How to Delight In Love

I'm happy to report I'm easing back into all the parts of my teaching that I love, including my podcast. This season we are focusing on the theme of delight, and it was truly a delight to get back to recording. Please allow me to share with you about this week's episode of Jess on the Mountain: A podcast about yoga, chakras, and becoming your own guru. 

In the journey of traveling up the mountain of chakras, from base to top, this week we are moving through the heart, where we ask the question,

How do we delight in love?

How does the quality of delight, that rises from the pleasure principle in the second chakra, make its way to the heart so we know that we are loved, are worthy of love, and can love others well?

To love is also to lose, to risk heart ache, to be vulnerable. We have to let go of a lot in order to let love in. I’m not the first to say it: Love is hard. And it’s such a big topic to tackle, I’m going to a trusted source on all things feelings:  Brené Brown, Author of Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, is a world renowned social worker, researcher, and storyteller, and she’s helping us figure out how to talk about our feelings…and how to talk about love.   In her chapter on Love, she writes,

“Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can be cultivated between two people only when it exists within each one of them–we can love others only as much as we love ourselves.”

We can love others only as much as we love ourselves.

It’s just you on your personal mountain of life. Yes–people will walk alongside you, but it’s truly YOUR journey. Everything and everyone comes and goes, but you are always with you. And the way things are in your interior life gets projected onto your exterior life, and everything and everyone in it at the time.  So I believe Brené’s statement holds true: We can love others only as much as we love ourselves. The degree to which we experience inner love is the degree to which we can experience love outside ourselves. Or, as you might have heard, "love your neighbor as yourself."

So how do we do this? How do we cultivate self love, and in so doing, experience greater love with others? In this week's podcast episode, Delight in Love, I take listeners through an affirmation experience to venture into the realm of self love. It will test your ability to recognize your true beauty and worth, in an effort to help guide you towards greater inner love. This, in turn, if practiced over time, will break your heart open to love others in a new way. Not just those you already know, love, or agree with, but all others. And I believe we need this right now.

I hope you go and listen. Give yourself 16 minutes to sit and connect with inner love and acceptance. Your consistent practice of loving presence will be enough to create change in yourself and your relationships. I promise. ❤️

Much love