Your Body Is Your Valentine

If you haven't already, I highly recommend taking a look at Marianne Williamson's A Course In Weight Loss, which is a truly spiritual approach to finding your way into right relationship with your body and your weight, using many of the principles of A Course In Miracles. This quote in particular seems appropriate to share with you today:

"Love and love only, produces miracles...That includes your love of self, and your body is part of who you are. If you love your body when you're thin but hate it when you're not, then you love yourself conditionally, which is not love at all. If you can't love your body, you can't really love yourself."

Think about this just for a moment and let it sink in. If your body is an essential part of yourself, then no matter how much 'work' you've done to become enlightened, make peace with life or with others, if you still resist, fear or hate your body then you can't yet say you love yourself. Your body needs that love and peace too.

Is there anything stopping you now from choosing love? Do you set conditions for your body which, when you meet them, will allow you to love it? What if the whole point is to choose love for its own sake, so that your life can be lived freely, miraculously and without the pain of judgment?

This doesn't mean that things won't change. Only that change will come from love, from wanting to forgive yourself and your body and work together, rather than being at odds with each other. So many times we think we can create change out of force, fear or judgment. But mostly we find ourselves right back where we started from. It won't mean much to you to lose weight if it comes from fear and if you know you haven't found that place of love within. Your body will rebel against that and so will you.

What loving act could connect you to your body today and how could you begin a relationship of love instead? How could you let your body know you want to begin to work together rather than outside of it, judging you both? Take that step today. Make your body your Valentine. Here are some possible ways you might declare the change:

1) Go for a walk.

2) Get a massage.

3) Write a love poem to your body for all it does for you.

4) Put on some music and dance.

5) Light candles and make some time to meditate on the body, checking in on all you feel.

6) Take a hot bath or shower.

7) Put some delicious-smelling lotion on, slowly and deliberately, letting your body know you're consciously experiencing the sensations.

8) Choose to slow down over your food and listen to what your body needs, how it feels.

Stepping into love is an act of courage that is demonstrated every day. And yet, at a certain point, it really is the only choice we have if we want to give up our bitterness and stuckness and live a different kind of life. As we do this with our bodies, we begin to do it with our whole lives. Your body has a Valentine's gift for you too; all you need to do is to connect, listen, and open yourself to its world of sensations and presence, calling you into the moment in which it lives.