What Is Self Love?

Self-love is accepting that life has its ups and downs. What is our attitude towards life and how we treat ourselves? How do we approach life? How kind and good are we to ourselves even in the midst of struggle and challenge? Rosa and Sydney help bring clarity on the reality of what that journey looks like.

Transcript

Hey everyone,

This is Rosa and welcome to the Rise My Body podcast.

And today we have a special someone who's going to join us.

Her name is Sydney Vaughn from Guelph.

Sydney is a fascial stretch therapist,

A personal trainer and soon to be registered massage therapist.

But before we bring Sydney into this,

Today we're going to be talking about self-love.

So I just want to go over self-love a little bit because self-love is an interesting topic and I find that a lot of people sometimes struggle with that concept of what it is and what it looks like.

I find that there's a lot of misunderstanding of what self-love really is and why it's important.

Why is it even important that we love ourselves?

What does it look like in our lives?

And so I actually hold a self-love workshop every month at Rise My Body because I find this is important for anybody who is going to join the studio and really take on a journey of finding themselves and finding their purpose and living the life that they desire.

One of the foundations is to understand self-love,

To understand the importance of it and why we need that as part of our foundation.

And so the first thing I usually teach is the fact that self-love is just basically about having a loving relationship with ourselves.

And so we're with ourselves 24-7.

We go to bed with ourselves,

We wake up in the morning,

We cannot escape ourselves.

So it's very easy to understand why it's important for us to love ourselves because if we don't it's like being stuck in a relationship that you don't want to be in.

And nothing good can come out of that relationship.

So it's really about our relationship with ourselves.

And some common misconceptions or misunderstandings of what self-love is,

You know self-love is maybe always trying to be happy or trying to be positive and it's all these flowers and this beautiful life.

And really it isn't.

It's about accepting the fact that life has its ups and downs and really it's about what is our attitude towards life,

How do we treat ourselves,

How do we approach life.

So a person who loves themselves versus a person who doesn't could go through the exact same thing and it's possible that the experience could be completely different.

And I think a lot of people can kind of relate to that or can kind of understand and probably agree with that.

So really it's about understanding,

It's just about how kind and how good we are to ourselves,

Even in the midst of struggle and challenge.

And so that's kind of what I wanted to go over and so Sydney,

What do you think about self-love?

Tell me about your self-love journey,

Tell me about,

Share with us about how self-love has played a role in your journey.

Well thank you for having me on the show Rosa.

So self-love has been a pretty,

It's been a big part of my life.

And going through my own journey,

You know,

Of course you have to go through your,

You have to kind of go to the bottom to get kind of to the top.

You've got to go through your own journey of what self-love is and for me,

You know,

I've known Rosa now for a really long time and Rosa has played a really big part in my journey and so I went through a really bit of a rough time kind of figuring out who I was and that's where I kind of found like I was at this point where I wasn't able to really truly live my truth and know who I was.

Like I didn't know who I was.

So what did that look like?

What was your struggle?

You know,

What were your days looking like?

You know,

Give me an idea of,

You know,

What that looked like,

What it means to not know who you were.

So it kind of started back in high school and for many,

Many years I've struggled with my own sexuality and so I went through a really long period where for a good 16,

17 years every day felt like a lie to me and I was not able to live this authentic self and be me.

So there was a real length of time there where I was unhappy,

I was depressed,

I was not satisfied with the way that I was living and I didn't like myself.

I couldn't accept that this was what I was given and this is who I am.

I couldn't accept who I was and I remember getting to a really low point where I was having this conversation with myself in the shower and I was like,

You know what,

I can either make a choice to make a change and accept who I am and however that journey unfolds is how it will be or I can choose to be unhappy.

And so I stepped into this journey of self-love and really discovering and continuing to discover who I am and appreciate myself for my faults and for the things that really bring light into my life and working through that.

That's awesome.

And so what did that journey of self-love look like to you?

