Peace, Love, and Yoga

It’s February and love is in the air. During this month we tend to think of love as romantic love, but “If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.” (Reference from Love Actually, if you haven’t seen it, drop everything and go watch it now!!).

The first tenet of the Eight Limbed Path of Yoga, ahimsa, is really just LOVE. Ahimsa means “nonviolence” or “non-harming” but at its core it’s a directive to center all of our actions in love. Sounds easy enough, right? But whoa……wait……..what about those people we strongly disagree with? You mean, we have to love them too? Of course! Love doesn’t mean that you like someone, that you agree with them or that you think their actions are excusable. Love means that you can see them as spiritual a being, that you understand we all see the world based on our own conditioning. Love is a commitment to see past that conditioning and treat one another as if we are sacred, holy beings.

Love comes naturally, but the world conditions it out of us. The good news is, love is like a muscle, even if we’ve let it atrophy we can build it back. One way to flex that love muscle is with the practice of metta (loving-kindness) meditation. During metta meditation you offer feelings of love and compassion to yourself, those close to you, those who you feel indifferent about, and those who you struggle with - eventually extending this loving-kindness out into the world.

Want to practice flexing your love muscle this month? Click the button below to follow along with the guided meditation.