Self-Love Practices [Episode #520]

This week’s topic is: Self-Love Practices

I know we could all use more self-love practices because of this interesting time that we are in right now. The fact that some of our prior self-care, self-love practices like getting facials, massages, pedicures or manicures – we just haven’t really been getting for many months now.

It’s really important that we check in and we talk about practices that you can do right now, today in your home. In that really warm, cozy environment you can really nourish yourself on many different levels.

As we say in our Four Cornerstones, on a dietary food level, a physical body level, an emotional and mental level, and the spiritual level, these are the deepest core of us, our essence inside of us.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Sarah – CA

This may sound strange, but is there a self-love practice for when it comes to food?

Betsy – Alabama

I’m trying to love my body, rather than berate it every time I look in the mirror. Is there one practice you find helpful to stop the negativity?

Fran – UK

I noticed you’ve introduced the spirituality element and would love to ask if you have any tips on how to create a healthy spiritual practice?

Lee – North Carolina

How can my husband and I create a practice together that will help us to connect more? Do you do anything with your husband?

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Inspirational Thought of the Week

“She who looks outside, dreams. She who looks inside, awakens.”  – Carl Jung

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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• The Importance Of Self-Love and Self-Care Practices
• Self-Love with Grace Sylke
• Breaking Through Old Habits and Fears!
• Overcoming Negativity and Self Doubt

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:00 Hey Beauties, welcome back to our Thursday, Q&A community show where our topic today is Self-Love Practices. And I know we could all use more self-love practices because of this interesting time that we are in right now and the fact that some of our prior self-care, self-love practices like perhaps getting facials or my personal favorite massages, pedicures, manicures, whatever sorts of services we haven’t really been getting for many months now.

Kimberly: 00:36 So it’s really important that we check in and we talk about practices that you can do right here, right now, today in your home. And in that really warm, cozy environment and you can really nourish yourself on many different levels. As we say, in our cornerstones on a dietary food level and a physical body level and also the emotional, mental level and the spiritual level, which is the deepest core of us, our essence inside of us.

Kimberly: 01:15 So really important topic today. I’m excited to dive in, I’m going to be reading the questions today because Caitlin as in the last few weeks has been very busy. We have been working on different, or she has been working on, I’m not going to take credit for any of the work, but she has been working on different projects and with different teams and working to update our site and to enhance your experience even more over there mysolluna.com. And we have been working on the fertility and pregnancy and postpartum course quite a bit, which I am so excited about.

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Kimberly: 01:53 And besides yours truly, there are a plethora of other experts that we have interviewed and their content is part of this course. So I don’t want to get into it too much, but some amazing, amazing people. Anyways, I’m not going to go down that tangent, but anyways, the point is I will be doing the questions today, and I’m really excited to hear your questions and also, please leave us a review on iTunes, which is a really, really great way to support the show.

Kimberly: 02:27 So I thank you so much in advance. And over there, you can also subscribe to the show and that way you have this self-love practice of having tips and tools and hopefully beneficial new information coming in through these different shows every week. And as busy as you get, sometimes you can forget about tuning into something if you haven’t subscribed. So it’s a great thing to do.

Question 1: This may sound strange, but is there a self-love practice for when it comes to food?

Kimberly: 02:54 And all that being said, let’s get into our show today. I’m super excited. Self-love practices. All right. Our first question comes from Sarah and she is from California. California girl like me. She writes, “This may sound strange, but is there a self-love practice for when it comes to food?” Well, Sarah, I don’t think it’s strange at all. I think this is a wonderful question and it shows that all these areas of our lives, the different levels, the different layers, the cornerstones one really does completely affect the other.

Kimberly: 03:30 So for instance, the food cornerstone, there is a reason that all the different great yoga masters and teachers from India would always talk about diet. They would always teach their students how to eat. And that was because they knew that the food that you eat becomes part of your energy. And as I talked about in, especially my earlier books, the energy of food and digestion has a huge effect on your total vitality and your total energy levels.

Kimberly: 04:03 So this is an example of how food can affect your spiritual practice. And it’s hard to meditate if you have indigestion and you are feeling really bloated or you’re just exhausted at the end of the day. So again, it’s important that we create the right fitness and the right environment for our bodies. So incorporating another cornerstone so that we’re able to sit in meditation longer. So that’s another example of an inter linking between the cornerstones.

