Announcing: the Summer of Self-Love 🎉
and how I leaned in to my own self-love practice when things did not go as planned
Dear Soul,
I recently declared this the Summer of Self-Love in my Soul-Centered Email Series (not subscribed? you can check it out here) and today I took a moment to record a simple practice for cultivating both a sense of safety with yourself and a greater sense of self-love.
Savasana (translated as Corpse Pose) is the pose that often ends a yoga asana class - if you’ve never attended a class, perhaps you’ve seen photos of people lying on their mats on the floor not looking like they’re doing much …
… but do not be fooled by outer appearances - savasana can be a challenging pose especially for people who struggle to be still and quiet with themselves. I have witnessed many a student twitch and wiggle and adjust their way through a savasana - sometimes they are eventually able to release into it; sometimes they pop up at the end like “thank goodness that is over!”; and sometimes they transition from the pose looking a little grumpy and out-of-sorts (I may have been {and may still be} each of these students myself at various moments in my own practice 🤷♀️).
We practice Savasana at the end of an asana practice as a symbolic dying to who we were before the practice and an arising to who we are after the practice. It’s a time of integration - a conscious pause woven into the framework of a session of mindful movement - and a moment of reorientation - an opportunity to marinade in our intentions and reset our course from this moment forward.
But you 💯 do not need to wait until the end of an asana practice to reap the benefits of Savasana - it can be a stand-alone practice, especially when our intention is increasing self-love and consciously cultivating a more loving and honest relationship with ourselves.
Savasana is a stand-out and very accessible tool in our self-love toolkit.
{{ Insert record scratching sound here }}
Um, well, I went to add subtitles to the recording and discovered that it has no audio … at all. So I had to take a break - do some laundry and get some lunch - so I could catch-up with myself and practice what I preach. Here’s the thing I’ve learned about myself when navigating disappointment - I need a little time to allow all the emotions and thoughts and sensations to flow through before I am able to regain the softened, more expansive and curious posture that creates space for a greater range of possibilities and solutions to emerge.
It’s a self-love practice for me to step away from a source of frustration or something that simply didn’t go the way I planned and give myself a little breathing room - maybe go outside; maybe get some food; maybe accomplish a task or two for a sweet little dopamine hit.
In what seems like a lifetime ago, I would have put my head down and pushed and pushed and pushed until I either broke through or broke down - something I was applauded for time and again as a show of perseverance, resilience, and get-it-done spirit. And while there is certainly room for all of that in life, the way I went about it was simply too costly. The damage to my relationship with myself - the slow chipping away at self-belief; the erosion of self-trust; the mark left by every unkind thought and less-then-compassionate choice - was a very high price to pay.
Self-love is not always sexy; it’s not always easy; and it often involves twists and turns and trial and error and a willingness to move forward by what seems like inches when you’d rather move by miles.
For my part, I’m offering you this 5-minute self-love reset practice ↓ instead of what I had planned.
I’ll record the savasana practice again (hopefully with audio this time 😉) soon; I’m operating under the assumption that I was the soul who needed to hear what I thought I was recording today and I’m taking all that into consideration in planning the rest of my day.
Sending you Love,
Tawnia