On Valentine’s Day, there’s a lot of pressure to step up your romance game and offer grand gestures of love for your significant other. Just don’t forget to give some of that affection to yourself and the divinity living inside you. Only when you are glowing with love for yourself, can you give an endless amount to others.
We live in a perfectionistic society that says we can always do more and be more. It’s the reason a lot of us are so successful, but also causes of a lot of our pain and illness. We never feel quite good enough. We try to cope by grasping for information and control and all things external and tangible, all things outside of us. Today, I ask you to certainly give tons of extra love to the special people in your life, but first to take some time and appreciate your insides. Give your organs some hugs. We have such masterful structures inside us that started off as cells and grew into instruments that allow us to breathe and pump and live every day. Despite the fact that these organs rule our entire being, we rarely even think about them until they start giving us problems and threaten our health. Then, we focus on their weaknesses and disabilities instead of the unfathomable power they constantly provide us with. We need to get into a habit of thanking and loving them so they’ll continue to nurture us.
It’s 2014; do you know where your organs are? Before I started acupuncture school, I’m reluctant to admit that I didn’t even know where most of my organs were positioned. In my first semester anatomy courses, I saw them and learned how they work; in my Qi Gong classes, I visualized them and learned how they feel. Take a look at these diagrams to become familiar with the locations of your organs. The liver is primarily on the right side under the ribs, and the gallbladder and pancreas lie below it. The kidneys are in the center of our backs, level with our belly button. The stomach is mostly centered, but widens towards the left and the spleen is right next to it. The large intestine is around the perimeter of the small intestine.
There’s a beautiful meditative exercise for your organs that you can do in 5 or 10 minutes every day. I do it in my car on the way to work. I start at the top of my head. I take a deep breath in and imagine that air and light are filling up my brain. On that inhale I silently say, “I love my brain” or “God bless my brain,” (depending on what I feel that day). I exhale and the brain relaxes. With that organ now full of love and healing, I take another inhalation and repeat the same mantra for my eyes. I move down my head and dedicate a breath and a prayer for each individual sensory organ. “I love my: (insert nose, ears, mouth, throat).” Now, I move down to my chest and love my lungs, heart, and diaphragm. Then into my abdomen, I send single breaths to my liver, gallbladder, stomach, spleen, pancreas, large intestine, small intestine, kidneys, bladder, and uterus (Guys, love your prostate).
When you’re done, you can imagine your insides glowing with light and relaxation. Some days, if I need more cleansing, I’ll send warm water through my body instead of light. Some days, I’ll send a healing green light or an invigorating red light through. I often include my muscles into this exercise too. I love my back, arms and legs, and hands and feet for carrying me through each day. I also love my belly and butt and legs unconditionally and resist the habitual urge to add things like, “I love my abs…even though they’re not flat enough” or “I love my thighs…although I would love them even more without that saddlebag.” We spend so much time focusing on our imperfections; we deserve to send our bodies unrestricted love for being exactly how they are in this moment. The more we appreciate them, the more likely we will be to treat them deservingly and vice versa!
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!