Kimberly: 05:30 When it comes to our bodies, we can create different practices within that specifically. So for instance, if we stretch out our hips and our knees in different yoga asanas, which are the physical poses, then we are able to sit with our spines upright and our legs either in cross-legged or full Lotus position, which is considered a type of an energy lock, just like [inaudible 00:06:03] mudra a shape that you make with your fingers is also considered an energy lock, meaning it keeps the energy recirculating within your body and it isn’t leaked out.

Kimberly: 06:13 So that’s a way that what we’re practicing with our body affects our spiritual practice as well. So emotionally, might as well talk about all the cornerstones at this point, emotionally, we know that it’s also hard to meditate. I keep referencing meditation and a spiritual practice because in many ways it is it, to be blunt, it is the most important cornerstone that will give us the most lasting joy and sustained peace. And out of that comes more balance with food naturally.

Kimberly: 06:56 It comes with a more balanced body and attaining the goals that you want in a more easeful way, as I’ve seen time and time again with people that I’ve worked with. And also what happens is that everything just starts to feel more harmonious. So you process your feelings and your communication and your relationships tend to get better as well. So Sarah, back to your question, it’s a very long intro, but an overall segue that I wanted to introduce with this concept because this is an example that perfectly highlights how the cornerstones work.

Kimberly: 07:40 So back to this idea about food. I think it’s really important to first of all, connect with your food as much as possible. So the most ideal would be if you could grow anything, even if it’s some herbs or you can sprout things in your kitchen. You can have planter boxes. Anytime you can source your food, there’s a real connection because you’re putting your love into growing the food, which is quite beautiful and nourishing.

Kimberly: 08:10 At another level, if that’s not possible, or in addition to what you could do is really connect with the food in front of you before you eat it, which is something that I do as much as possible, even if it’s quite brief when I’m by myself at lunch or in a much more expanded way at family dinner. When we are saying our gratitude practice and grace.

Kimberly: 08:34 We do say grace every night as a family. And my nose is feeling a little bit stuffy tonight. I don’t know if you guys can hear that. I’m listening to myself and saying, “Oh, I’m sounding a little bit nasally and it’s funny.” It just really suddenly came on, but it definitely has gotten windy here where I live in California really suddenly.

Kimberly: 08:58 So it’s definitely a vulnerable time for our throats and these little respiratory systems in general, of course we want to protect right now. So time to bust out the scarves. I’m going to get out by tomorrow. It just feels really good to keep my throat really warm and cozy and protected. So starting very soon, I’m going to be a probably daily scarf person. Although I know it’s going to get pulled on a lot by Mosey, who’s constantly in my lap and switching from side to side.

Kimberly: 09:33 So back to food. I love to connect with it. And what I mean by that is give thanks for it. I’ll think about again, if I have a little bit more time at dinner, I think about the chain of events that brought that food before me, just a general overview gratitude for the farmers and the people that work on the trucks and bring it to the stores and the farmer’s market, which is where a lot of our vegetables come from and distributed it to us.

Kimberly: 10:07 So I like to just think about that if only briefly and give thanks and really connect with the food and give thanks to the food.

Kimberly: 10:33 Being as close to the sourcing as much as possible and also buying locally is a really powerful thing that you can do, which is why I love farmer’s markets so much. I love that the vegetables were picked that morning. The farmer’s market I go to doesn’t start till 10. So the farmers literally tell me that they get up early in the morning and pick the veggies for the market that morning. So it’s pretty, pretty amazing. So sourcing is important and taking a moment and giving thanks for the food I think is a beautiful self-care practice.

Kimberly: 11:08 And what it does is it connects you to the source. Gratitude is a very expansive energy. It’s high vibration energy. It’s great for everything I think, especially even relaxing your body and helping to promote better digestion. And I do believe there is even some research around this.

Kimberly: 11:26 So great thing to do. I go back, my older listeners or listeners that have been listening to the show for many years, I don’t mean chronological age. I mean, time spent as a feel-good podcast listener might remember a couple … I’m so bad with time. But over a year ago, few years ago, my dear friend, Tony was on the podcast with we and we love him very much, but he was a chief researcher and he was so great at it. So he would probably know something off the top of his head or be able to really pull something from his storehouse over there, gratitude and the body, but anyways. A little flash to the past.

