This time of year it’s natural to reflect more on love! Connecting to our heart seems to be more of a thing as we approach Valentine’s Day. It’s important to love ourself first and foremost. For practical actions steps, we can focus on managing our energy! We can track our energy patterns, recognizing our individual daily peaks and dips, scheduling complex tasks during high-energy periods and routine walks during low-energy times, and taking frequent short breaks to recharge and help prevent burnout.
To show ourselves love, it’s important to manage our energy sources including our body, mind, emotions & spirit. Physically, we need to support our body with adequate sleep, exercise and proper nutrition. I find movement breaks to be particularly helpful even if it’s just 2-5 minutes every hour and also prioritizing hydration. For our mental well-being, we can practice mindfulness, reduce multitasking, and avoid constant task switching to help maintain focus. Emotionally, we can cultivate positivity, creating time to enjoy life beyond work and engaging in activities we enjoy to help manage our stress. If we find ourselves interacting with people who drain our energy, we need to take action to get back to neutral, even if it means rescheduling something to recover and recharge.
Socially, fostering positive relationships helps to increase our energy. Positive relationships are a buffer from stress. It’s helpful to get to know which colleagues, friends and family members increase our energy and keep nurturing these important relationships. In a healthy committed relationship, prioritizing time with them helps to increase energy. In the workplace or other areas of our life, sometimes we need to practice assertiveness skills, especially if a boundary has been crossed. To love ourself we need to look out for ourself. It is absolutely OK to interrupt someone when we need to draw the line; we can speak up firmly with steady eye contact, maintaining an upright confident posture as we set our boundary and protect our heart.
What nurtures your spirit? For people working from home here in The Beaches, perhaps going for a walk in nature during a lunch break can help. However, many people have returned to the office 5 days a week now and getting out in nature in the middle of the day may be challenging. When work aligns with our personal values, it becomes a source of energy rather than draining it. What work depletes you? Can you do less of that? While we don’t need to be 100% aligned with our work to feel motivated working on a task, particularly if we’re feeling a sense of accomplishment making progress and getting something done, to energize our spirit, it’s important to feel “aligned enough”. If our work feels totally out of alignment with our values, we will naturally feel depleted. What aspect of your work is so enjoyable it doesn’t even feel like work? Can you do more of that?
If you feel that you are managing your energy effectively yet still feeling tired, one thing to ask yourself is where in your life you may benefit from the practice of forgiveness. People who hold onto grudges tend to feel exhausted! For those of us who are sensitive, we can even feel this type of energy walk into the room. The heavy energetic weight of not forgiving can block the heart centre. In yoga, we call this our heart chakra. While there are yoga poses that can help open up the heart, sometimes it’s more about forgiving yourself for something. Part of loving yourself is being able to forgive yourself as well as others. Being human beings, it’s natural to have areas in our life that need more forgiveness. If it’s helpful to redefine forgiveness, you can think of it as “letting go of the consequences that not forgiving has created in your life” or “releasing any resentment, sadness, anger or frustration, in order to make room for life-energy and inspiration that could be sitting in its place”.
Valentine’s Day can be a challenging day for some people. There’s a bit too much emphasis on receiving roses or another type of present from a loved one. For people in a committed relationship, it can be helpful to let go of the expectations of this day and focus on being present with each other. For those who are single, healing from a previous relationship or simply choosing to focus on themselves, it’s important to understand that self-care is not selfish. Taking care of your well-being is a priority!
How do you define love? What does love mean to you? How does love support our wellness? Reflecting on love as a feeling, perhaps think about the hobbies you love. How do you feel when you are doing what you love? I feel very connected to my heart when I’m focussing on my strengths such as facilitation skills. I love what I am doing when I lead trainings and workshops that are experiential & interactive. When delivering presentations, I enjoy not only sharing my knowledge and skills, but also holding the space for the expertise in the room, creating opportunities for participants to share their insights with each other.
Dancing is another thing I love to do, particularly when I take a break from choreographed forms of dance and move more intuitively to music. This is called free dance and it is also a wellness practice. In Toronto, dance events such as Ecstatic Dance focus on this freestyle approach. It is a safe space with some rules like no drinking and no drugs, and some guidelines like no talking. When I have danced at this community event over the past 20 years, I feel a deep connection with my heart and l love that feeling. The space itself feels loving in that it is designed to be a space in which we are free to dance authentically without fear of being judged, valuing those around us as they move to the music in their unique ways, respecting others space as they dance, and continuing to connect to our heart more fully as we move freely through space.
We can reflect on love beyond the feeling, viewing it as a choice or a verb. In a committed partnership, love can be understood as an action including a deep, active commitment that involves empathy, respect, understanding, and care for another’s well-being. Love can involve prioritizing our partner’s needs alongside our own. It can be expressed through actions like kindness, presence, and support, fostering connection, trust, and shared growth, and being accepting including acceptance of imperfections. The meaning of love can include unconditional care, trust & security, mutual respect, vulnerability & growth.
Unconditional care is a deep concern for another’s well-being with a commitment to make this a priority. In a healthy relationship, the key is to do this consistently, continuing to prioritize someone else’s well-being. Trust & security is about a foundational feeling of safety, where one feels free to be their authentic self with another, without fear of any judgement. Mutual respect can include valuing each other’s individuality, opinions, and boundaries. We can also share in another person’s joy & show empathy for their pain. Vulnerability is the courage to be completely open and seen by another person. Love is also about growth, supporting each other’s personal goals and “growing together” rather than just alongside each other.
As we approach Valentine’s Day, it’s an opportunity to reflect on our relationship with ourself as well as our relationship with others. We can give ourselves the gift of presence, being present with our feelings and any sensations in our body, listening to our intuition, reflecting on the ways that we manage our energy and engaging in activities that fill our hearts with joy! Practicing presence is a great wellness strategy to increase overall energy! We can also practice being fully present with someone we care about, letting them feel truly heard without interruption or advice. If you are interested in my wellness workshops “Skills for Effective Listening & Healthy Relationships” or “Energy for Vitality“, feel free to contact me and I’ll give you details on the day/time it’s being offered this winter. In the meantime, wishing everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day!
