When looking at holistic health, do you think self-love is a worthy topic? Our previous editions of Holistic Living Magazine have been focused on ‘illnesses or diseases’.

As a therapist myself, over the years of working with my clients, whether it has been on their physical body through massage, energetic body through Reiki or emotional/spiritual body through hypnotherapy and NLP, each client, in their own way showed me that if we don’t show ourselves self-love, there becomes an issue in our body or life.

This made me look deeper at myself to show me how lack of self love had been affecting me in my life and there were many. I am lucky enough to know many amazing therapists (many are writing for this magazine) and I worked with them on my issues.

It took many years and the more I worked on myself, the more I uncovered. This is of course still a work in progress as it will be for us all until the day we die.

The good news is, the more we love ourselves, the easier life becomes and more flow happens for us because we stop sabotaging ourselves. When we show ourselves self-love, the universe reflects that back to us. As with anything, the awareness that we have lack of self-love is the start.

Lack of self-love will show up differently in different people. In some people it will show as disease, in some, pain, in others a lack of flow. There are so many ways we sabotage ourselves, that when we start loving ourselves, things start to change.

Your body will let you know when something is not in flow in your life and when you learn to listen and know where to look, or who to ask, you find the answers you need.

If you are looking for an answer for a physical ailment, a great place to start is with Louise Hay’s work, or you can look through our website and find others who may be able to help you.

This magazine’s aim is to help you think differently about disease, cause, symptoms and regaining your health. When we start to think differently we open our eyes to other possibilities.

This is a crucial area that we need to look at when talking about health, wellness and healing. At this point, modern medicine does not address self love as something to look at regarding our health.

I hope that with enough time this will change and modern medicine will realise what holistic therapists already know.

I hope by reading this magazine you will shine a light on some of the areas, you may be sabotaging yourself and find ways, and/or the therapist that can help you on your journey, as learning self appreciation, self value and finding ways to improving self esteem are all great steps to having great health and well being.

Enjoy.

Everyone talks about a coin having two sides; heads and tails. In reality it has three, there is an edge. Just because it is thin, doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and how many times have you flipped a coin and it actually landed on its edge?

It may not stay there for long, and finish on a head or a tail, but it still does.

For me, happiness is the same; many people think of it in just the binary form of happy or unhappy. In truth there really is a third option, which I’ll just call ‘not unhappy.’

This is the middle ground between happy and unhappy, and unlike the edge of the coin, can be quite a broad plan of existence for many.

This is where I live much of my life, with some happy and some more unhappy. Here I sit, struggling with, as this edition calls, self-love.

I’ve never really been one for self-love, self-destruction would be a more appropriate epitaph. Irrespective of the why, which I do have a fair understanding of, it is still a struggle to begin to feel worthy within myself and from others.

I bury myself in work as a simple way to salve the conscience, or throw myself at books and learning new things.

Of course that is seen by many as worthy, but it really doesn’t nourish the soul; it doesn’t really give one a sense of purpose, or even belonging to anything less ephemeral than money or some notion of intelligence.

I read every article in this edition prior to publishing, and it gave me both a sense of dread and also of hope. Dread from the point of here I am at the age of forty five and self-love has passed me by.

But also hope; hope in the understanding that there are tricks and tips I can start to do. Hope that I can start to have self-love, and over time, be so much more accepting of what I give myself, and what others give to me.

My fervent wish is that all who read this edition, see, however small, a kernal of hope to how to really know your self worth, boosting self esteem and start to love who you are, right now.

Throughout this edition of Holistic Living Magazine you would have read articles telling you how vital it is to have self-love when looking at your health and wellbeing.

So if you do not have self-love, or you have fallen out of love with yourself, how do you find it again?

Many of us had self-love once but due to life’s circumstances, we started to fall out of love with ourselves.

Maybe it was negative self-talk that made you love yourself less, maybe it was because you felt like a failure, maybe it was because you let someone else treat you badly and tell you negative things about yourself that you started to believe.

The bottom line is, if you listen to negative self-talk about yourself you will never love yourself.

As you can see, there are many ways for us to fall out of love with ourselves and the good news is, on a positive note, there are many ways for us to develop the self-love muscle.

That is right, there is a self-love muscle. (Well it is not a physical muscle but, with regular workouts, it can be trained and grown, just like a muscle can).

At any moment, we can focus on what we don’t love about ourselves and the qualities we are lacking OR we love and appreciate where we are right now. Knowing that we can change things whenever we like.

When you proactively move towards gratitude and engage in loving actions and thoughts about yourself, you carve out the neural pathways to your heart, (or start training the self-love muscle) that will infuse you with loving feelings.

To begin with this will be a conscious effort, just like anything else you want to learn.

I am currently learning Spanish and I have done 2 lessons a day for 200 days. I am not yet proficient in Spanish but I know so much more than I did 200 days ago.

The earlier words I learned are now easy for me to recall and as I am getting more into constructing sentences, I am still not finding it easy, but I know so much more than when I started.

When I started I was telling myself, “I will never get this”, “My brain does not think this way,” “It is too difficult,” “I will never learn”, “I am too old to learn something new”.

Even though I was saying this to myself, the stubborn part of me that does not like to give up, kept me going.

Now I think back I see that I am learning, and I see the progress I have made (no matter how slow it is). I feel proud of myself and know I can do it. I need to give myself time and practise patience, rather than getting frustrated with myself as the lessons get harder.

This is the journey of life. When we are growing any muscle, it takes a routine, patience, and practise.

This was the exact process I went through when I was practising self-love. I started with the negative self-talk. I practised and did my exercises daily, and if I missed a day it would be OK because I knew I could start again tomorrow.

The more I practised, the more I started to love myself and see the great qualities in me. The more I could see the great qualities, the better I felt and I wanted to find more great qualities. I wanted to start seeing myself how my friends see me.

So how did I do this? As I mentioned before I worked with some of our experts and they gave me some exercises. I want to share with you what worked for me.

You are welcome to give them a go yourself, or you may find the advice from some of the other experts work better for you.

So one thing I did was to reach out to my friends. My coach Elaine from Avalonian Moon asked me to do this.

I was not feeling confident to ask this question, so here is what she said to me. “Go to your Facebook page and tell your friends that you have a coach and that your coach has asked you to ask this question to your friends”.

(That way, I felt better as it was a challenge that I had to do).

Now some people wrote many words and some wrote only one as I had asked. What I ended up with was a huge list of beautiful qualities that I wanted to be, that I never saw in myself.

This moved me to tears as I realised in that moment how others saw me, and I saw none of this in myself. I sat and went through the list and thought about HOW that person saw that quality in me. What did I do to or for them, for them to get this idea about me?

Then I twisted it back on itself and asked myself. If someone did that to me, how would I feel about them? This made me see myself in a completely different light. I started seeing the beautiful qualities in me. I had my beginning……

If you feel like this will work for you, I challenge you to do this right now. Tell your friends, “Sharon from Holistic Living Magazine has asked me to do this to see what results I get”.

This was the beginning of my self-love journey. I had a glimmer of hope that I could start loving myself and I was worthy of love. I then started doing one of these exercises daily.

Here Is A List Of Self-Love Exercises You Can Do:

Write Yourself Love Letters. That is right, it sounds a little lame doesn’t it? To begin with, use the words that your friends gave you in the exercise above and write about the qualities that your friends see in you. As your muscle gets more exercise you can use your own words.

Write A Gratitude List. What are you most grateful for about yourself? I know when I first did this exercise, I could not find a thing but with practise I found more and more things. I started with, “I am grateful for my ability to listen to others”. “I am grateful because I love helping others”. You get the idea. Think about the kind things you do for others. As before, once the muscle is growing, you will find more and more things to be grateful for.

•Be Aware Of Your Self-Talk. As mentioned above, once you hear your self-talk, you will begin to hear what you are saying about yourself on a daily basis. I know that if you lack self-love the self-talk will be negative. Once you catch yourself saying something negative about yourself, STOP, and reframe the sentence.

For example. If you hear yourself (either in your voice, or someone else’s voice) say; “I am stupid, I can’t do this”, change it around as say “I am smart and I can do this”, you will feel the energy in your body change and it will be more open to finding the solution for you.

Meditate. During your meditation, speak to your younger self. Ask her/him what qualities they would need in order to feel better about themselves. Find out what quality they felt they were lacking and give them that quality in a box for them to open as a gift.

Imagine that quality infusing them in the meditation. Sometimes the younger you is blocking you from feeling self-love.

There are so many ways that you can start loving yourself again and I could write so many more articles about this one topic and there are so many in this magazine already. Read through and you will find the answer that resonates with you.

Or you can of course find a therapist to help you uncover the issues that are preventing you from loving yourself as well. We have many here in this magazine and of course you can work with me. I have worked with hundreds of clients both one on one and at our events.

Think positively about your self-love journey and keep practising your self-love muscle.

Listen to the message’s from your intuition telling you to wake up and face your true self. This is the time for you to do some self-reflecting and to bring your love for yourself back home to your heart space.

It is a reminder for you to take away the self-judgment, shame, blame or guilt that you have been carrying around for years.

It is a reminder to go back to the flow of life and to allow your energy to move harmoniously in, out and all around you in constant motion.

For when this energy is still and suppressed, it becomes stagnant, slowing eating you up and causing all types of illnesses and heartache.

Like the universe, every aspect of who you are is life force energy, and it is this energy that craves for you to be in a harmonious relationship with every aspect of your being, your mind your unconscious mind, your body and your soul to integrate as one.

Becoming intimate, sensual and feeling sexy will help you deepen the connection that you have with yourself.

Being sensual is all about coming back to your feminine essence and reconnecting with yourself, from the heart space, to the creative expression of who you really are.