Kimberly: 12:17 But yes, so I think gratitude is just a wonderful self-care practice to bring in and to honor yourself and to honor the food and to bring ceremony and magic and ritual into everyday life, which can I think overall enhance our quality of life, which is what self love is all about. It’s a great question. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Question 2: I’m trying to love my body rather than berate it every time I look at the mirror. Is there one practice you find helpful to stop the negativity?

Kimberly: 12:42 All right. Our next question comes from Betsy in Alabama and she writes, “I’m trying to love my body rather than [inaudible 00:12:51] it every time I look at the mirror. Is there one practice you find helpful to stop the negativity?” Betsy, thank you so much for your question. I think that most all of us women have struggled with mirror issues, including myself. I wrote about this in the Beauty Detox Power, about how I would look in the mirror and just constantly think, oh, your arms are so flabby and your thighs are so big and you’re so fat. I would literally say that to myself multiple times a day. And looking back on it, it just, I think why was I so mean to myself? Where did that come from? Was it from imbalanced teenage hormones? Or just as we’re developing into adults, is that a phase? It just felt, not the part about beating ourselves up, but just the extreme levels that I was speaking to myself.

Kimberly: 00:59 Again, I think we’re all on our own different pathways and time frames and journeys and the ways things unfold and the purpose of this podcast, which is from my heart, is to share with you guys what’s helped me, which is really the core, the source of all my material and all of my books is through my experiences and then seeking out research around it and also working with a lot of different people that have had a lot of different experiences and issues and witnessing that and working with it has been a huge, huge, amazing aspect of education as well.

Kimberly: 01:48 Back to this idea of the mirror. Again, I think this is something that is going to take some time to undo, but little by little, it can be undone because it’s been undone for me. And so I know if I can do it, I know that you could do it, Betsy, and all of you listening out there that have, we could call mirror shame. I think it’s really important. For me, this is an example where we work more and more and more on the unseen parts of ourselves. Specifically cornerstone three, which is our emotional wellbeing slash mental health cornerstone and our spiritual cornerstone, because when we connect more inward, when we connect to our spirit, into our essence and to our soul, we don’t hyper-fixate so much on the surface and on the shape of our bodies. While we can do practices like focus on three things that you like about yourself.

Kimberly: 02:51 And I’ve written that, I’ve given that advice because it’s very pragmatic and it’s a starting place too. But at the same time, I think it’s really important and we also cannot get around the fact that when we connect in our body, we don’t overvalue the outer body. And the ironic part is that when we do that, when we don’t obsess about the outer body, it turns out that it becomes much easier for the outer body to shift and morph and unfold and develop into what we do want it to look like and how we do want to feel.

Kimberly: 03:29 What I would suggest Betsy, is again, this combination perhaps or the pragmatic approach of thinking about three things that you love about yourself and bringing that up when you are looking in the mirror first. And then secondly, I would say to work on your meditation practice and to really find the time to sit, ideally morning and evening, to start your day and to end your day, and to just take some time to breathe. We definitely have some free meditations over you at mysolluna.com.

Kimberly: 04:15 I think it’s good to have some guided meditations with whatever type of meditation you connect with. I have free ones I offer. Oh, and there’s plenty out there, plenty of different apps as well. Just find one that feels really harmonious to you, that you really vibe with and then you can hopefully focus on incorporating into your life in a regular way. And it’s just like anything else, when we really prioritize, focusing on our food, we notice a big difference. We notice a big difference when we’re cooking at home more. When we prioritize on our bodies and we’re making time for our yoga practice or making time to walk, we notice a difference in our energy levels and how we feel in our bodies. And so it’s the same thing with all of these cornerstones.