Well coming from a background of sports and always being so driven and focused on one aspect of my life being sports,

Sports,

Sports,

That was something that kind of defined me.

And so there was a point where I decided to make a decision,

I was kind of going through a bunch of things and I stopped playing sports.

So that one thing that defined my life was totally taken from me and I was like,

Where do I go?

What do I do?

I don't know who I am.

I'm also dealing with my own sexuality and I don't know what the next steps are.

So at that point in my life was actually when I reached out to you and I was kind of like,

You know what,

Ro,

I'm kind of figuring out what I want to do with my life.

I don't really know.

I'm not playing soccer anymore but I remember seeing you when you'd be out on the field and training us because Roza used to train me when I played soccer that I reached out to Roza and I'm like,

Can I come and shadow you?

There was just something there that I was like,

I think that this could be a journey and a path that really I was passionate about but I had to kind of discover it.

That's awesome.

And so the unfolding of that journey,

What is it that you learned?

Well,

I'm still learning,

Learning a lot.

The one thing that I think has been the biggest game changer has been meditation and that's one thing that I've learned through you and learning to love myself and just accept myself for who I am and take the time out of my day to do my self-care,

To meditate,

To change my mindset,

To not allow the noise and the negativity that could potentially be present to take over my life but also face the fear that resided in me and work through that.

And I found that through stretching and mindfulness and just being present with my body really helped me and still does move through like you were mentioning phases of going through struggle and I see myself still,

I'll go ahead and I'll get through A,

B and C but then I'll find myself fall back to A.

So I feel like you said,

It's a journey but it's not a forward straight path.

Not at all and that's the thing is in one of the episodes that we talked about,

The phases of struggle,

It's definitely not just a one direction forward moving path,

It's sometimes we need to take a few steps back to move forward.

And so we were talking earlier today about this and I know you had some questions to challenge about how to allow ourselves to move forward in the different phases and why we get stuck.

I don't know if you remember what the question was but we were just talking about the phases of,

Sometimes we're in the phase of just at our lowest point,

Our rock bottom which is what Sydney,

That you reach that point and at the moment where you accepted that something needed to change and you allowed yourself to enter into that second phase of getting through struggle.

At that point now you're entering the third phase of learning to appreciate and love yourself for taking on this journey and moving forward has been a bit of a challenge or a struggle and how do I get past that?

Yeah so for you to say I recognized what it was that needed to change and then I've also then acknowledged where I'm at and asking for help and going through those questions of reaching out for help and then now being in this journey of self-love and it hasn't been something that's been completely linear.

Or graceful.

Yes,

It necessarily hasn't been graceful.

But there's moments where I find if you're going through your day and you get caught up,

Like you get caught up in the phase even though there is a knowing to,

I understand that this is where I'm at but I get caught up in it.

So in the moments that I'm finding myself caught up in what I'm in,

How do I take a step back from that and look at myself as if I'm not actually in the situation?

That's an awesome question and right now I'm thinking my mind is going so many directions that I can just delve in deeper.

The first thing I would say is that education is empowerment and when we educate ourselves it brings about more self-awareness and that's key.

We need that self-awareness to bring about a deeper understanding to get us through things in life.

And so when we're at a point where we can acknowledge the fact that we're caught in a cycle,

Where it's like,

Hey this is not just a few steps back to go forward,

I'm really stuck in this cycle.

I got out of the phase of recognizing,

Yes,

Okay,

I want to change but I'm not caught in this cycle,

I'm really struggling to love myself.

When we do find ourselves getting stuck in that repetitive cycle,

There's something that we need to learn more about,

There's something that we need to understand and we can't move forward in a phase unless we've understood.

And what I would say to a person or to someone who's feeling like they're stuck in the self-love journey where they're there with the intention but they're just caught up in that,

Is what I would say is to just recognize and acknowledge a few laws and principles and understand that what we're seeking is happiness,

Peace,

That stillness within ourselves.

And recognizing that that state exists in the present moment.