I’m talking about reconnecting with your true authentic self, so that you can feel the intimacy that you experience with yourself first, and then use this as the foundation to deepen your relationship with others.

Here are a few activities that I have designed for you in my book I co-authored called ‘You Can Live the Life of Your Dreams’ you can purchase the book off my website www.claireflynn.com.au and also find more information on upcoming workshops.

Release Past Sexual Trauma And Set The Foundations For Great Sexual Intimacy

Your mind is the biggest trickster of all. You came into this world from a place of spirit to experience a human existence. As a human you learn to form emotions, thoughts, feelings and beliefs that tend to get in the way of who you really are.

You even begin to believe other people’s opinions about how they perceive you as a person. It can take just one hurtful word for you to start believing that you are not loved, that you are not good enough or that you don’t belong.

These beliefs come into play during the most influential years of your life, the imprinting years, from birth to the age of seven.

The information that you receive consciously and unconsciously during this time sets the foundation for how you choose to interpret your life experiences here on earth.

It is usually not until our middle ages that these beliefs begin to resurface so that they can be addressed and faced once again.

Children are born with a healthy sexual self. They know what feels good and right and have no issues with exploring their bodies. Have you ever noticed a baby boy with an erection or a young child touch or rubbing themselves against an object or a piece of furniture?

This is a great indication that they are enjoying the feeling and stimulation of an orgasm from their genitalia. This is a natural part of growing up as a sexual being.

Although infants and children are still yet to fully develop as being sexual like adults the fact remains that we were born of sex the moment we were conceived and therefore we are sexual beings.

What so often happens during the child’s imprinting years is that children are reprimanded by a person of influence for masturbating or touching themselves and then told that their behaviour is ‘dirty’ or ‘naughty’.

The child is just doing what feels natural to him or her, now all of a sudden they have been made to feel guilt, regret and ashamed of their actions.

So the child learns to stop touching themselves or they may hide their behaviour and masturbate when no one is watching, feeling that self-pleasure is a naughty thing to do.

Can you remember as a child that someone may have said “don’t touch that, it’s dirty?” Just this line alone can disconnect you from your sexuality.

Sexual abuse, unfortunately, can also occur in the home too with ‘trusted’ adults in the childhood years and this too can distort/repress the future adult’s healthy sexual self.

Once the child has attached shame and guilt to their sexual expression, the child’s emotions and behaviour become repressed and taken into adulthood.

As now the shame-filled child has disconnected from the joy of self-pleasuring causing the neuron pathways connecting the mind and vagina/sexual organs to also disconnect.

It is not the intention of the parent/adult to create such a problem for the child. More often than not, they feel that the information that they are giving them is preparing them for ‘fitting in’ and being accepted in life.

In the case of telling the child ‘it’s dirty’ or ‘we don’t do that …’ the parent was only doing what they were taught or that they thought was best to do. As a child you attach a belief to the words that were said and take it with you as part of who you are.

You are now living a life of past conditioning and making decisions based on meanings you gave to words from someone you trusted and respected.

These decisions and meanings may not serve you now and you may need to change these beliefs to reflect a more healthy sexual self.

Action Point:-Positive Sexual Affirmations

We have talked previously about the power of positive thought and how affirmations can help. Now let’s create some positive affirmations about your own sexuality and your sexual self.

Take your pen and paper and write down ten different affirmations to transform old beliefs that you have held about yourself that you are ready to change right now and make new beliefs that will serve you, support you and allow you to be free, loving, giving and able to receive true love, intimacy and great sexual pleasure. e.g.

Now it’s your turn use the above as a starting point or create more of your own…

Self-love is a huge topic with a wealth of information written about it, with many contrasting and conflicting views.

In this article we are going to touch upon some of the core issues and I hope to offer some practical and simple advice on things you can start considering and implementing right away.

Given the vastness of the subject, let us simplify by going through each of the chakras and discussing the issues that relate to them.

Root Chakra

Perhaps the most important chakra, as it is the very foundation upon which everything else lies, the root is, sadly, one of the most problematic areas for the majority of people.

Many of us live in urban or suburban areas and spend most of our time indoors, away from the rivers, trees, birds and bees, struggling with never-ending to-do lists and little precious time to give our bodies what they need.

It’s perfectly understandable why you see so much convenience food these days. However, in order to have the energy to implement changes in our lives, we have to start with the basics: good food and physical health.

I’ll leave the details for another article, but most of you already know what to eat and if you don’t know, you can easily find out. I encourage you to get in touch with your body and discover what it truly needs in terms of nourishment.

And if your cravings steal the mic, be honest with yourself. We need to foster a loving and nurturing relationship with our bodies, just like a mother with her child. This is a great place to start.

It’s also very important to consider the environment in which we live. Many of you will have heard about the plethora of harmful chemicals in our environment today, as well as other hazards such as EMF radiation.

If you don’t know much about this, I urge you to educate yourself and start making some changes. It doesn’t have to cost very much and it needn’t take a lot of your time.

There are simple and practical things you can start doing right away, such as turning off 4G or WIFI when you don’t need it and switching to natural, organic food, personal care and cleaning products. Your body will love you for it.

Let us not forget about the little things. In Ayurveda, it is recommended that each day, we allow a little time for the simple pleasures in life.

This might be diffusing some of our favourite essential oils, listening to some uplifting music, soaking in a bath with sea and Epsom salts and a few drops of rose or lavender oil after a long day’s work.

This enables us to centre and ground ourselves, which is so beneficial. And another thing: we should not feel guilty about indulging ourselves in this way! We truly do deserve to be pampered.

In a world where we don’t get nearly as much rest as most of us would like, it’s important to take time out for ourselves.

Sacral Chakra

It may sound like a cliché, but to judge and reject others really is to judge and reject a part of ourselves and the proof of this is in the way it hurts. It never feels nice!

Sometimes we can’t stop those snap judgments and negative thoughts from arising; however, we can make an effort to become more mindful of them and to release them.

Harbouring negative feelings about others is akin to drinking poison and expecting the other to get sick.

On the other hand, it’s much easier to have a good relationship with ourselves when we step away from abusive relationships with others.

Nobody should have to suffer abuse and self-love is about being honest with ourselves and recognising that somebody simply isn’t treating us with the love and respect we deserve.

Life is too short and precious, so if you know that this applies to you, I urge you to do something about it right away. You will be amazed how quickly things can start to shift when you remove toxic people from your life.

Solar Plexus Chakra

This chakra is intimately connected with our sense of confidence and self-esteem. It is also connected to having healthy boundaries and being able to put our needs first, when necessary.

Those who struggle with assertiveness and perhaps find themselves in relationships where their needs don’t get met may end up with some resentment around this, which is understandable.

If this sounds a little like you, it’s good to recognise it and to consider taking some assertiveness training. Doreen Virtue has an excellent online course and has also written some amazing books on the topic.

It boils down to recognising that your needs are just as important as everyone else’s and we can all learn more effective ways of communicating what we need.

Heart Chakra

Having a healthy heart chakra is essential to cultivating self-love and, of course, it works both ways: loving oneself is a fantastic way to open up one’s heart chakra so that we can love others more completely and more deeply.

There are lots of things you can do to help open up and start feeling the love: walks in nature, meditation, watching the sunset, spending more time with loved ones, creative visualisation, essential oils such as jasmine, rose and lavender, bonding with pets, hugging more – especially hugging more!

And make sure you hug for at least 20 seconds so that you get all that oxytocin (the love / cuddle hormone) flowing.

Throat Chakra

Healthy self-expression and speaking one’s truth are essential to cultivating self-love. When we don’t speak our truth, not only do we generate frustration and sadness for ourselves, but we also deny others the precious gift of our perspective and wisdom.

If you struggle with this, consider joining a choir, humming and singing more and, above all, simply making an effort to speak up when you feel like it, even if it makes you a little anxious at first.

With practice, you can develop the confidence to be more expressive and your relationship with yourself and with others will improve.

Third Eye & Crown Chakras

We are living in the age of reason and other forms of intelligence, such as emotional intelligence, intuition and inner knowing are still largely undervalued.

However, if we want to have a healthy and loving relationship with ourselves, it is essential that we get in touch with that inner voice. It’s not only related to our higher chakras, but also applies to our visceral intelligence or “gut feeling”. Often in life, we encounter situations in which our heads are at odds with what we simply feel is right.

Our inner knowing is connected to an intelligence so vast and far greater than that of our rational mind and when we start paying more attention to it, amazing transformations start to occur. Are you listening to your inner voice?

Nonetheless, that is not to say that our Ego should be disregarded. I believe there is a fair amount of spiritual righteousness today with regards to the Ego. We are taught that we must suppress or disengage from our egos if we are to be spiritual, loving beings.

The problem is, when we try to cut ourselves off form our egos, they have the uncanny habit of sabotaging any other ostensibly more “spiritual” pursuits we may have. The fact is, having an Ego is a perfectly natural and human phenomenon.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons why we are here: to have the experience of separateness. So, to truly love ourselves, is to also love and nurture are fragile egos, whilst ensuring they don’t run the show, of course.

In fact, by taking care of them in a mature and loving way, we make it far more likely that they won’t sabotage our lives. Each of us has a unique character with his or her own needs.

Ultimately, I believe it is important to be truly honest with ourselves about what we really want, because if we’re not, then we are only going to manifest more dissatisfaction in the long run, and waste time trying to convince ourselves that we should be happy when we’re not.

We shouldn’t be scared of appearing too self-obsessed or too egotistical or simply weird just because we choose to express ourselves a certain way or derive pleasure from the material.

That’s also a part of why we are here. So let’s celebrate being human in all of its colour and flavour; let’s celebrate the unique character that our own ego plays in this amazing and bizarre play we are all in and perhaps that might take us one step closer to something we all want deep down, which is to be loved and accepted for who we really are, warts and all.