Kimberly: 05:10 If we really want to progress in our inner life, which will help you dramatically heal the outer. In fact, it is the antidote. It is the answer to hyper-fixation, constantly beating yourself, is to build the inner connection, which is where the real self love comes from. It’s where we connect to our deepest, deepest source, where the true safety and the true security, true confidence comes from. And the great news is that it is inside of each and every single one of us already. The work, our work, our daily work, our daily practice is to spend time connecting back in which we do through our meditation. And again, this is the most important part, Betsy, of healing body shame, self hatred, berating yourself when you look at the mirror, being negative with yourself, negative self talk, is to work on the inner love and the inner connection. And I promise if you do that, you will see a difference in your life.

Break

Kimberly: 06:13 All right. And I don’t say that about many things, but of this one, I am sure. All right. Thank you Beauties, so much. I love these questions so far with our self love practices topic. We’re going to take a short break and I’ll be right back right after the break.

Question 3: I noticed you’ve introduced the spirituality element. I would love to ask if you have any tips on how to create a healthy, spiritual practice?

Kimberly: 06:41 All right. Our next question back here from the break on our topic of self love practices comes from Fran in the UK, and she writes, “I noticed you’ve introduced the spirituality element. I would love to ask if you have any tips on how to create a healthy, spiritual practice?”

Kimberly: 07:01 Well, Fran, we were just speaking about that as well in the last question and we can go a little bit further with your question. Thank you so much for submitting it. And I send you love over there in the UK. A country I have spent quite a bit of time at a country that I love very much. Yes, the spiritual element is one of our cornerstones and upfront. I want to say that for me, I define the spiritual path as a path to connect with the spirit inside of each of us. It’s not about religion or dogmatic theory or exclusionism of any sort. In fact, it’s about connection and feeling oneness and feeling expansive energy and it’s so powerful. It’s like stepping into a different dimension. It shifts your life because it shifts the way that you look at everything.

Kimberly: 08:04 As far as setting up a practice, Fran, I would say one of the most important things on the path is consistency and regularity. Just as I was saying in Betsy’s response, that if you want to get better at making your own food, you have to spend some time testing the recipes, playing with the recipes. And so it is with your spiritual practice. It’s important that you are consistently spending time in your practice and then it starts to go deeper and deeper. It may start to feel like, oh man, there’s a lot of thoughts in my head. Am I just wasting my time? Am I doing this right? What am I supposed to be doing? But then eventually over time and with guidance and a path, then you will be able to go deeper and deeper into the practice.

Kimberly: 08:53 I would say that you want create a system in the morning. For me when I wake up, I may cuddle for a little bit, but then I sit upright with my loved ones because by that time my children are in bed on one side, or one of them is on my chest and one of them is next to me and my husband’s on the other side. I sit up cross legged, one’s in my lap, one’s still next to me touching my leg and hubby’s touching the other leg so I’m connected to the family, but I sit upright and that’s how I meditate before I do anything else. Before I look at my phone, before I really open my eyes, I may take a sip of water, but I don’t get up.

Kimberly: 09:41 For me, I’ve established that that really works for my practice and keeping it regular is the timing. I know for me, if I do it right away, I can drop in. I’m not immersed yet in the world and the news and social media and email and texts that have come in through the night. I put my phone in wifi mode so I don’t get the texts until, then I open my phone. I’m like, “Ah.” They start to come in and sometimes, sometimes not. Depends on the day. I would say that creating a time and a rhythm to when you incorporate it. And then for me, I start to flow into the other parts. I go into the kitchen, I turn on the water for hot water with lemon, taking my SBO probiotics. And then, I don’t make the smoothie every day. I make batches, the GGS. And so, I might have some smoothie ready. I like to take it out around that time as I do with all my smoothies, because I don’t like them too cold. I like them to warm up a little bit closer to room temperature.

Kimberly: 10:52 Anyways, and so the day continues and same thing in the evening. For me, I like to meditate in the same spot actually, but usually in the evening, it’s my time to calm down and ground myself. sometimes I actually move Mosey, usually sleeping, I move him off my lap for a moment and I just have a little bit of space to myself. That’s my practice. I would say Fran, feeling into what feels good to you, of what you can right now in your lifestyle do consistently and sticking to it. And again, I’ll iterate, we had the free meditations from yours truly over at, mysolluna.com and you can check them out there.

Kimberly: 11:37 And I’m also doing a weekly different meditations over on Instagram. I usually post them on Wednesdays or so. Sometimes my days flip a little bit, but my Instagram handle’s @_kimberlysnyder. And you’ll see that one of my IGTV series is actually called Meditations. You can check them out over there as well if that’s a convenient way for you to access finding the meditations.

