Do You Belong To Yourself?

How fully do you belong to yourself? How fully do you choose yourself?

Can you imagine what life might feel like were you to choose to belong to yourself fully?

Many of us deny ourselves this belonging through the subtle ways we reject who we are moment by moment. When we reject parts of ourselves, subtly or overtly, we pull back slightly from life and our life-force. When we do this often enough, over time we find ourselves experiencing less happiness, less aliveness, and less capacity and willingness to participate in our lives.

When you notice yourself rejecting some aspect of who you are, I encourage you to try a bold intervention on yourself: speak directly to the part you would like to reject: I love and accept you exactly as you are. Simultaneously, deepen your breath—imagine drawing in the vast blue of the sky on your inhale. Hold the unwanted part alongside this vast, open sky of space itself and allow their proximity to coax forth another possibility: this, too, can belong; there is space for this, too; this, too, is worthy of being here. Not because it is your preference, but because it is here. As we learn to include more of ourselves, we begin to notice more softening and openness—not more perfection, but more relaxation and ease with what is.

Only in the last few years of my life can I begin to say I am meeting people who truly belong to themselves. Up until now, I would have claimed that I had never met one who was willing to love and accept themself exactly as they are, warts, cellulite, sickness, and all. There can always be a reason not to love ourselves completely: too fat, too old, too young, too poor, too much of this, not enough of that. As a psychotherapist, I have had the honor of intimately witnessing a full range of humans—from those who embody culturally recognized ideals of beauty and success to those who do not, and everything in between—and I assure you, each one finds a reason not to accept themselves fully.

And the people I am meeting who do? Are they some special breed of perfection? No. Nobody is. Nor will we ever be. These are simply people committed to courageously welcoming their experience just as it is, moment by moment. When the moment becomes challenging, they do not withdraw their unconditional love and acceptance from themselves. Instead, they hold, support, and accept themselves even more. Because when we least want to, we definitely most need to.

I am working with this in my own body through breath. When I feel subtle rejection or self-aggression, it is accompanied by a tightening inside and a shortening of breath. When I take a full breath that fills my lungs, solar plexus, and belly and gently billows my pelvic floor, I begin to soften and open. My craniosacral pump gently ignites, undulating with each inhale and exhale. I can feel the base of my body flowering open in receptivity while, simultaneously, the crown of my head opens to receive. My whole spine moves with my breath. In these moments, I feel less separate from myself and my environment. I become more like a beautiful jellyfish moving with the ocean—soft, responsive, and intimately connected to both myself and the world surrounding me.

How much space and breath are you giving yourself in this moment? How much nourishment are you allowing yourself to take in? How much life-force energy are you allowing yourself to participate in with every breath—whether or not this is a winning moment for you or a failing one?

The adage that we cannot fully love another or receive love from another until we love and accept ourselves is a familiar one. Yet again, how many of us feel worthy of belonging here in our own skin? Instead, we are often fraught with self-judgments lurking deep within our unconscious—judgments we encoded quite early as we attempted to please—and seemed to fail—our caregivers, as well as those we inherit from our families, cultures, and the collective.

I continue to arrive at this realization: the most direct path toward loving ourselves lies in how devotedly we can remain present within ourselves. The more deeply we allow ourselves to participate in our own being, the more deeply we become capable of participating with others and with life. The further inward we travel—connecting intimately with and fully allowing and embracing our own breath, sensations, and cells—the further outward we can reach.

It is a paradox and, seemingly, a natural universal law: the more completely we belong to ourselves, the more completely we can belong with one another and to life.

How deeply can you belong to yourself today—no matter what?

Please share this with whomever you imagine might benefit. I am also available for one-on-one support should you or yours so desire in this tender and radical process of coming home to and belonging to yourself.