Thank you Charlie for this inspiring post! I found the encouragement to explicitly aim for self-love very helpful.
After a bad year of responding to chronic stress with a lot of self-judgment, I realized that I need to reset my relationship with myself, and I have an intention for this year to get better at self-love and practice every day. I found some self-love meditations on Insight Timer and have been doing them daily for a few weeks. I’m definitely feeling better but it’s too early to tell if this is a stable change.
I found that meditation that specifically aims at self-love works better for me than loving-kindness meditation. The loving-kindness meditation recordings I have encountered usually focus on “wishing well” to yourself or others, which feels different and somehow more neutral than “sending love” or something like that. Connecting the intention with the breath and imagining that I’m breathing in love for myself and breathing out love for others also makes the meditation more powerful for me.
Thank you Charlie for this inspiring post! I found the encouragement to explicitly aim for self-love very helpful.
After a bad year of responding to chronic stress with a lot of self-judgment, I realized that I need to reset my relationship with myself, and I have an intention for this year to get better at self-love and practice every day. I found some self-love meditations on Insight Timer and have been doing them daily for a few weeks. I’m definitely feeling better but it’s too early to tell if this is a stable change.
I found that meditation that specifically aims at self-love works better for me than loving-kindness meditation. The loving-kindness meditation recordings I have encountered usually focus on “wishing well” to yourself or others, which feels different and somehow more neutral than “sending love” or something like that. Connecting the intention with the breath and imagining that I’m breathing in love for myself and breathing out love for others also makes the meditation more powerful for me.