Madly in Love with ME. Christine Arylo

good can come to me and others from my choosing to love myself.”

      Then stop, keeping your hand on your heart, and feel the words and their superlove vibe sink in. Notice any shifts in your feelings and body sensations. This is what giving love to yourself feels like. It’s good, isn’t it?

      Love Note: I’d never ask you to do something I haven’t done myself! I always experiment with myself (and with other daring souls) before recommending a Daring Act of Love. If you’d like to see a live video demo of me in this Daring Act of Love, check out Self-Love TV, which I created just for people like you who make the daring choice to choose self-love. Go to www.SelfLoveTV.com to access these videos, where you’ll be welcomed into a playground of self-love — seriously, it’s a self-love candy land!

      As you move forward, challenge yourself to dive into each misunderstanding and find what’s there for you to release, so that you can rewire your mind with a new self-loving truth. Answer the questions honestly, take the Love Baths when needed, and engage in the Daring Acts of Love. Just reading the words won’t work. You need the combination of the power of the mantra (spoken word), movement, and brain science, with a twist of good old-fashioned fun and comfort-zone-pushing, to get results.

      The impact? Liberation to love, baby. Liberation to love!

      Note: If you still can’t get past feeling silly about taking this Love Bath, ask your inner seven-year-old to do it for you. Remember that little girl you invited to take this journey with you? She doesn’t care what anyone, including you, thinks about how silly she looks!

      Misunderstanding #1. Self-Love Means Masturbation

      When I made the announcement that I was leaving my corporate job to go out into the world to teach self-love, I’ll never forget what one of my male clients said to me. As if stating some undeniable truth that I was totally oblivious to, he said, “Christine, you can’t go out into the world and talk about self-love. Everyone will think you are some kind of crazy sex lady talking about masturbation!” He was dead serious. Now, I won’t even get into why people think talking about sex and masturbation is crazy (I’m pretty sure that sex is meant to be a natural part of our adult lives), but the fact that people’s minds go directly and narrowly to this place is just wrong.

      Love Truth Love requires intimacy, not sex. Self-love is nothing to be ashamed of.

      Regardless of your beliefs about masturbation, whether you’re pro, con, or neutral, linking self-love immediately to masturbation, as if the two were one and the same, is like saying one drop of water makes up the entire ocean. Masturbation could surely be categorized as part of selfpleasure, and self-pleasure is certainly an aspect of self-love, but self-love is a vast concept and a deep reality that encompasses much more than physical self-pleasure. Not to mention the fact that there are lots of ways to create pleasure for ourselves that have nothing to do with sex — long walks in nature, ice cream, spending all day in bed reading a good book, yummy food, cashmere everything, shoe shopping, and anything that makes you laugh. And truth be told, we could all use a lot more of the joy that self-pleasure can bring us when we are not operating under the misunderstanding that self-pleasure, and therefore self-love, is taboo. Just imagine if your life were bursting with pleasure — how fulfilled, happy, and cared for you would feel. Nothing wrong with that at all!

      Let’s clear the air and clear the way for more self-love for you, shall we, by releasing this misunderstanding and giving you new love- generating information to operate from. What masturbation and self-love do have in common is that they are both taboo words in our culture. Not taboo because masturbating or loving yourself is inherently wrong, but taboo because we are a people bred to be extremely uncomfortable with being intimate, both with ourselves and with others. Just mentioning the word intimate (another misunderstood word) can freak people out and make them squirm. I remember once telling my sister that I wanted to have a more intimate relationship with her. Imagine my reaction when, in reply, she jumped off the couch, her face completely contorted in horror, and she said to me, “What? You mean have sex with me?” Of course that’s not what I meant! But because the words intimacy and sex have become so interlinked, although wrongly so, people confuse sex with intimacy all the time. But in fact, intimacy has nothing to do with whether your clothes are on or off your body.

      The best definition I’ve heard for intimacy is “into-me-see,” as in letting someone see the truth of who you are, see deeply into your heart and soul. And while this may feel scary — expressing and sharing your true self with another, or with yourself for that matter — it does not require removing your clothes. But it does require letting someone past your protective walls, where they can see the truth of who you are. But before you can experience the deep levels of love you desire from another, you must into-me-see with yourself first, which is exactly why self-love is such a positive act.

      Masturbation and self-love also have another unfortunate trait in common. Just as we’ve been taught to be ashamed of our sexuality, we’ve also been taught to hide our full brilliance and abstain from too much pleasure. As a result, we tamp down both, and then we act out our repressed sexuality, self-expression, and need for pleasure in all sorts of unhealthy ways — addiction, codependency, and dishonoring our bodies (to name a few), all while lacking awareness of our impact on others. The world would be such a better place if our beliefs liberated us to instead embrace and express our sexuality and brilliance and receive great pleasure in both empowering and sacred ways. Owning and becoming comfortable with expressing your sexuality and full brilliance, and making self-pleasure an everyday requirement, are musts for any woman on a self-love journey.

      Answer each question, yes or no:

      1. Do you think that masturbation and self-love are the same or closely related?

      2. Would you choose not to speak about loving yourself for fear that people would think you were talking about masturbation or something else that “should” be talked about only in private?

      3. Are you uncomfortable with the idea of being intimate with yourself?

      4. Do you lack emotional and physical intimacy with yourself? If you don’t know what that means, the answer is yes.

      If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this reflects a misbelief that’s influencing you. Stop here so you can take a Love Bath and scrub off the dirt and rub in the love. If you answered no to all four, move on to misunderstanding #2.

      Love Bath Step 1. Scrub off the dirt.

      Refer to the Love Bath directions (page 22) to get the full instructions. Choose from one of the three release statements listed below, or use all three. Don’t think too much; just go with what feels right.

      “I release the belief that self-love is the same thing as masturbation.”

      “I release the belief that loving myself should be done only in private.”

      “I release the belief that loving myself is something to be ashamed of.”

      Say your release statement(s) out loud, over and over, for at least a minute (setting a timer is a great idea) while wiping your body with your love loofah. Keep going until you feel some kind of physical release in your body. If you feel a little weird and have a hard time getting into it, put some energizing, nonvocal music on in the background to help get you moving, or stomp your feet up and down while you vigorously love-loofah yourself.

      Love Bath Step 2: Rub in the love!

      Now slow down, close your eyes, breathe, and move your hand in clockwise circles right over your heart, touching your skin, repeating the new belief, this Love Mantra, until you feel the love sink in. Rub the truth about love right into your heart, body, mind, and spirit:

      “The more I love myself, the more