I want you to close the door, get yourself into the mood, turn off the iPhone, draw the shades, put your feet up, let yourself breath, then feel and imagine the words that you are about to read.

Setting the scene! You are amidst a lush tropical island resort, your own private hideaway.

You are lounging on a soft comforting bed, a soft pink floral print is luxuriously wrapped around you, your head nestles on cloud soft plumped pillows, the turban towel covers your hair, having just finished soaking in a glorious bubble scented bath.

Ever so frivolously strewn across the bed are delicate rose petals and they have spilled over the bed and onto the floor.

A bottle of champagne (or sparkling water?) sits on the night stand in a frosted ice bucket, the tinker of ice crystals as they quickly melt against one another.

Your head is feeling light and giddy, a glass gently clasped in your hand, now empty.

In the background the ever so gentle sultry voice of Barry White, floats through the air, the warm soft breeze drifts through the room and makes the delicate sheer curtains, that hang loosely over the rafters of your bed sway gently.

You’re eyes glow softly from the illuminated candles that are scattered around the room, flickering from the soft breeze.

You’re feeling relaxed, pampered and oh so good. Your chest gently rises and falls as you breathe gently, and it tunes in to the emotions you are feeling and the thoughts of the day.

Now in this moment the sensual smells from the ocean to the fragrance of abundant tropical flowers fills your nostrils heightening your senses.

Adjacent from the bed a large mirror is displayed upon the wall, something catches your eye and ever so slowly as you lift yourself up the vision of a magnificent, powerful, beautiful, attractive, loving presence fills the room it actually takes your breath away, but no it’s not Ryan Gosling, George Clooney (or whoever you were imaging) …. this loving presence is You!

Whhaaattt you say, you were envisioning someone else. Hard to picture yourself that way? Have I got your attention? Good. Guess what, this is a romance novel of a different kind.

What Is Self Love?~ Forensic Healing System~Emotions

We have strong opinions of ourselves. We can be our own worse critics. We treat our minds with our words, our bodies with actions and our soul with our beliefs. We may never be enough, have enough, look the right way.

We look in the mirror and what we see may not add up to the person we feel. The accumulation of our life comes from our experiences.

If you we were brought up in an environment where it was deficient of love, appreciation, nurturing, recognition of worth, then how you feel about yourself may be totally off balance.

Loving yourself doesn’t mean you have to be arrogant, self-centred or down right egotistical. It’s having a healthy positive self-regard and knowing how you interact with others can contribute to the effect you play in people’s lives.

Loving yourself is the most fundamental relationship you can have, as this is essential in creating positive relationships with another person.

How would you like to be treated by others? Of course you would say, with respect, appreciation, positive, support, kindness and love. Someone who has low self-worth, would not feel these words resonate with them easily.

They may be more generally critical and highlight their flaws. Self-worth or self-love is an important aspect to living a balanced life.

Not everyone has a distinctive characteristic of high self-esteem or self-love.

A person can feel inadequate in either social skills, physically, intellectually their relationships, emotionally or spiritually. It is your birthright to nurture, honour, respect, cherish and appreciate you.

Self Worth Affirmations

The following is part of the Forensic Healing System protocol we use to assist someone who may be dealing with this important aspect of themselves and their own Self Worth/Love and we establish these points.

Loving Yourself Again

You don’t quite need to create the scene as described at the start of this article, in loving yourself, (but if you do, good for you!) Though indulging in self nurturing habits such as time for yourself, massages, meditations, quite reflective time can be ideal.

We have all felt at one time or another moment’s in our lives where we have lost our sense of self-worth and love, believing that we can get it from other sources, such as material things, possessions, unfavourable habits, other people.

When in real essence it all comes from us. Find ways to fill your cup again, not trying to fill someone else’s cup. Really appreciate who you are.

If we were to love, see, value ourselves as we do others, by the effort we put in to them, then you would hold yourself in a greater light and at the highest emotional vibration. Your Own Self Love.

You are the soul being of you, if you cannot love you (even like you) how is someone else going to resonate with you? Your energy emits that frequency. You might get away with it for a while but eventually you begin to feel an emptiness within you.

Once you value and respect your own thoughts and feelings then it confirms to others how you consider them. Believe in your own powers, own potential and own goodness!

Forensic Healing Is A Proven Therapy System Superior To All Healing Modalities, Because It:

• Profiles the client, identifying negative life patterns, archetypes, emotions, belief systems, and much more
• Clears curses, negative energies, rituals, and many other spiritual issues
• Activates spontaneous healing forces in the body for immediate changes
• Removes the negative conditioning stored in the DNA or cell memory
• Uses healing secrets from ancient healing scripts combined with the most-advanced scientific methods
• Utilizes healing pathways that use physical, emotional, energetic or spiritual elements.
• Heals deeply at a soul level by targeting soul facets, fragments, DNA etc
• Places a blessing on the client at the end of a healing
• Educates and empowers the client to understand themselves so they leave with new information to progress in their life

A Pledge

Promise to treat yourself, with Love, Respect, Kindness and Honour your existence. You are here for a reason, you and only you know your path. Love yourself for all you have been, all you are and all you will become.

Like Cyndi Lauper sings “I see your true colours shining through, that’s why I Love you, so don’t be afraid to let them show your true colours true colours … are beautiful like a rainbow!”

The greatest journey we will ever undertake is the journey that leads us home to the love of ‘Self’.

We find it so much easier to love others, but to turn this beautiful energy onto, or into ourselves is never achieved for many of us.

Why is this? Is it a case of feeling unworthy of our own love, or is it difficult to give our love to ourselves because of conditioning from an early age as we were told that we were selfish or self centred if we gave ourselves to much attention.

I believe that most of us feel a deep sense of unworthiness, so from that place, giving love to ourselves is not an easy thing to do.

So often we feel like we let ourselves down, so often through feeling ‘unworthy’ we step back when given an opportunity to step forward in life, and so often our self talk is berating, belittling, filled with anger and regret towards ourselves, filled with guilt and doubt.

Is it any wonder we cannot even begin to know love for ourselves while carrying all this within us!

This is a changing world now, but the greatest change is happening within each of us as so many are willing to go on that ‘deep inner journey’ now and look at the parts of themselves that hold them back from knowing the love that is waiting to be realised.

We are in reality, beautiful ‘whole’ beings and this means that we are made up of every aspect and every emotion.

We are all of the shadow and all of the light and this plays out as aspects of us come up for acknowledgement, triggered by experiences around us in our everyday life.

As each aspect is felt by us and our awareness goes to this part asking for our love, it is in the acceptance of that part of ‘self’ that love begins to grow.

As we learn to monitor our thoughts, become aware of our feelings, and honour our emotions, we open to ourselves on a new level, and through this new awareness we know our thoughts and feelings as energy, and that energy is felt throughout our body.

So kind thoughts, loving thoughts, gentle thoughts, fill us with a lightness of being, while heavier, denser thoughts drag us down in the depths of the shadow within us.

To simplify this… we feel much better when we allow positive thoughts to move through our minds.

We learn that forgiveness and compassion for ourselves are deeply healing and bring us to a place of softness, and gentleness, while guilt and regret can hold us stuck in our life for a very long time.

We are ‘feeling’ beings, and so being fully aware of our feelings and knowing that this is our ‘inner guidance’ communicating with us, assists us hugely in moving in the right direction for our highest good in this life.

Since the earliest age we have been told by society and our peers, that we are mind driven beings, now we are realising that in truth we are heart centred beings and at our core we are beautiful beings of divine love.

So in coming to the knowing of this we are in actual fact coming home to ourselves as this energy of pure love.

‘Self Love’ is born from a deeply honouring place within. It asks us to put ourselves first and foremost in making all decisions.

It invites us to find the courage to speak and act from a place of personal truth. It encourages us to live our life with conscious awareness for ourself, others and for all life.

Self love arrives through kind and gentle thoughts and words to self, it builds upon itself through the commitment to bring into balance, the mind, body and spirit, by giving each level of us balanced focus and attention.

By committing to time out with ourselves, and filling this time by doing things that we love, we build a growing sense of deep inner connection, and as we allow ourselves to feel and reflect… we get to know ourselves from new perspectives.

Through this process we learn to let go of any feelings of guilt that may arise, as deep within there is a sense of self worth growing.

In fact, by learning to let go of any energy that no longer serves our greater good… doubt, guilt and regret being the leading three, and instead come from a place of acceptance for who we know ourselves to be right in the ‘now’ moment… we are on our way to becoming our own best friend.

I often say to my clients, “There is no one in this world that knows you like you do yourself. There is no one that is there for you like you are. There is no one else that can give you the courage, the joy, the peace, that you can give to yourself… and it is found within as you open to yourself”.

Every thought we have and every word we say…. WE HEAR OURSELVES… And as I have mentioned, thoughts and words are energy and this energy floods through us, saturating every cell within our body.

By stepping back into the ‘observer’ we start really listening to ourselves, and through this awareness we gently begin to turn our conversations around to positive communications, and if we slip up now and again as we will do until we have broken habits of a lifetime, then this is an opportunity to show ourselves kindness, by not getting angry or frustrated, but treating our mind like a child and with utmost gentleness, turning our thoughts around again to positive thoughts.

It is the very same thing for our feelings and emotions. By becoming aware of these and observing them when they arise, we are honouring ourselves. We are validating to ourselves that we do matter, matter very much indeed and every thought, feeling and emotion is worth our attention.

We often make our lives complex by fighting against what innately feels right, we fight against ourselves more often than we befriend ourselves.

That inner battle can be the toughest battle we fight in this life. Make it an intention that the fight is over, no more inner battling. From now on we are all about being loving towards ourselves.

