Love and acceptance

For the past few weeks I have been thinking a ton about love and acceptance. It is human nature to want to be accepted and loved. Every person (unless maybe a psychopath) wants this, even “bad guys” want to be loved and accepted by their fellow “bad guys”. We put so much energy, time, effort, money, mind chatter…to find this love and acceptance…from others. However in my experience I did not put enough if any effort into HONESTLY accepting myself and having compassion for myself.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

One of the huge barriers is that what we so desperately want from others, we don’t have for our self. I am learning that if I don’t love and accept myself I can’t fully love and accept anyone else. I am learning the more I cultivate these qualities in myself the more I can connect with others in such a more meaning full way.

Practicing on our matt is a wonderful place to show acceptance and compassion to our self. We can fall in the habit of trying so so so hard to get out body into the shape of a pose and get frustrated that we aren’t doing it right. I suggest you try the pose! Work hard, but also try really really really hard at accepting where you are in the pose, and loving who you are genuinely.