And if we can understand that,

Then at any moment we can recognize we're in the cycle,

We can recognize,

Wait a minute,

I'm nothing but peace and still right now.

And it's about in that moment,

Creating that experience for yourself in that moment,

Whether it's closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths,

Whether it's if you're in a situation where you can,

Is going off to a private room and doing some breathing and relaxation.

And so just bring yourself back to the present moment and putting in the repetitions of taking ourselves out of a pattern and putting ourselves into a new pattern.

And so when we get caught in a cycle,

What's actually happening is that we're in a pattern.

We're replaying some sort of story that we're so caught in it that we forget that we're in the story.

And so if we have enough self-awareness to recognize,

I'm not happy right now,

Right now in this moment,

I'm not still right now,

I'm being distracted by this thought,

Then it's about implementing that strategy or that tool,

That skill in that moment and say,

For every time I catch that,

I'm going to do five deep breaths.

And with anything in life,

It takes 10,

000 reps for mastery.

So do that about 10,

000 times.

The next thing you know,

It'll be your new natural state is to have that stillness,

Right?

It's a new workout.

So,

And that's where I would then say,

It's about also patience.

So if it's something that you are doing,

Or you find yourself in the cycle,

But you do have a strategy that you're implementing every time you catch yourself,

Then the next step is just to be patient and trust in the process,

Right?

It's different if you're caught in the cycle,

But you're feeding that cycle and you're not doing anything about it,

Then you'll probably get stuck in that cycle.

But it's about recognizing,

Are you able to acknowledge that you're not present?

Are you implementing a new pattern in that moment?

You have the willpower to step in and take a few deep breaths because it's hard in the moment,

But that's where it's gotta be that choice,

Right?

Or you're that uncomfortable in the pattern that you're just,

You know,

Say I can't handle it.

You drop down and do a few breaths or,

You know,

Just to shake up that pattern in that moment and then just allowing yourself just to be patient and trusting that,

That will eventually change.

You literally need to,

You know,

Restructure your thought patterns and all that.

And in order to do that truly requires that you integrate,

You know,

If we can check out the podcast on our mind-body topic,

But really understanding that that's not something that we can intellectualize or try to figure out in our minds.

It's actually about getting out of our minds and coming back to the body,

Coming back to breath,

Coming back to something simple that just allows us to,

You know,

Return back to the basics of life.

And over time we will notice ourselves coming,

Naturally coming out of that phase as we need to.

What that does look like,

However,

Is sometimes in that stillness is where we find clarity,

You know,

And all of a sudden we realize what that loudness actually was.

Wasn't loudness,

But it's actually information that we needed to look at.

And it's the same,

You know,

Theme,

The same pattern that keeps coming up.

And we realize that the reason why we're falling in that pattern is because,

You know,

Our conscience is,

Is,

You know,

Watching us not act on what we know we need to act on.

And so if we want something better and we want,

You know,

Something,

We're desiring something more in our lives because we know that there's something more,

You know,

We,

If we really sit still,

We know exactly what we need to do.

But the loudness is almost a distraction to entertain the fear of why we can't do it,

Which is why we get caught up in the loudness.

So the stillness actually allows us to recognize,

Ah,

It's clear.

You know,

In fact,

If you put yourself in a situation where you say,

What would I tell my best friend if they're in this moment?

We know the answer instinctively.

Of course we do.

Right?

Yeah.

Of course we do.

So,

So really sometimes we're caught in a pattern because we're just not listening,

Right?

We're not allowing ourselves to act on what we actually already know.

We're overcomplicating it.

Does that make sense,

Kait?

It makes sense.

So I,

There was one thing that you said there with feeding it.

So feeding the thought,

Feeding that pattern.

Would you say that a lot of that comes through fear because some people get so caught up in this cycle that they're afraid to get out of it because they're so comfortable in this routine of these patterns.

It's just what they know and that they're afraid to get,

To get out of it because they don't know what's on the other side of that.

Yeah.

It's interesting you say that because they're,

You know,

So love is consciousness,

Fear is not.