We can make ‘learning all about ourselves’ into a ‘project’… by making it a main focus in every moment. If we remember ourselves in an honourable way, our self worth will soar, because every time we consider ourselves, put ourselves first, be understanding and forgiving, make time for ourselves, we empower ourselves, we are telling ourselves that we matter, that we are worth it!

When ‘self love’ is evident the world takes on a beauty that was not seen before. It is as if we look at life through those ‘rose coloured’ glasses we have all heard about.

Our confidence is flowing, our smile is far more available, life feels like a gift as the feeling of joy is felt often, and peace has settled within our heart… and the best and most beautiful part of all is that we are intimate with love and this most beautiful of energies radiates from within us like a shining light, which is then felt by others who become curious as to what it is about us that looks and feels so glorious. We become a ‘shining’ example of love … ‘self love’!

The key to loving yourself is found through awareness, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, and patience, all beautiful qualities of Love!

Daily life gets SO busy doesn’t it? It’s so full of stuff to do all the time! Sometimes it feels like time is being sucked out of you without you really even realising it, like a leach when it’s attached unbeknownst to you and before you realise, it’s taken loads of blood without you even noticing…Yuck!

The never ending tasks that need to be completed each day through work, family and friends, can get overwhelming sometimes and I don’t even have kids! God help me if I did have kids as I certainly would not be coping too well to get everything done right now!

In these times of being overwhelmed with so many daily tasks and generally being busy with many of these tasks being done for others, we can often quite easily forget about ourselves and our own needs in the process.

We often really need to schedule in self-time for it to ever happen at all. It can initially seem overindulgent, especially if you have others in your family, like a partner or children, but this very important self-time, goes hand in hand with today’s topic of Self-Love!

Taking time out for yourself, doing the things that you love is crucial to recharging your own batteries so that you have more to give others.

Sometimes I feel that people are unconsciously punishing themselves and feeling as though they’re failing if they need to take time out and do the things they love and enjoy.

This often comes from a very unhealthy and distorted work ethic which seems to relate the time spent doing a task (especially at work), will equate to productivity. However this is far from reality.

The longer we have to complete a task, the longer it will often take to get the task done and often the quality isn’t great at all as we often can’t concentrate for such long periods of time continuously.

When we relate this to exercise and movement, it’s often thought the longer you spend exercising, the more you get out of it and most often, this isn’t true.

Loads of research is currently showing us that shorter bouts of intense exercise is much more beneficial for fat loss, cardiovascular fitness, as well as strength. It’s all about quality of movement, rather than quantity of movement.

When we take the time out for self-love activities, like exercise, we should be mindful of giving the body what it needs. We all too often have a distorted perception of what our body needs and we often end up punishing it instead of giving it self-love!

The ‘No pain no gain’ concept is definitely taken out of context regularly. This is normally referring to discomfort rather than pain and with exercise, we do often need to get out of our comfort zone to get results. However, this doesn’t mean that we should be in physical pain to do so!

I often teach my clients and students that pain is your friend, but only if you listen to it and they need to stop immediately doing what is causing them pain, as pain is most often the body giving you a warning of danger.

But unfortunately, most people don’t listen and keep going, which is where injuries occur and exercise is no longer self-love, but a form or self-sabotage. There can be some deep underlying emotional issues related to self-sabotage, which I’m not qualified to speak about, but I do see it quite often.

I often find that I need to hold people back from themselves as there can be a tendency for people to do way too much of the things that they don’t really need to be doing for their body type or needs.

I see this pattern most commonly with athletes and with endurance sports (both pro and amateur) as the time spent doing their sport or activity never matches the time they need to unwind from all the exercise.

To explain this, I created some terms to describe this imbalance and to help people simply understand what is happening, so to help them be able to make appropriate changes and understand what it is that they’re doing to themselves and what I’m trying to do for them.

These terms that I use are Soft Tissue Budgeting™ (STB), Soft Tissue Debt™ (STD) and Soft Tissue Saving™ (STS). I’ve related them to money as people often listen better when you talk about money!

When budgeting money, we need to find the right balance between money spent and money saved from the money that we’ve earnt.

So if we spend too much we will go into debt, therefore we need to save some money to prevent this debt and by not spending too much, we’ve already saved.

The same thing happens with our body’s soft tissue; the more we exercise, the more that tension develops in the soft tissue and it gets tighter and tighter and our soft tissue becomes heavier and heavier and in turn it becomes spent and fatigued, which reduces the range of
motion and the body finds it’s harder to do the things that we want and need to do due to the fatigue.

If this happens for too long and the tension keeps building up, often the soft tissue reaches a point where it’s so tight, that inflammation occurs, hence more pain i.e. Soft Tissue Debt.

Remember if we listen, pain is our friend, but if we don’t we will most definitely get injured which is a form of forced rest as the body is saying:

So to negate the effects of tension in the soft tissue, we need to release the tension developed as we go and which I consider to be Soft Tissue SavingTM which really needs to be done each day.

The best time and cost effective way which I’ve found to perform STS is of course Foam Rolling safely and pain free on a daily basis!

Therefore, the perfect balance between the two is what I consider to be Soft Tissue Budgeting.

So for me, Foam Rolling safely and pain free using the 3­in­1 MoveBetterRollerTM is just another way of saying, Self Love.

I’d really love to help you get the most Self Love out of Foam Rolling so please contact me directly for assistance. I guarantee that your body will seriously love you for it!

Me. Me. Me. Yes, sometimes it is all about me and I do not apologise for this, as it is a very important thing to focus on.

I liken this to the advice that is given on First Aid CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) training courses when the DR ABC acronym is explained.

The D stands for Danger and it is the first thing that is considered to ascertain how the next step of any Response is taken. This is an important thing to do as one’s life may depend on it.

If there is a situation where someone is in need of some help, it is always a good idea to check out the safety aspects first. In the first instance, this is all about Self-Care; about Self-Love.

It is generally not wise to put oneself at risk to save another when there is imminent or even possible danger. This is not an easy thing to say, or even do, especially if the people we are trying to help are loved ones.

However, this advice is meant as a safety precaution and a warning about staying safe and being in a position of being most effective and useful in any given situation.

From this perspective it is very important to put ourselves first. All medical workers will tell you this. It is a big part of their training. In essence this is common sense training and advice.

And for me, this common sense also includes how I can choose to live a conscious and healthy life too. Self-Care and Self-Love is an essential part of my life.

For me, this extends out to having healthy boundaries and the ability to say yes or no in a clear and conscious way. It is all about knowing what is good for me; what is best for me.

I try to work with this sense of Self-Love every day and work as consciously and consistently as I can to have my clear and healthy boundaries in place so that I am more able to take care of myself; to love myself.

This is not an easy task and I find that I do get wounded and hurt, despite having the awareness to put this into place in my life.

Things still get to me, but maybe not quite as much as they would if I did not have this awareness and did not do the work that I do in this area.

Creating and having healthy boundaries is not just about the physical, it is also about the emotional, mental and spiritual as well. I have a saying that I use to support me in this work that I love to share with others:

When I work with my clients and students this work on boundaries is one area where I spend much time. I see, too often, people with thin, or almost non-existent, boundaries.

These people are often sick with ‘colds’ and ‘flu’ or other dis-eases or illnesses that ‘get in’ their being. When our boundaries are down (physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually) the etheric body, life force, or Chi energy (there are lots of names for this) within us has to work extra hard and is then not as strong or effective at keeping things out.

This is why good (organic) clean food, exercise, rest, meditation, less stress and good sleep are essential. It helps to give us good healthy boundaries.

I take my health and wellbeing and my personal boundaries seriously and I certainly do not entertain people’s behaviour and nonsense if they are rude or obnoxious or try to coerce or bully me. I do not tolerate this very easily.

As I expressed previously, “If it is not invited, it is not allowed in”. And because I love synchronicity, I will share this story with you of what happened today. (I knew that there was a good reason for getting this article in at the last moment!).

A few months ago I was having problems with my left knee. It got inflamed and I was in a lot of pain, so I went along to a local doctor and got a referral for some X-rays and an MRI.

I wanted to know what was happening and take some measures to stop the pain and fix whatever needed fixing. All in the name of Self-Care and Self-Love!

Today, two months later, I went to see a knee specialist for his ‘expert’ opinion and advice. After waiting for 50 minutes, I finally went into his consulting room. He never apologised for being late and started to speak to me in a very condescending and rude manner.

He displayed very bad listening skills and kept interrupting me, even after asking me direct questions that required an answer. I stayed quiet for a few minutes, kept breathing and thought that it would pass, but eventually I could take no more.

He was basically, being a very rude man and I was not willing to be treated that way any longer. I thought I did well to last for five minutes! He was lucky that it was me that he was treating this way. Had it been my wife … Grrrrr …

After him examining my knee, and then him trying to ascertain where the X-rays and MRI’s were, which I had tried to explain several times were attached in a new ‘MyFilmBag’ folder that the X-ray department gave me to use, he asked me to leave the room with the words “Get out and I’ll call you back in when I’m done!” – That was the last straw for me.

I took a big breath, did a U turn and walked straight back in to his room and told him that I found his manner rude, obnoxious, unprofessional and unacceptable and that I did not want to work with him and that I was terminating the appointment.

Furthermore, I told him I would not be paying for the appointment.

At the reception desk, I also told the receptionist that I had terminated the appointment and that I would not be paying. She looked shocked. She then asked me for my Medicare card (Australian Government medical rebate card) so that she could at least Bulk Bill (pay a Government standard payment to the Doctor).

I said no, I would not give it to her as he did not deserve to be paid. She walked into his office to check on what she should do and came out and said “No charge”. There was a look of even deeper shock on her face as she said this.

