yourself and with others. For example, I enjoy dancing tango. I love the way the body moves, I enjoy the discipline of it as dance, I enjoy the relationship between men and women in social dance partnership. It's also a highly transformative movement and process as much "stuff" comes up about how we relate to each other as men and women. I also find a great sense of happiness when I walk in the woods, listen to the creek and melt into the clear blue sky. The deep forests give me ease. When I meditate I find peace. When I do pilates I move into an enjoyment, empowerment and love with myself. I also enjoy cooking and splitting the kindling. Basic things . . . mopping the floor. You might have other things you love to do. Ski. Horseback ride. Creative art in some form. You come alive to your own self when you do these things. By doing these things, you connect with some deeper essential authenticity with yourself. If the core of one's being is love, when we do something we love we are connecting with that part of our self, that vibration, and sharing it with each other. We often feel a lot of passion about the things we love and those things are relevant to our lives.
When we do these things, we also feel complete or whole. When you touch that part of yourself you are touching your own divine spark of life. When you do these things, you are living YOUR OWN LIFE and YOUR OWN SELF. The more we develop SELF-LOVE, the more we make doing these life-fulfilling things the PRIORITY!
How the Ten Series Can Help You Find Self-Love
The Ten Series of Structural Integration is a process which helps the body mature and gain physically correct anatomical alignment. Just by standing more naturally tall with your heart open and supported by the hips and feet, you will feel more alive and true to yourself. As your body matures through this process, you will gain a new sense of boundaries about yourself. As you go through a Ten Series, you will be letting go of emotional and physical patterns which don't really support who you are intrinsically. You will begin to find better ways to enjoy living your life. The "shoulds" or expectations from other people start becoming less enjoyable or attractive . . .and you will naturally begin to listen to your own body, heart and mind!
The Ten Series of Structural Integration addresses physical and structural issues of alignment. This means literally that the work will help you stand with better natural posture. The feet come under the sits bones and you move through your hip joints with greater ease. The ankles and knees and feet flex more gently. The spine is released from overuse and inproper use of the back muscles, hence there is less strain placed on the individual vertebrae and the discs. The arms begin to swing properly from the shoulder sockets. Hands and wrists align as well. The head is placed more evenly and correctly on top of the cervical spine. The work itself is a structural process which allows the bones to move into correct positioning so that you move with greater ease, natural fluidity, less pain, and greater balance.
However from another point of view, there is a psychological and spiritual response of wholeness, sense of well-being and even self-love that comes with the work. We might say it is a by-product of the work. You will go through a growing sense of self-empowerment and self-realization with the Ten Series. You will begin to take more time for your own self-care and enjoy your body and your life more. People often make some wonderful changes in their lives during a Ten Series and often it's not much of a struggle. You are getting in touch with your body in a new way and feeling a new alignment in your body and with yourself, and it feels great!
When you feel great, you share that feeling with others more easily. This helps us all live in joy together. We often forget and become isolated when we hurt or when we are in fear. We also have a time in our adult phases of trying to understand our past. We end up in therapy of some sort . . . for good reason! There is a time in each person's life when one must grapple with who your parents are, why what happened happened, who you really are and what it is you want to do with your own life. Somewhere along the way we generally stop blaming our parents or other people for making our life miserable . . . and something new begins to arise. It's like a SMILE from the inside. This really starts to open up with Session 5 in the Ten Series.
The first 5 sessions might be said to release the old patterns and open up the core of your being to yourself. Sessions 6 - 10 might be said to re-align and empower your core self, integrating that shining into your actions of life. The more you feel empowered to live your life, the more you experience love and fulfillment.
Many Blessings as you walk your own steps . . . hopefully finding more joy and love and happiness along the way.