So one thing that we need to do as one of the steps to self love is to recognize that it's not our fault.

We're not choosing fear.

We don't even know we're coming from fear.

We just haven't stepped into a higher consciousness to choose to be love,

Right?

So when we're in this state,

In this cycle and we're in a place of fear,

We got to recognize,

Wait a minute,

I'm coming from a place of fear right now.

We got to be able to acknowledge that.

It takes a higher consciousness to recognize that.

Rather than thinking that we're choosing,

No one will choose,

You know,

No one is actually consciously choosing to stay in fear.

They just maybe don't know of anything else,

Right?

But if we can just step back and say,

Okay,

I'm coming from a place of fear right now and what am I afraid of?

What am I really afraid of?

You know,

It's like a really profound question that we can ask ourselves in the midst of our struggle.

Okay,

What are you really afraid of,

Rosa?

What are you really afraid of,

Syd?

What's really bothering you?

You know,

It's like that moment of get honest and get deeper and you know,

I'm afraid that if I let this go,

Then this will happen or you know,

Really being honest and direct with yourself about what is it that you're really afraid of and once you can acknowledge that fear,

It's then your choice to be that love for yourself and how you want to approach it.

I don't know if that answers the question.

That answers the question.

I want to go back on that because it was like you said in your last podcast there,

How we don't believe that there is something greater and so I like that because you know,

If we get caught up in this fear or we're like,

What are we really afraid of?

There's really nothing on the other side of it but something much greater for us and that whatever we're going through is really teaching us something.

Absolutely and you know,

It's just the fear of the unknown.

So at that point,

It's also about obviously you know,

Maybe we need more time to develop our faith in something on the other side and you know,

Sometimes we finally let go of a fear because we hit rock bottom.

We didn't have a choice and we're you know,

We need to face what we need to face but at some point,

We develop a sense of faith where you know,

We've experienced,

We've put in so much time into the courage of self-love that we start to see enough change.

We've brought in new relationships,

New support into our lives that you know,

We get caught up the way we get caught up in the cycle of fear.

We get caught up in the cycle of faith that we can still be in the midst of struggle but this time,

We're going through with a knowing,

With a knowing that this is just a phase like a knowing in the heart not just a knowing of the mind because maybe we heard the podcast and now we're like,

Okay,

I get it in my mind that there's phases but it's about you know,

We put in the time of actually being patient and acknowledging you know,

Using these techniques and asking ourselves these questions you know,

Taking the time to take a few breaths and once we're in that stillness,

Okay,

You know,

What are you really afraid of?

It's like you know,

And I've experienced this all the time and so eventually at some point,

You look back and realize,

Ah,

I see my pattern.

Every time I went through a state of fear,

I went still,

I confronted it,

I acted on it and the other side was amazing.

By the time you do that three,

Four,

Five,

Six times,

You become fearless because you see the pattern is that something always greater is on the other side and so you can imagine the first few times facing fear where you just have no idea what to face.

At that point,

It becomes more of a testament to your faith and sometimes we need that support around us.

We need to be open to you know,

Some people who may be reflections to us in our lives who can help us to see the possibilities of what could be and we just need to be open to that,

Right?

Yeah,

I don't know if that… Yeah,

I think there's also one thing that you said to me a while ago when I was actually going through a struggle was that we can all know but the difference is believing in what we're doing to get to where we want to be and not like,

It's easy to know everything,

Right?

Like,

And that's when you're like,

Well,

I can know this,

I can know that,

Like,

I can know that if I do that,

I'll get here but it's truly believing in it and acting upon that.

Well,

And that's the awesome thing.

There's a guy I found on YouTube,

He's kind of got some great videos,

His name is Matt Kahn,

You should check him out but there's a video that he says that it totally resonated and it's true and he said,

You know,

We already know the truth.

There's nothing more that we need to know.

We already know the truth.

We came here to be and live the truth and so really the challenge is can we align ourselves with what we really know?