I get a sense that no one had ever stood up to this man before. As I said earlier, I do not do rudeness or bullies!

This was a great lesson in Self-Care; of Self-Love and putting up my strong boundary. I do not know if this was his usual way of working with patients; his general modus operandi, but I was not going to be subject to it, not today, not any day.

So yes, today was about me. Me. Me. Me. And I am glad that I had this experience, especially as it fitted in well with the timing of writing this article.

I forgot to mention that my wonderful wife Arleen was with me during this experience, and, to her credit, she kept a very straight face through it all.

She found it all rather amusing and said that she sensed it would not bode well for the doctor the moment that he started to speak to me in that way.

Knowing when to speak or act in a place of self-preservation, of Self-Love, is important. If we do not do so, then from a deeper energetic and even psychological perspective, we contract and become less than we truly are.

This is not always easy, but it is in the practice that we learn how to do this more and more effectively. If we are to truly love ourselves and become more fully responsible for our own lives in a more empowered way, then these things have to become part of our daily life.

To not speak or act with the purpose of Self-Love is the opposite, which in its fullness is Self-Hatred. This is where we can learn that we have a choice. We can choose to be more loving and kind to ourselves or not.

We can choose to speak up for ourselves or not. Each choice that we make has a consequence of some kind. I know that the consequences of speaking up today empowered me and helped me to love myself a little bit more.

Had I not spoken I would have brooded over it, perhaps for days or even weeks, and then would have felt that I had let myself down, and this article would certainly have been written in a very different way.

So Self-Love, in its truest form, is not about being selfish, arrogant or self-centred, it is about empowering oneself. When we are more empowered, we can then also help others to be more empowered too. We do this by observing our actions.

My last thoughts are, I wonder what sort of afternoon the doctor had and how he treated his next patients. The waiting room was quite full and they certainly heard the conversation I had with the receptionist. All I can do is to send him my blessings.

What is self-love? What does it look like? Do you love yourself? Are the motivations to self-love pure? Or is it just seated in the ego? This whole movement fascinates me because the true Self, is Love!

Instead of loving the Self, we need to open up to let the Self love us. The Self doesn’t need consideration or need to manifest anything it is already the magnificence of creation.

Last year I facilitated a retreat in Bali, the volcano erupted and my flights along with the flights of the participants were cancelled. I managed to get on another flight but no-one was coming, the whole thing was going to be a disaster, a failure.

I was in a state, worried, catastrophising, my pride being hurt, I was taking the whole situation totally personally, like a volcano erupting has anything to do with me?

“Why is this happening to me!”. My spiritual teacher was watching me, and I knew he was, I was just trying to hold myself together and not collapse into a crying heap on the ground. He approached me and said “what’s happening with you?

Trying to hold back the tears I said “ I am just trying to love myself through this ” (yes, I need to love myself in this moment of perceived failure).

His response was, “you don’t love yourself enough? I said No, I don’t think so or this would not be happening, he said, hmmmmm maybe you love yourself too much!

This stuck with me and I often think of it when I am getting upset or taking some thing or situation too personally, when I think I deserve better or want something different.

Over many years I have found myself in deep pain around my life; not having the things that I want, life not looking how I want and not being who I want. I have been a hopeless mess, feeling I must be the lowest person on the planet.

Then I got hold of all that self-love business and went through the stage of telling myself that I am worth it, and I deserve, and that the childhood trauma’s were not karmic but just a mistake and you didn’t ask for that, you didn’t deserve that blah blah blah.

I continued on with this for a long time, trying to manifest and attract until it nearly sent me crazy, because of course I still didn’t love myself enough to get what I want.

Then having enough of it all one day I just said to myself ‘I am nothing’ I am nothing!!! I am a speck of stardust on the assh#%e of the universe, why do you think you should have all this and that, look around be grateful.

This is not I am nothing in a self degenerative sense but just common sense, there is 7 billion people on this very small planet and I am just one, really I am not much in the scheme of things, we are actually nothing!

This helped me immensely, helped me move through a massive “what about me” stage.

I just say “I am nothing” and suddenly all this weight is lifted and I am free to enjoy. When you are nothing everything is a gift!!

When you are nothing you become grateful for just being able to experience seeing a tree, feeling the sun, smelling the breeze, witnessing a flower, or doing your duties.

We build ourselves up to be somebody, something and then we feel we deserve something or somebody… its just our personality and then it gets angry, greedy & envious because it feels it deserves….

And it feels ripped off, dismissed and embarrassed when it does not get what it wants. If you listen to the new age BS, “If you just love yourself!!! You will get what you want” or be patient, everything comes in divine timing…. Like I did.

This is the wrong direction if you are after realisation, true happiness or true love of self!

If you actually truly arrive at Self Love you realise the “be patient, everything comes in divine timing” doesn’t mean be patient because soon you will get everything you want, it actually means be patient because a little further down this path of realisation and you will let go of all the things you want, which will allow for something else.

This is a bitter/sweet realisation, well it was for me anyway… there I was being patient just knowing that soon everything was going to come together just the way I wanted it….. hehehe…. not so.

When you are No thing or No body you allow just the pure love to be, to just love what is, to be in awe of nature and be so grateful that even me, a tiny speck of stardust can experience so much!

Even if that experience is perceived good or bad or average. That is why the great sages of humanity say to ‘slow down’, “smell the roses” and just “realise what already is” the magnificence of creation; nature, trees, ocean, air, life, your body, your feelings, your mind, your relationships.

As with everything the trick is in the paradox, when you drop everything and just be nothing, you allow yourself to become everything at the same time.

To have the humility to let go of your pride, your personality, your profession, your desires and just be nothing, you are no longer narrow in your ambitions, bound to an identity, or driven by desires. You expand and can allow everything in.

Maybe even receive the Grace of God, to see and feel everything as it truly is.

To grow forward and arrive at authentic Self Love, we must stop behaving like spoilt brats that just want more, more, more… We live in a time on planet Earth where conveniences, comforts, luxuries & prosperity is unprecedented!

We have so much, but we want more and we feel we deserve more, maybe it’s because we don’t love ourselves enough yet? All these comforts, luxuries, materialism are depleting the most loving of all, our Mother Earth.

Our radical pace of consumption is out of control and our appetite for more seems to be fuelled by deserving more, or is it greed, envy, gluttony, laziness & pride.

People have become very exclusive in who they are and what they want, they feel they deserve and deserve more than the other, despite what it causes.

People want to be on top looking down, be the king of the castle! People are becoming increasingly separate from their family, neighbours and community and their own hearts and true nature.

Unfortunately we don’t include each other, we exclude each other. On every level of society there is exclusiveness e.g. this is for me, but not for you. What’s more this exclusiveness is sold to us through propaganda as a good thing and something to aspire too!

So is Pride and Envy. People were much happier and self-loving and inclusive when they had less material things, more time, all lived together and shared more with their family & community.

To grow up, is to be LOVE, to be LOVE is to consider others first, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, to help people for no other reason than, it’s the right thing to do, to grow up is to be LOVE.

To be childish is to be self-hating; this is a very immature state. To be actively trying to love yourself is to be juvenile; like rebelling against the true self, trying to control everything. To just be LOVE is to be mature.

A stage I hope we all get too, so that we can model that to the young.

“You have got to love yourself, before you can love anyone else” is a statement of untruth, it is a ridiculous statement, because the other is just an aspect of yourself!!

On the contrary if you learn to love the other, you come to love yourself, that is actually the easiest way, the way it is planned so we spread the love, not keep it for ourselves.

When you can accept in another their faults (perceived by you) then you can accept that fault, which is hiding from you, in your own nature.

To truly arrive at self love is to also accept and love the darker aspects of yourself and God makes it very easy, because its so easy to see the your darkness in everyone else!

If you can forgive and give to someone whom you think or feel does not deserve it, then of course you demonstrate to yourself that you also deserve Love, even though you are flawed and not perfect.

It is seeing yourself in others that creates Self Love, that is the key! And actually allows you to let love flow through you. Let the Self love You.

We are trying to love ourselves, instead of letting the true Self love us, all of us.

The issue is; we are conditional with our love, we love our children but not another’s children, we love do gooders and we do not love rascals, our love is conditional. We love ourselves and not the other.

LOVE is not conditional just as GOD or the SUN does not discriminate, LOVE does not discriminate. It is our personality that discriminates and our personality is prejudiced & conditioned and is really only out for itself, parading around as self love!!

This kind of self-serving love can be just a higher, more virtuous way, or if you like a more slippery way that our ego serves itself. The only thing we should be discriminating about is OUR own personality; how we behave, think, react & give.

If we believe in reincarnation or that we have had other lives, do you think they have all been saintly? Perhaps you have been involved in violence, abuse, war, greed, deceit and many wrong doings in past lives.

Perhaps the reason we can’t stand a greedy person, or an abusive person or violent person is because we once lived like that and have not accepted or forgiven ourselves for that yet… Thus the reason WE are so triggered by it? Because it’s US.

Or better still, in this life we may have been a perceived or real victim of abuse, violence or greed, like I have been. Could it be a gift of Self Love in disguise?

Experiencing the victim side is our opportunity to forgive our perpetrators, which may represent ourselves of the past, in order to arrive at self forgiveness & Self Love. Is this how the true Self is loving us?!! This is big concept. * Read this paragraph again.

To be Holy is to become whole, to love all parts good and bad, to integrate the dark is to forgive those around us with qualities we label as dark.

If we are all one, as often people say, well that dark must be a part of us, even the worst kinds of atrocities is part of you & me, can we accept that? Can you love that? An Enlightened one has integrated the darkside.