Question 4: How can my husband and I create a practice together that will help us connect more? Do you do anything with your husband?

Kimberly: 12:06 Okay. Thank you so much for these questions so far, you guys. I am just loving them and I’m loving this topic. We have one more who’s from Lee in North Carolina, and she writes, “How can my husband and I create a practice together that will help us connect more? Do you do anything with your husband?”

Kimberly: 12:29 Yes, yes, yes. I love this question. We have many practices and I think that bringing ritual and practice and ceremony in different ways to your relationship is a very powerful way to connect with your partner, to deepen your love and to benefit the both of you. Connection is so healing and it’s so powerful. Deep, deep soul connection, especially. When you have your soulmate friends and if you have been lucky enough to meet your soulmate, and maybe you’re someone that is now ready for your soulmate, and that’s exciting as well. And I would say to create the space for feeling the energy that you want to feel in that relationship. And I could say that’s exactly what I did and that’s exactly what I got. I would just imagine. I was coming out of another last relationship. I took five months to really heal and to do my practice and to go into myself and then when I was starting to get clear or I came out and then I had some meetings and a shorter relationship that was with a really nice person.

Kimberly: 14:08 But then I got really clear about what all that I wanted. And when I got really clear is when I found it. I don’t know how else just to put it, but that simply. I think clarity is really, really important. When you’re with your partner, present or currently magnetizing in, shall we say. I’ll share some of the practices that hubby and I do that I love. First of all, we, as a family hold space for the kids, Mosey’s too young still, but we hold space for family dinner and grace and gratitude and we often speak about each other and that feels really nice and it feels really connected to do as a family. We also do two person circles. And so the Solluna circles, it’s a whole other topic, but involves different aspects of sharing and meditating together and doing breath work and there’s so many different ways that we do circles.

Kimberly: 15:20 We are actually revamping our Total Circle Program very, very soon for you guys. It’s in the works now. I’ll tease it and say that I’m super excited for this to come about because I think it’s just going to be a wonderful offering with inspiration that you can work with it a little bit on a daily basis, but that’s a way to integrate, integrate, integrate into your energy field and benefit. I’m really excited about that.

Kimberly: 15:56 We do these circles periodically and we connect daily. We have, I would say almost daily bedtime chats and we talk about our day. We put down the phones and the screens and we cuddle and we connect with each other, which is really, really important for me mentally and emotionally and spiritually with my partner. And we are very physical as well. I will say in our physical practices, in our sexual practices, I’ll leave it at that, but I’ll say that we make space for that as a regular part of our life.

Kimberly: 16:46 And I think that life can get busy for all of us and so it’s important to honor our sexual connection with our partner because our sexual connection with our partner is the only person that we have that relationship with and it’s a beautiful way to express love. And so again, everything is multilevel, just like the cornerstones so we want to create practices for our partner, ideally in each of the cornerstones. It’s funny, I just sort of naturally, I think I didn’t do a body one, but food wise, gratitude practice around meals. Body wise I would say that we love to walk together and we have a dog, Jackie and it’s nice to walk with him on the beach, which we used to do more often when we were living in Venice. Now we do more mountain walks and emotionally the bedtime chats and the circles and spiritually part of that is really, really connecting authentically from the heart and also meditating together.

Thought of the Week

Kimberly: 17:55 Wow. What a great show. I really loved this one, especially. Thank you guys so much for being here, being part of the community and I love you. And I can’t wait to connect with you more. As we are leaving the show, I just want to leave you with a thought of the week. This is an adaptation of the Carl Jung quote, “She who looks outside, dreams. She who looks inside, awakens.” Goes along with all our talk today about spirituality and cultivating our inner world and nourishing our inner world, which will benefit everything else, including the other cornerstones, including our relationship with food and our physical bodies and our emotional body as well. I will be back here Monday for our next interview podcast. I am on Instagram everyday @_kimberlysnyder. The website, mysolluna.com. Lots of different ways to connect with me. Sending you so much love from my heart to yours. I’ll see you back here soon. Till then, take care. And again, lots of love.