That's where the disharmony comes and you know,

The more we can create or the less of a gap we can have between the two,

The more in harmony we will live.

And so,

You know,

So yeah,

It's just about,

It's not about what we need to know more of,

It's about acting on what we know that brings about the peace within ourselves and recognizing that,

You know,

There's a process to that.

And so we won't go into it deep into this episode but in our mind-body episode,

We'll delve more into it.

But it's also recognizing that there needs to be an appreciation and understanding.

Remember I talked about,

You know,

Having more knowledge and understanding of the mind-body connection,

Right?

If it was as simple as acting on what we knew,

Then we would just act on it,

Right?

So there's something holding us back and there needs to be an appreciation and understanding that we have patterns of fear within us based on what we went through in life.

I'm about to sneeze.

Bless you.

Hold on,

I heard if you say like orange,

Orange or you distract yourself with something,

You can sneeze more.

Yeah.

Did you think put your finger under your nose or something like that?

Yeah,

No,

I don't know but it's gone.

But just to warn you.

It worked.

Yeah.

So I may need to sneeze at some point.

But now I lost my train of thought.

My nose is tickling.

What was my thought?

Oh,

It's about knowing,

Yes,

And appreciating the mind-body connection.

And so I want to go into more detail with this but,

You know,

There's in what I've gone through my life with my car accident and what I've discovered in working with my body is that what I was actually doing,

To me,

Was a physical experience.

I had this physical pain.

I have a metal plate in my arm.

I'm trying to learn how to move again,

Being an extreme athlete to having to work on basic movement patterns I don't actually remember ever having to work on because naturally I was kinesthetically in tune with myself since I was a kid.

And so just basics like being able to put my mind and my body,

You know,

Very small postural movements.

And as I started to work on my body with the intention of physically healing myself,

Physically fixing myself so actually I can go work out again,

I started to step more into who I was but what I realized what I was doing is that there's something that I was doing with the body that was actually allowing me to release fears that I didn't even know were there.

You know,

It's like when you're in a room and there's a fan that's going on and you don't even know what's on until it turns off.

And so it was the moment where I was able to recognize the connection.

I didn't choose to let go of a fear.

I actually didn't even know I was in it.

And so I was actually able to turn off a fear-based pattern that I had that was going on in the back of my head and running my life and driving my choices that I did not know was there just simply by catering to the injury that I had which was actually opening my body and drawing attention to the body and it almost turned down the noise in my head.

And when we turned it down,

The part of us that is actually there and is who we are will act.

We'll act accordingly.

We'll act out of love because that's who we really are.

And so when we have,

It's almost like if I had to draw a picture,

I imagine the body and us being like a mummy and we have these wrappings around us and we're literally wrapped around our face and our eyes and our mouth and we're trying to talk and speak but we can't.

And it's like we know that we need to speak.

We know we need to move but we can't.

We're strapped down.

We need to take away the layers.

Yes,

We need to take away the layers.

We need to actually open up these layers.

And this is kind of what I've come to realize as I've been opening up my body.

I actually feel these straps.

They feel like belts around the body and it's part of the fascial stretch therapy.

It's evolved and part of the sessions that I offer at Rise Mind Body and that I've come to be known for is these weird feelings that you get with Rose's body.

What I'm actually doing is I've been able to visually and intuitively connect to these belts that we hold in our bodies that actually represent the subconscious fears that are going on within us and I can help to unlock them.

So that's why it's so important that when we recognize we're in a state of fear and we're in a cycle,

There's nothing you can do about it.

You're in it.

You can't intellectualize yourself out of it.

It's about recognizing this is not in my control.

This is a pattern from the past and I've built this belt around me.

I need to go find it in my body.

I need to close my eyes and connect to it.

So we'll definitely talk more about the mind-body connection.

It's very,

Very interesting stuff and I think that could be a breaker for people to really break through some of the common struggles they have when they really,

Really want to but they just don't understand what they're missing.

And so thank you.

That would be it for the episode today.