Through my own experience I have remembered that a Woman is Love she is a channel for the divine, her source of giving does not come from her, it comes from God, Source, The Universe, the Mother whatever you want to call it.

This source of love is not ever depletable or exhaustible. It is only when we feel we (the little I – a.k.a the one that is trying to love itself) is giving something that should be ours like my time, my money & my love that we come to resent and feel depleted and exhausted.

I have realised that for Women our biggest responsibility is to embody our ability to be the vessel for the divine that is our true nature; we are vessels and hold the energy of the divine that is why we carry the babies and our symbol the chalice.

This is true if you are a mother or not (I am regretfully not a mother) however I have received this knowledge from my own body. If you are in the body of a woman this is your gift.

This is not to say that Men are not vessels for the divine, just that the nature of woman is predisposed to Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of devotion.

When the woman is connected to the divine, she just gives, she gives to the husband, the children, the community; neighbours, colleagues & friends at large, she includes and does not discriminate. She is selfless, not worthless; she is selfless because she knows her worth!

She feels the LOVE in her and she gives it absolutely unconditionally to all. She is selfless because she is an instrument of the Divine, this is the most worthy purpose possible.

I feel the remembering of this truth, which resides in our bodies, must happen to evolve this planet by LOVE, by including of all within ourselves. Self-Love is an internal experience of realisation that expands out to be inclusive of all.

It has nothing to do with what life looks like on the outside. This truth is a great power and blessing.

I feel it is the ultimate responsibility, power & purpose of all women to connect to the divine, heal her own heart and demonstrate true Love from Self to family and community through inclusion & selflessness.

Then she will be happy and totally bursting with LOVE from SELF.

I am not completely living this truth yet, but having arrived thus far to the point I am now I feel this to be absolutely my truth and where I am heading.

After going though a self-loving journey, which on closer investigation was actually seated in the ego and a case of pride, envy & loving myself too much.

Can we let the Self love us?

Deep down you are searching for your original state of unconditional love. That’s where you came from and that’s where you shall return unless you blow it. The only way you could blow it is to not love yourself.

People ask me all the time “Why can’t I love myself?” What about me is so defective that I cannot let go of the past and move on to a happy life?”. What are the components of unconditional love?

By becoming human you temporarily abandoned your original state. You are here on earth to learn lessons. Some are very painful so we tend to fall back on our ego mind’s version of what will make us happy.

The ego mind is a bottomless pit. It tells you this or that will make you happy. Once you achieve it there is another goal and another. This part of us is ruthless. It often justifies taking action that hurts others. It wants to be right and make others wrong.

Over time you will feel guilty. You do not feel good about yourself. Your ego mind says simply “let it go.” The body-mind holds onto to the pain of this guilt until you honestly deal with it.

You might say you hold yourself accountable because you have a conscience. When you admit to yourself that you do not feel good about things you’ve done in the past you then begin the important journey of Self- Forgiveness.

The most thorough process to moving beyond this stage is to feel authentic remorse and make amends with people when ever possible. Everyone has a part in a falling out.

A client of mine George from Melbourne Australia married the woman of his dreams. It slipped his mind to tell her he was seriously addicted to pornography.

He had a secure high salaried corporate position. He quit the job for a start up business without her blessing. The business did not take off even though George has a brilliant mind and a brilliant service. His wife left him.

He eventually realized he had been living a lie and he felt very guilty. This began his journey to self – forgiveness. We focused on reconciling the hidden cause of his addiction and to make amends with his former wife.

Almost immediately his business picked up and job offers came rolling in. Life supports those who live in truth. Self –forgiveness is the first step to unconditional love.

If you find yourself constantly and consistently working on yourself year after year without progressing in life, then you can be sure you do not accept yourself at a very deep level.

The foundational premise of all healing is Self – Acceptance.

If makes no difference whether you see a psychologist or an alternative energetic healer or a yoga & meditation teacher. Their first job is to help you see the truth of where you really are in life. Then to accept that truth as the real you.

When you learn to develop self acceptance, you can be at peace with yourself and your life will begin to flow. It is such a relief to be in touch with the “authentic you” instead of your idolized image of yourself.

This authentic reality becomes your new “inner ground” in which to plant new seeds of growth. Remember anything in life that is not build on truth will eventually fall apart. This means all; your relationships, your health, your spiritual connection and your business.

Naturally there is room for conflict here that must be rectified. You may believe that you do accept yourself at the personality level but unconsciously you reject parts of you.

This is the most common form of self deception in the entire personal development movement. Thinking one thing but deep down feeling another. This inner conflict stops you in your tracks. Your early childhood conditioning goes into effect in a crisis or under lots of stress.

Thank the Lord there is a way out. If you are on a spiritual quest then Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” and Michael Singer’s “The Untethered Soul” clearly demonstrate the need to observe the mind in a quiet state.

If you prefer a scientific approach then Joe Dispensa’s “The Power of Observation” is clearly saying the same thing regarding neuroplasticity and the quantum world which is in constant interplay with our reality.

If you also would appreciate the energetic solution for the body-mind and its blockages of meridian chi, then Roger Callahan’s EFT / Tapping will give you a solid and quick balance to those negative emotions and beliefs that prevent complete self-acceptance.

Believe it or not self – love is the most challenging component of the three. I saved the best for last. This is about creating a positive intention to love yourself every minute of everyday and simultaneously digging out the negative intention buried within.

Both paths will take you into the freedom to love yourself and life efficiently and effectively and way faster than either one alone.

The challenge here is that we were all brought up within a dualistic plane of right and wrong, good and bad, loveable behavior and un-loveable behavior. We experienced conditional love from very early on in our lives.

Therefore, whenever we proclaim how loveable and worthy we are – directly underneath is our doubts and fears to the contrary.

Accordingly, the only way to claim this brilliant self- love beyond the split is through divine intervention. It means to surrender to your; inner person, higher self, spirit, soul or the love of the creator. Whatever term works best is really whatever you have most faith, trust or belief in.

In this instance its time to make a list of your positive qualities and your negative qualities and begin to love, forgive and accept them all. Until you can love your negativity; character flaws and shadow material with equal weight and dignity along with all your beautiful qualities, then you can never attain the desired state of unconditional love.

This is the life that you deserve. As human beings we will never be perfect. But we can however, strive to live with ultimate peace and creative fulfilment. We simply cannot achieve this without love. Good Luck on your journey.

More and more people we encounter today are depressed. They sometimes do not even know why. In reality the society we live in today keeps everyone busy in the matrix, and they forget to nurture themselves by doing things they love.

Self-love is important to revitalize our lives and be in a state of appreciation for oneself. This is enhanced daily through taking responsibility and doing things they love and excite them.

Begin your journey of this ongoing process with a few of these ideas below.

Emotional Self-Love

Emotions trigger a cascade of biochemical changes in the body that affect the way the body functions and how we feel. Our endocrine and nervous systems constantly communicate with the immune system via hormones and neuropeptides.

Emotions can induce health or illness and, in turn our state of health can induce emotions. Cortisol is the hormone that is released in a stressful state along with adrenaline. It plays an important part of the “fight or flight” response, helping prepare the body for emergency action.

Excessive cortisol over a prolonged period can contribute to deplete the adrenal glands and predispose one to chronic fatigue, thyroid suppression, hypertension, blood sugar problems, abdominal fat, increased feeling of anxiety, and suppress production of serotonin making one feel anxious and depressed.

Sapolsky R. M., (2004) notes in his book ‘Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers’ that the body cannot interpret what is an actual threat from imagined.

The body responds with cortisol and other complex biochemical stress reactions in a similar manner for a perceived or real danger or stressful event or actually experiencing the event. This is important to consider when choosing thoughts.

Umberson D. and Montez J.K., (2011), studies found ‘poor quality of social ties’ adversely affect immunity, physical and mental health. Banish people who are toxic in your life.

The toxic relationships and/or people in your life will consume your time, your resources, and your sense of well-being. Remove these toxic relationships and people from your life you have every right to do this, regardless of who they are in your life.

No one has the right to bring negativity into your environment, cause you to feel hurt or fear of any kind, make you feel bad about who you are, or try to coerce you to live the life they think is best for you.

Laughing reduces the risk of heart disease. Laughing expands the inner walls of the arteries which increase the ability of blood to flow around the body, and, this positive effect lasts for up to 45 minutes after the laughter has stopped.

Study by Dunbar R.I.M. et. al. (2011) concluded that social laughter elevates pain thresholds. A smile costs nothing but enriches those who receive it.

Remind yourself what you like doing and start doing it. Explore what you love and this will bring unexpected joy back into your reality. You could start by writing down your passions. Notice things that give pleasures as you go through your day.

When working well, one will feel sleepy at bed time. Try not to ignore this by staying up, as this is a window of opportunity for sleep. Avoid bright screens within 1-2 hours of bedtime. The blue light emitted by the phone, tablet, computer, or TV is especially disruptive to sleep.

It allows one to connect with our true selves. All of the research points to the fact that the closer we are to nature, the happier we feel. Consider taking a walk in nature. Join a walking or hiking group.

Clothes have a way of reflecting mood and attitude. When you look good, you feel good. Find the proper clothes for your body type.

Love yourself enough to pamper yourself with the things that make you feel good or make your life a little easier. Have a spa day. Get a massage. Buy flowers. Spend an afternoon reading a book. Enjoy High Tea.

Watch the sunset. Get away for the weekend for a mini adventure. When you make yourself a priority you boost your self-esteem.

Psychological Self-Love

A hobby can be a real life changer it supports psychological well-being. Hobbies excite people to learn new skills, make new friends and live more fulfilled lives.

A hobby offers the time and space to relax, which is good for one’s health and wellbeing and bring us pleasure and delight. Hobbies encourage one to take a break. Greater fitness can be developed through active hobbies.

