20 Empowering Spiritual Reasons to Start Loving Yourself
Self-love gets confused at times with narcissism. Loving yourself doesn’t mean you’re self-centered or only thinking about yourself. It doesn’t mean railroading other people in order to get what you want. It’s about taking care of yourself in the best way possible. It means owning your own power and acting from a place of kindness towards yourself. This way, you are ready to love others, having revitalized your own spirit.
This is what happens when we love ourselves:
- Renewing our spirits: we let go of negative forces in our lives, like blame, shame, and anger. We place the space with positive influences, such as ownership, creation, and power.
- Empowering ourselves: instead of miring ourselves in self-doubt, we feel, hear, and believe in our power. The opinions of others don’t count for anything; what matters is how we feel about ourselves.
- Giving ourselves peace: our spirits are still and calm. We accept ourselves — including our strengths and weaknesses — unconditionally.
- Owning our lives: responsibility for our own actions is a key part of any spiritually mature person’s life. We recognize that we are the source of all happiness. We are the source of the power to change our futures, careers, relationships, passion, compassion, empathy and authenticity. We have the power to change our own lives.
- Connecting with the world around us: we let go of loneliness and embrace a deeper connection and sense of oneness with the world, people included.
- Living to our potential: we allow ourselves to show up in the world and live our purpose. We aren’t afraid to pursue what fulfills us.
- Overflow of our love to others: the more we look at ourselves with love, the more we practice love and acceptance toward those around us. We let go of thoughts that negate our reality (ideas of what people should be or how they ought to react), and we become lovers of what is, accepting it and people.
- Embracing our humanity: we understand that we aren’t perfect and we allow ourselves to be human. We accept the mistakes and failures we have, and we invite vulnerability into our lives.
- Being enough for ourselves: proving ourselves in the eyes of others is not worth our time. We understand that we don’t need to impress anyone. We know that we are enough.
- Living courageously: we are no longer ruled by fear, because we know that love is the strongest power of all. When we choose love over fear, we become stress-free beings and improve the overall quality of our lives.
- Living freely: we let go of competition and comparing ourselves to others. Therefore, we’ll always be enough.
- Living creatively: when we love ourselves, we give birth to creativity, inspiration and openness. We inspire our hearts again to follow what our spirits celebrate.
- Accepting our lives: we understand reality instead of blaming and fighting it, because we know that love is in every corner. We hold on to our lives with a loose, loving grip.
- Bringing harmony to others: We attract accord, peace, spaciousness, and significance in our relationships. The self knows how to love better, and spreads it to other people.
- Accepting failure: we find courage to accept failure because we know that it is one step closer to growth, and our significance isn’t dependent on what we produce.
- Letting ourselves grow: we let go of keeping ourselves small in this world and allow growth instead, just like the tree that grows to provide shade and food for an infinite number of people. The more we grow, the more we spread love and joy.
- Handling stress: when we love ourselves, we become aware of our stressful thoughts and how we react when think them. We question their truthfulness and we choose to turn them around and invite stillness instead into our lives.
- Securing ourselves: We feel safe because we know that we will always be right here for ourselves.
- Dazzling naturally: we shine without working for it or fighting to get it.
- Living abundantly: we move from scarcity to abundance in every area of life without the need to fight or push to get it.
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6 Tips for the Best Bath & 12 Ingredients to Add
When people think of an ideal way to relax, a nice hot bath is usually what comes to mind. However, there are a few lesser-known tips and tricks that can take your bath from a simple relaxation to a full-blown healing, medically therapeutic investment!
Before you dive in, however, be sure you follow these tips for the best cleansing bath you’ve ever had:
1. Some like it hot…but not too hot!
How hot can you stand it? For some, if it feels like bathing in a bubbling cauldron of bliss, it’s just the right temperature. But did you know that superheated baths actually get your nervous system revved up? In actuality, there’s a threshold of heat where the relaxation is just a bit of an illusion. If you’re pregnant, this is especially important; keep your baths to a maximum of about 37˚C (100˚F) — just barely above body temperature!
Not only is your nervous system…well, a little nervous, but homeostatically it can be a bad idea to start boiling your system. Contrary to popular belief, if you can’t sleep, a piping hot bath is actually more likely to keep you awake than soothe you to sleep.
The most relaxing baths are not quite piping hot. If you are bathing for sedation or specifically to help you sleep, keep the temperature easy on your body.
2. Keep it cool
Ever feel wilted and sluggish after a hot bath? You may have even gotten a headache afterwards. Avoid this post-bath syndrome by keeping your head, hands, feet, or all three cool with a cold washcloth, ice cubes wrapped in a towel, or pouring cold water on these spots on occasion. They are your body’s ideal spots to release heat, which is important.
Your body isn’t actually too fond of getting too hot when it doesn’t have a chance to release heat. This creates an artificial fever. An artificial fever has its uses, but it can also have some unpleasant side effects, such as headaches. Give your body some opportunity to shed some heat. Your core body temperature will still go up (and you’ll get the benefits of that), but it will cause less physiological stress. You may be quite surprised at how much this improves your experience.
3. Make it a massage time
Treat yourself completely with a little self-massage, perhaps to release tension in trigger points. You can try something like a self-abhyanga massage after your bath, or you bring a ball into the bath with you and trap it under your body to apply pressure to stiff and aching muscles. Simply run a warm bath, and trap a ball between your body and the bottom or back of the tub to rub your back muscles — your buoyancy allows for excellent control over moderate pressures without being too intense.
4. Stay hydrated, my friends!
Guess what? Even if your bath is only slightly warmer than your body, your systems start to attempt to cool you off in the way it knows best: sweating! You can end up losing a lot of valuable fluid this way, so do yourself a favor and drink plenty of liquids before, during and after to replenish your body.
Choose liquids that are indeed hydrating rather than any diuretics, such as caffeinated tea, alcohol (sorry, bath wine!), or coffee. Instead, try a refreshing cool lemon water! This way, you will also help avoid a post-bath headache.
5. Lower back love
If you have lower back pain, a hot bath is the treatment for you! It’s even better than trying to ice it (which might even be on the harmful side).
The myth that a hot bath will only worsen the “inflamed” back is simply not true. The great majority of low back pain is essentially muscular in nature, contrary to the popular and mistaken view that it’s usually caused by something “mechanical” like a intervertebral disc herniation. Specifically, the cause of most back pain is myofascial trigger points (“knots” in your muscles), which can cause far more grief than most people realize — and yet they are relatively treatable. A little reassurance, rubbing, and a hot bath go a surprisingly long way, even with the most horrendous case of low back pain. A hot bath is amazingly good therapy for back pain, and the price sure is right.
Once again, trigger points are eased by heat, and usually irritated by cold.
6. Deep bath breathing
What better place to “blow off steam” breathing than in the bath? Controlling your breath moves energy throughout your body, and with the right technique, can be a hugely helping hand in relaxation.
Conscious, deeper breathing is always relaxing, grounding, and embodying. It can make you more comfortable in your own skin. But it seems to be particularly effective in a hot bath.
Now that you’re a bath pro, discover what bath ingredient is best for you! For example, did you know that by adding tea bags into your bath, you can help your body balance its energy and hormones, aid in clearing it of toxins, and also provide the anti-aging benefits of antioxidants? Check out this infographic, and see what ingredients you’d like to start trying.
