Chapter 23

Let yourself be filled with love. Love your world. Look around and just love everything. Wake up to the truth today and decide to love the whole universe and everything in it... including yourself!

Here are three ways you can practice the action of love:

1. Love your world through your actions. Hug someone today, in fact hug a few people. See if you can give out ten hugs by the end of the day. Send loving texts and give out compliments seeking nothing in return. Or be creative an express love in spontaneous ways without any limit. Love freely with no expectation.

2. Love yourself. Accept that your brilliance is part of the perfection of this magical world. Look in the mirror and find one thing you love about yourself (I love my smile). Practice a ritual of self-care like getting ok your mat or meditating today. Speak only words of life to yourself, affirm your goodness, forgive yourself and celebrate the miracle that you are.

3. Let all the love in. Share your vulnerability and drop your emotional armor when love comes your way. Sit with the feeling of wholeness and completion that is love manifested in your heart. 

I used to spend hours standing in front of a mirror holding my thighs from the back wishing I didn't have "fat thighs". Even though other people appreciated my small, compact body all I knew was that if a pair of jeans fit my waist they didn't fit my thighs and I hated it. The list of things girls can get body conscious about is endless, muffin top, hairy arms, breast size (too big or too small), flabby butt, and now... The NYT just reported that young girls are looking at their genitalia and seeking cosmetic surgery to modify their most intimate parts. It borders on body dysmorphia. 

I can really empathize though. The Victoria's Secret catalog was enough to give me an insecurity complex when I was growing up. I didn't have endless online photos and videos to compare every part of my body to. My thighs took the sole focus. My thighs were such a dead zone that I actually could not feel my hips when I started yoga. When I would try to tune in I simply got nothing back. Until one day during a meditation retreat I started to feel something, and what came through was deep sadness wrapped around my legs like a blanket. Every time I looked at my body and wanted it to be taller, longer, leaner, more delicate, refined, or just generally look like everyone else, those thoughts actually took up residence on my body and weighed me down. And until I felt them all nothing could set me free. 

After I felt my body I looked in the mirror and realized that there is nothing wrong with my thighs. I look back at old pictures that I never shared and clothes I gave away because I thought my thighs looked too fat, and I can't see it anymore. I just see a beautiful girl who needed to learn to love herself. And I want you to love yourself right now. 

Step one: Share your vulnerability. What body part are you self conscious of?

Step two: Feel your body. Close your eyes, calm the mind and cover your body in awareness. Let the emotions come.

Step three: Speak love to your body. Write down one positive thing about your body every day this week. 

Step four: Lift each other up. Compliment the person who commented you. 

Operate from the paradigm of scarcity and you will never have enough. But turn everything over to faith and even what little you have will feel like an abundance. There is no permanent satisfaction from the acquisition of material objects or wealth. Seek your fulfillment in the riches of the inner world and let that be your sustenance. Be filled, overflow with the beauty of the spirit and let every action come from a place of wholeness. Build your empire on the foundation of fullness. If you know that you are more than enough, that you are valued beyond measure, then you will never seek to fill a void with the pursuit of false happiness. The only true happiness, abundance and wealth is in the spirit. Everything will pass, the world will fade away but the inner light always remains. Surround yourself in the fibers of love. Be a millionaire in the currency of love. 

The hidden secret of success is love. Love what you do and let everything be a labor of love. 

1. Give What You Would Like to Receive - share love with someone today by giving them a hug, a smile, a kiss, or tagging them in this post, and spread the love. 

2. Change the Game - take an honest look at your life and find any decisions or actions motivated by scarcity, fear or only money. Change your paradigm and initiate actions motivated by inspiration and joy. Do what you love and let that fill up your heart and lead you to true success. 

3. Define Wealth for Yourself - Visualize yourself surrounded with abundance. Remember it's not an either/or game. See all the success you want in the material (if you want it) but remember to include the love that gives everything true value and meaning. 

The world is filled beauty, love and grace. You just have to train your mind to see it and focus on it. Make love and gratitude your daily news report. Get out of bed each morning with the thought, I love my life and be thankful for the blessing of another day. 

1. Love yourself �" Look in the mirror and compliment yourself. Find one thing about yourself that you just love. 

2. Love someone �" Look a friend or family member in the eye, tell them how much you love them, give them an honest compliment and then share a hug. Or, love a stranger, share a smile, give someone a compliment, buy the person in line behind you a cup of coffee. 

3. Love your world �" For one entire day do not complain about anything. Instead, look for the blessing in every situation. Wake up in the morning and say, life, I love you. 

Do not push anything. That which is meant to be will simply be. If you find yourself forcing and fighting, take a step back and breathe. Let it go, surrender. Recognize the limits of the individual will and understand that the desires of the ego will lead to suffering. But the desires of spirit set you free. Step onto the wings of grace with faith. Then sit back, relax and watch as the magic unfolds around you. 

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I had to surrender to being sick for the last two days, full on flu, sleeping all day when I had intended to film a big project for three days. Not fun to cancel, but necessary. And you know what, it was all OK. What are you forcing that you can let go of? It might be a pose that you're fighting with every day. Ask yourself how you can practice that pose without forcing your body. It might be a life situation where you're not getting what you want. Ask yourself what you can accept or whether you need to walk away. Surrender isn't about giving up, it's about following the path of least resistance. Surrender is about humility, forgiveness and faith. There is a divine plan unfolding in your favor. Do you trust it? You can't always see the big picture and sometimes the next step forward is into some murky territory. Surrender means being willing to take a leap of faith into the unseen promise of good things yet to come. You just need to say, I believe. 

To practice yoga is to be still, to find the stillness inside of yourself even amidst movement and then to live from that place of imperturbable peace. That moment before you're about to do an impossible lift up, just as l you're about to approach a challenging backbend, or while you sink deeper into a forward is pure stillness. If your mind is anywhere else you just won't find the strength or grace to enter the pose. Asana is the foundation of the experiential relationship to what can sometimes be abstract philosophical concepts. Stillness is an experience of the inner body. Stillness is a filter through which you view life. Stillness has an infinite depth and wisdom to teach you. Stillness speaks. Yoga teaches you how to listen. 

Called Nirodah in Sanskrit, stillness is the state of yoga. We run from silence and fill up our lives with music, TV, news, and text messages. Today stop running and just sit in stillness for at least one full minute, but longer if you like. Don't move, don't put on any music, don't check your phone. Close your eyes, drop your attention down into the inner body. Feel the still-point in the spiritual heart. Tune in, dial the frequency of your attention deeper down and just become totally and fully still. Then see what movement, what potential, what surprise may be born from the stillness within you.