Those who feel overwhelmed at a job, for example, can benefit from hobbies because they provide an outlet for stress and something to look forward to after a hard day or week at a stressful job.

Even if you currently do not have a hobby, consider developing one. Consider taking up a hobby such as painting, drawing, and pottery, playing the piano, guitar, photography, gardening and writing.

When you are living in the present, you are not worrying about the future or thinking about the past. When you live in the present, you are living where life is happening. The past and future are illusions, they don’t exist.

Live in the present. Enjoy whatever you’re doing at the present moment.

Spiritual Self-Love

Explore your spirituality it will also take you on a journey to learning things about yourself and those new thoughts, feelings, passions, and raw emotions will make you appreciate yourself for being authentically you. This involves having a sense of perspective beyond the day-to-day of life.

Conclusion

Participate in self-love each day and become more alive and rich in experience in your journey. Inundate your life with fun and self-love activities.

Take time to recharge and energize and remember to do all the things you love. Be gentle and kind with yourself. Enjoy the journey of life.

I read a quote once that said “whenever you feel sad remember there are billions of cells inside your body and all they care about is YOU”. The essence of that statement is perhaps what we could all do with a bit more of… MORE SELF LOVE.

Every one of us has innate mechanisms built into our body there simply to ensure we physically survive.

We also have a conscious desire deep within to thrive in life, to experience more and be unbound by limitation – but how many of us can say we truly thrive in every aspect of our life? Do you want to?

These days the law of attraction is commonly known (simply summarized: what we focus on gets bigger), however, what most people are unaware of is the more we consciously “want” something in life, or focus on it, the “wanting” itself actualizes, ironically leaving us with less.

A better option is to magnify the positive elements of what we do have. As what we experience inside is reflected back to us by the outside world.

Can you imagine what could manifest in our outer world from the sum total of magnified self-love from all of our inner worlds combined?

The majority of our physical survival is pretty much automatic, (we don’t consciously try to make our heart beat, distribute oxygen or regenerate our own tissues etc. it just happens)

This “thriv-ival” or the thrive element within us however, may well depend on something more elusive (yet simple); our own ability to consciously practice love toward ourselves aka self-love.

This itself however, can be a little challenging when the main driver of our conscious mind is hidden from us.

Have you heard the term “unconscious mind”? Our unconscious mind is the storehouse of absolutely everything, every perception, thought, emotional pattern, experience, belief, memory and random piece of information we have come across during our life.

What is pertinent here is within all that data the unconscious mind also contains the core subjective maps of reality.

We created this during childhood about how to function in the world itself.

Due to the non-existent guide book at our birth, the “How to parent perfectly 100% of the time guide” combined with the natural developmental phases we go through as we are growing, unfortunately, these maps are usually based in fear, fear of abandonment, rejection, loss, betrayal, humiliation, not the most ideal foundation for creating a loving reality in which to thrive.

Recent scientific research has found the conscious mind processes at 40 bits per second and the unconscious mind at 40 million bits of data per second, meaning the unconscious mind is truly responsible for shaping our life and therefore key in changing it also.

In summary: To have more of anything it must come from the inside first.

Our body is innately programmed to survive, part of us is drawn to expand by thriving in what we love and every one of us has an incredibly sophisticated data processing instrument within us – the brain (conscious/unconscious) which is the key player in the way we experience the World.

So, what is self-love? The simplest way to describe it would be “the action of loving behaviours toward ourselves to expand the appreciation of SELF”.

So if we are wanting to create MORE self-love, we have two steps to follow.

First being to consciously employ techniques to expand our own present experience of self-love e.g. manifest more by focusing on what we love about ourselves and secondly reprogram the driving force of the brain – our unconscious mind.

Quiz – How Much More Self Love Can You Have?

If you ticked any of the above, get excited as you have an opportunity to have more inner happiness! The more ticks the more self-appreciation is available for you to experience!

How Can I Get More Self Love?

Step 1: Conscious Reprogramming

Self-love is not a thing you can get from anyone or anywhere, it is connected to your appreciation of who you are and expands by any action you take which supports this appreciation of yourself.

The exciting thing about that is YOU are totally in control of how much you have and how often you “get” it!

Also, by valuing and internally recognizing personal achievement. When our sense of self-appreciation grows an expansion of our sense of self-love occurs simultaneously.

Again, back to the concept of: “what we focus on gets bigger” any seed of celebrated personal achievement will grow and in this way bring more success into your life which will again multiply the things you can appreciate yourself for!

Another hurdle for us is the misunderstanding of personal failure. Failure is part of being human and forgiving yourself is a huge part of self-acceptance/appreciation.

If there is any part of you which is stuck in the past in regret, anger, self-punishment, guilt or shame (or any negative state) it will not be possible for you to experience self-love fully as perpetuating these types of emotions internally will diminish you.

All failures serve as our teachers, our stepping stones to success. Big mistakes can equate to big lessons as we take responsibility and learn from them we can move forward with the gift of inner growth. Love and accept your failures as the pavement to your successes.

Step 2: Accelerate Change & Re-Program Your Unconscious

Step one will help you tremendously in the creation of more self-love. To comprehensively transform yourself and to fast track this process you can actually work directly inside the realm of your unconscious.

Due to the complexity of this elusive aspect of our Being, the best way to start exploring your own unconscious mind is with the assistance of a practitioner or teacher qualified and skilled in this arena.

Luckily there are many brilliant natural therapies available today which all have specialized tools to access and work with the unconscious mind: Kinesiology, Hypnotherapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Meditation, Theta Healing, Psychodynamic Therapy, Forensic Healing, Yoga are just a few.

So research online, or here inside the Global Healing Exchange and find a therapy and Practitioner which you resonate with to get started.

I have studied and worked with many modalities specializing in the machinations of the unconscious for over 15 years.

Kinesiology is one of my favourites because it is tailored to meet your specific needs and with the basis being muscle testing, we can attain instantaneous physical feedback giving us an incredibly efficient and very effective way to work with the body/mind/spirit matrix as it is all inter-related.

Because our brain is hardwired to our body through the muscle testing we can easily access the exact why’s, when’s, how’s and where’s of your issues be it conscious or unconscious and exactly what is needed to transform these allowing us to get results fast!

I personally have witnessed the transformation and empowerment achieved by thousands of my own clients and hundreds of students spanning the globe. Based on this, I know anyone can transform their life including YOU.

I challenge you to make it a priority to be kinder to yourself and find a natural therapist to work with your own unconscious mindscape so you become more peaceful within and live a life that then reflects this back to you.

Remember, by transmuting our internal experiences, we transform the reflection we see in our outer world. What kind of world would you like to create? You have the power to make that happen!

Pregnancy and birth is a sacred spiritual journey and its inherently receptive nature is an opportunity for mother’s to tune in and receive love from a huge field of energy.

This field of energy flows all the way from source through the mother’s very own soul light essence, and encompasses the unconditional loving energy from the father as well as the unique and loving energy signature of their baby that is bonded with them in body mind and spirit.

In our modern society, there is not enough attention or acknowledgement given to the transformative nature of pregnancy and childbirth.

By embracing pregnancy as a rite of passage, a wonderful space is created for the mother to move into deeper levels of self-care, self-love and conscious connection with her growing baby.

Here are 5 important self love tips you can follow to co-create care, self-love and a sacred connection with yourself and your baby during your pregnancy.

Self Love Tips:

1. Find Your Birth Team & Like Minded Tribe

Mothers have been historically surrounded and nurtured by elders, sisters and midwives. The traditional role of members of a community or birth tribe has been to both support and help navigate a woman’s passage into motherhood.

It is vitally important from a self-loving perspective to research and interview carefully the people who are going to be a part of your pregnancy and birth journey.

Birth doesn’t just happen to you, it is a co-creative experience and whilst all women innately know how to give birth, the state of modern maternity care necessitates clear discernment on behalf of couples to choose the care providers who are in alignment with their vision for birth and can therefore support them in a loving and caring manner.

Continuity of care from a known midwife, or a small group of midwives for example enables women to develop a relationship with their care providers.

Women who have the same midwife caring for them during their pregnancy, labour, birth and post birth have the best opportunity to build a trusting relationship which increases their confidence and the outcomes for them and their babies.

Engaging a doula to support you for your birth and in the postpartum period is the ultimate self-loving act; doula is a Greek word that literally means “woman’s servant.” A wonderful description I read on pinterest recently describes a doula’s role perfectly;

“The act of educating, loving, respecting, listening, embracing, advocating for and assisting a woman prenatally during labour, childbirth and beyond.” Hire a doula!!!

Finally, finding a tribe of like-minded friends and practitioners even before you start your family will provide you with a community of support and helpful resources to ease the family transition into parenthood.

Social media is definitely a great way to connect with like minded mother’s, but it is important to establish in person friendships in your local area, you will appreciate catching up for tea, attending playgroups and exchanging information as you feed and cuddle your new babies.

2. Clear Past Wounding & Support Yourself Energetically In Pregnancy

The sexual nature of pregnancy can catalyse some of our most significant initiations into self-love.

Conceiving and carrying a baby is a reflective journey that can invariably trigger past unresolved trauma’s involving certain sexual shadows including violation guilt and shame.

If your soul has been wounded or repressed as a little girl, you may find yourself participating unconsciously in unwanted and even harmful transgenerational patterns.

During pregnancy and even at the time of birth, struggling to process from past traumas can severely impact on a mother’s capacity to be truly self-loving and practice consistent self-care.

It can also contribute to a lack of confidence in their ability to give birth, become a competent parent and can also make them more susceptible to postpartum depression.

Finding acceptance and forgiveness for past hurts gives us back to ourselves and can open the doorway for mother’s to access their true divine nature and assist them to come into peace and joyfulness in readiness for mothering.

