The Month of Love!

We know, love is a huge topic, and to cover what we could say about love in this month of love and Valentine’s Day,
would take libraries full of books. 

So, let’s stay with the practice of love in its many forms with the person who most needs it: 

YOU.

If you are like most people, you are focused on helping your family, your friends, serving as a volunteer… you know,
the busy-ness of life. These are truly all acts of love, and hopefully they bring us a sense of fulfillment and purpose.
Yet we often forget we are the person we most need to love, first and foremost. 

Usually, we’ve been told as children that a me-first mentality is selfish and vain. However, as adults, that’s not what we’re talking about, because we have grown to understand the importance of using our gifts to serve others. Yet, our bodies are bound to tell us over time that our cup is empty, and we need refilling. 

Ironically, our most recent podcast featured Zabdy Love, a reiki practitioner, whose story gives us a great roadmap to how we can practice self love while still loving and serving others through our gifts.
If you’ve not heard of or experienced reiki, here’s a quick definition: it’s a stress reduction and relaxation technique that uses a practitioner's hands on or over a recipient.  Its goal is to channel "universal life-force energy" to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. 

Zabdy’s journey began as a teenager at a Christian youth event, where she felt the gift, yet wasn’t sure what it meant.
Through prayer and openness to what Spirit had to say, she eventually leaned into the practice of reiki.
She describes the feeling of the other person’s emotional weight, and helping them to cast it to God. 
Her process was one of asking for help and clarity, then allowing stillness to be able to listen. This really speaks to self-love in that we need to be a little vulnerable in asking for help, believing that we are worthy of receiving it. We need to be open to the idea that we are loved, are lovable, and when we ask for something, we will receive. Stillness is that space where you are open to hear what might be said, and a direction for your next steps. 
Zabdy also explained that once she had clarity on her gifts, she needed to receive them, accept that she was indeed gifted (as we all are!), and was shown love by these gifts to in turn share with others. Think for a moment when you were given a task that indicated you had the gifts to fulfill it, and what that said about your own self-worth. I hope you felt loved in that moment, and not scared or doubtful.

The next step is a big one in self-love…TRUST. 
Do you trust in others, especially in a higher power, to use your gifts? More importantly, do you trust in yourself?
If you know that you are truly a human BE-ing, not a human DO-ing, you know that your worth lies not in what you do, but who you are. You’ve been created, with love. It’s a healthy practice to lean into that truth. 
We need to listen to God, not our trauma,” Zagby explains, if we are to understand and love ourselves, to see our potential and use our gifts. 

We all walk through this process, everyday. We’re imperfect, but we’re invited to progress, and remind ourselves just how lovable we are. This is why we call it a practice, and we can often get there more quickly when we trust in others to help us along the way. You are invited to review the many practitioners at the Healing Institute to ask questions, listen to ideas and answers, receive what help is available and to trust yourself in the process.

The Healing Institute’s Moto is “Service with Love”.