By embracing and affirming the safety of your inner child you will also become more capable of being a loving and compassionate mother.

Mother’s who have had a history involving an unhealthy relationship with food and their body image can also struggle with the increased demand for food during pregnancy and their ever-expanding body.

These mamas need extra support and guidance on how to learn to love their pregnant body, keeping a journal and engaging in art therapy is a great way for them to adapt and express themselves in relation to their changing shape.

Useful therapies for clearing traumas include Somatic Bodywork, Holistic Kinesiology, EFT, Ho’oponopono, Craniosacral therapy, Transpersonal counselling, Art therapy, Dance therapy.

Maintaining a loving heart connection with your partner and your baby during pregnancy can also be supported through regular Reiki treatments or by guided sessions with an energetic healer.

3. Engage In Loving & Consistent Self-Care Practices

There is no better time to nurture and treat yourself than when you are pregnant!!!

Maintain a healthy diet – Eating healthy high vibrational foods and staying hydrated with pure clean water during pregnancy assists you to feel good and provides the essential nutrients to support your growing baby.

See a naturopath throughout your pregnancy to assist you to keep up with the needs of your growing baby.

Meditation – can help you to feel calm and grounded as well as fostering a deep connection to your baby in your womb.

Massage – prenatal massage has so many physiological and emotional benefits for you and your baby, schedule a regular treatment during your pregnancy.

Yoga and exercise – Prenatal yoga is a wonderful way to slow the pace down in your pregnancy, learn to connect with your baby through movement and also to learn some specific postures that can assist you to birth comfortably.

Gentle exercise during pregnancy such as walking and swimming can help improve your physical and mental wellbeing and supports your body to be in great condition for birthing.

Bodywork – The enormity of the physical task of growing another human takes a huge toll on a woman’s body and so it is imperative that you support your developing body with consistent chiropractic or osteopathic care.

Take regular warm baths – with your favourite pregnancy safe essential oils.

4. Nurture Your Connection With Your Partner, Yourself & Your Baby
Embrace your pregnancy as a spiritual journey for your whole family, spend time with your partner to celebrate and reflect on your transition into parenting. Consciously create your vision and goals for a positive pregnancy and birth together.

Finally do yourself the biggest favour by enrolling in a quality independent childbirth education program such as the Hypnobirthing Australia program.

The integral role of your partner during pregnancy and birth will be encouraged and honoured and you will both be empowered with tools, techniques and evidence-based information to make informed choices and create sacred birth experiences.

5. Trust In Your Body, Your Baby & Your Ability To Give Birth

Embody the knowing that you were BORN TO BIRTH as nature intended. Just as your baby innately knows how to develop within the womb, your body also knows how to give birth with grace and ease.

Birthing is the ultimate unfolding into surrender, a miraculous, natural and divine rite of female passage.

So love yourself, your pregnancy, your body, your baby and your birth however it unfolds for you are weaving a magical story together.

Most of all surrender deeply into the infinite wellspring of love that is becoming a mother, a family and meeting your baby for the very first time!!!

I worked through the question of self-love many times in my journey to become a wellness coach, but it emerged as an issue for me again in a big way when I hit menopause a couple of years ago.

Among other things I faced a moment of truth about the fact that it’s simply not possible to outrun a lack of self-love indefinitely, and when the chips were down with my hormones all over the place.

I realised that I needed to get things into perspective and reign in some of the self imposed negativity that had crept back into my life.

The first thing I did to get back on track was to ask myself what conditions I needed to have in place, for self-love to become my default setting again. The answer to that question included the following –

The next thing I did was carry out an exercise that I regularly give to my clients to help them flush out any attitudes and habits that are likely to erode their wellbeing in general and their self-love in particular.

I offer you a condensed version of this exercise to keep handy whenever you feel like your own self-love is waning. The exercise includes answering the following questions;

And lastly, I re-established a set of rituals that have helped me to get emotionally healthy in the past that for one reason or other had been gradually watered down over time.

Again I’m sharing this with you in the interest of helping you to maintain a level of self-love that works best for you. The set of rituals involves the following four parts.

Three Relaxing Minutes:

Three Grounding Minutes:

Three Focused Minutes:

Daylong Mindfulness:

Whenever you notice negative thoughts coming up throughout the day, make a point of noticing how and where you feel this in your body, and ask yourself:

These are deceptively simple yet very powerful exercises that I really urge you to put the time in to setting up a routine around. This will slowly but surely change your life and make an abundant flow of self-love much more available to you.

Self-care is important in ensuring that we live the healthiest life possible, and self-care starts with intuition.

Intuition is an instinctive response that comes without any logical or rational thinking behind it. It is that feeling that you get when you instinctively ‘know’.

We are all born with intuition, but some people choose to ignore this in favour of ‘rational’ or ‘logical’ thinking.

It is never too late to embrace your intuition and the sooner we learn to develop and nurture our intuitive insight, the more in-tune with our bodies we become. We learn to know what is wrong and what to do to heal ourselves.

There are 8 key qualities that support the development of strong intuitive insight and by embracing these your intuition will flourish and grow.

Empathy

Many people find it hard to distinguish empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, without feeling pity for that person.

When you feel pity you are experiencing sympathy, an entirely different emotion. Sympathy can involve you getting dragged into someone else’s drama, whereas looking at it with empathy means looking at it from an outside perspective.

There are many ways to maintain empathy, including a prayer of protection, surrounding yourself in white light and using aromatherapy, just to name a few.

Find something that works for you and use this technique anytime you feel you are getting sucked into someone else’s crisis.

When someone is in crisis, we often feel the need to ‘rescue’ him or her. It is important that you take a step back and realise that it is not your responsibility to save them.

This is their journey. As a friend, be empathetic and ASK if that person would like advice. Often they would just prefer someone listening to them.

Discernment

Discernment is the ability to determine the value and quality of a subject or event. More particularly, it is the ability to look beyond the physical view and make a detailed judgment about that “thing”.

In relation to a virtue or quality of your personality, if you are a discerning individual, you are considered to possess wisdom and good judgment.

Always hold in your heart the best of intentions when you make a choice and through experience and choices you will become wise and learn good judgment.

It is important for you to discern with wisdom and demonstrate good judgment when using your intuition. When you don’t know something, say so and don’t guess.

This could happen initially while you are developing your intuition. Take some time to really listen to your intuition as it can be fleeting.

Compassion

When you feel compassion for others, you experience pity and a strong desire to help them. In order to not be pulled into their drama (as discussed above) it is important to first determine if the person in crisis actually wants to be relieved of their suffering.

Sometimes people like to hold on to their drama for any number of reasons – attention, lack of strength in dealing with the problem or even because they are in their comfort zone.

This is very hard when we really want to help someone because we can see the effect it is having on him or her.

Strength

There are 5 types of strengths we need to possess to develop our intuitive insight:

• Energetic strength refers to the reservoir of strength we have deep within the core of our being. This is the strength we use everyday and to get through tough situations.

It is important to keep this reservoir topped up at all times, balancing what goes out with what comes in. If you don’t maintain this balance, you can make yourself very sick.

• Physical strength and stamina comes from moving your body. Make sure you engage in regular exercise to keep your body in a healthy condition. Pilates, gym workouts, organised sport and even regular walking will help maintain your physical strength and stamina.

• Tough love involves making a decision that is in your best interests but is not something you would initially choose to do. This could involve making some sort of sacrifice in order to maintain your health or state of wellbeing.

Often these decisions are made by others on our behalf, because we are not looking after ourselves or making the best choices. Instead of getting angry, try to look at the situation from the other person’s perspective.

Look deep into their heart and you will see it is coming from a place of love for you and this will diffuse the anger.

• Boundaries are essential in maintaining our energy and intuition. Without boundaries we are at risk of having our energy taken from us by others.

Intuition

Develop your intuition by first being willing to connect to your feeling body. When you do this, your intuitive response will come without you having to think about it. This is your authentic knowing – where at a cellular level your body gives you the answer.

Take some time to develop your intuition by observing the tangible signs. These signs are different for everybody but could include a tingling sensation, goose bumps, hairs standing on end or a feeling in your solar plexus.

To develop this intuition further, do exercises that strengthen the connection between the left and right halves of the brain.

For example you could draw (or copy) something with your dominant hand and then replicate this with your non-dominant hand.

When you do this, the left side of your brain is concentrating so hard on the drawing that it has no time for ego chatter, allowing your intuition to come in.

Trust

Once you have developed your intuition you need to learn to trust it. Often this is a struggle, as you need to choose between the left-brain thinking option and the intuitive option.

This is where your tangible sign comes in, and you will learn to choose the intuitive option when your tangible sign is activated. It helps to make a note of your choices and to look back and see the outcome.

Ethics

Living with ethics can be seen as living to your highest values. This could entail honesty, integrity and doing no harm, as well as any other values deeply important to you.

It is important to not punish yourself if you don’t always live to your ethics because this can be very harmful. Take some time to think about why you acted the way you did and think about how you can make a different decision next time.

Authentic

When you live an authentic life, you know your core values and live to these values. By identifying the top 5 values in your life, you will be able to more easily make decisions that correlate with your authentic self.

Every time you make a decision, ask if the answer matches with your 5 core values and if it doesn’t, take some time to rethink it.

Authentic people know who they are and are themselves, always. They don’t change to be what others want them to be.

By living this way your authentic vibration attracts people who resonate with your beliefs and inherent qualities.

To sum up, we all have the ability to intuitively find the root cause of all disease and by understanding these key qualities you will be able to better develop the intuition to do that.

The gift of intuition is the birth right of every man and woman and it lies hidden within you just waiting to be awakened. The secret to bringing your gifts into consciousness is to take action.