December 17, 2017
Updated December 14, 2023
“I love you. I love you. I love you.” – you to some part of you (or you to someone else)
“It works best if you DO it.” -a student
It’s December and as many of you know, this is the month that I lead what I call the “I Love You” practice, and you can read more about what “I love you” means in this blog from 2016.
In case you don’t know about this yet, the idea of it is very simple. When practicing yoga poses, you will be focusing your mind on something internally the whole time, ideally. Whatever is getting your focus at any given moment, that is the you part of “I love you.” It could be a body part, or a range of sensations, or an emotion arising out of a particular part of the body or…. To that, you give the energy, the feeling, the attitude, the perspective, and the words: “I love you. I love you. I love you…” repeatedly at a pace that feels natural. If you’ve never tried it, do; it’s very worth the experiment.
This practice is one of those things that you can “fake it till you make it.” It works even if you don’t feel it yet, or if it’s not totally sincere. We sometimes have to “wash out” all the previous practice of the opposite thought before we can sincerely direct “I love you” internally to some part of our body or being. That being said, if “I love you” seems too insincere or too big of a leap, a slight modification of the phrase may be required, downgrading it to “I am willing to love you,” or “I am willing to learn to love you,” for example. I think it’s best to not back it up any more than “I see you,” if those other possibilities won’t work for you in some moment either. And if we find a particularly traumatized part of ourself, we may need to make it, “I’m sorry. I love you.”
One of the reasons behind this practice is to create a very safe, loving, friendly environment inside in which to do the important inner work of real Yoga, as opposed to simply exercising and getting a workout. It also helps us strengthen our ability to remain in love even when facing challenging situations in life.
You may have guessed that I do it at this time of year specifically for several reasons. One is that, this being the dark time of the year, it’s one way to bring some much-needed light to the inner world and thus to the outer world since they can’t really be separated. We spend time, energy and money on outside lights—which I enjoy and is festive and fun and beautiful, though sometimes excessive and wasteful. But it is insufficient to simply put a veneer of light—to light simply the surface or just the outside—when it’s really the INSIDE that so desperately needs the light. Nature is just fine with it getting darker at this time of year, obviously. It’s WE that need the light.
I also lead this practice at this time of the year because between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a lot of people have more interaction with their family of birth than at other times of the year. For many people, this is a wonderful thing, but for many others this is a huge challenge—at best—to stay loving, centered and focused on what they want to focus on and be who they are now, not who the family remembers or wants them to be. This inner practice on the mat can help us stay more loving and grounded in our true Self and not buy in too heavily to others’ thoughts, perceptions, projections and imaginations.
This practice—an internal process on the mat—also works well when applied to OTHERS: silently and repeatedly thinking, “I love you, I love you, I love you…” while mentally directing it toward other people. We can give that thought and energy even to those who present us personal challenges, whether they are in our family or otherwise. You don’t have to tell other people that you are doing it for it to work; in fact, in most, if not all, cases, it would be bad to tell them you were doing it.
After putting this idea into practice, several people over the years have told me what they considered as miracle stories. To their shock and surprise, they saw challenging relationships change unexpectedly for the better after they practiced this process for the month. In one case, a decades-old negative family situation changed for the better, far beyond what this person ever imagined was possible.
Though practically speaking it’s a very simple practice—whether done internally or directed externally—it is not necessarily an easy practice. One woman each year for about seven years told me that it made her angry when I lead it. Fortunately, at least now when she reminds me of that fact, her anger is in the past tense. That is, of course, progress! And she is not the only one. Over about 18 years that I’ve guided this annually, quite a few have expressed their initial strong dislike of this practice. Without exception, all of those have—over years—made self-admitted progress and in most cases, even gotten to like the exercise and genuinely feel, experience, and give love!
The reason for any negative reaction is that this simple practice is very confronting to the opposite voice in there. The inner critic, of course, has a lot of practice and is fairly content with being the preferred lens through which the Innermost Self views the world and the small-s self. In general, it won’t let go of its feeling of power and authority quickly or easily. When we confront it with an opposite voice—a necessity if we are to move beyond it to a deeper Truth—resistance will show up. If we can keep loving, keep thinking, and if possible, feeling “I love you” directed to whatever is showing up, then we are building our inner power AND our ability to love in all circumstances.
Here’s where we get to the above quote from the student. One day in class when I asked for questions or comments on the practice, she so humbly and honestly said, “I’ve been coming to class very sporadically for about seven years now, and today I realized that it works best when you DO it. Up till now, I thought it was just a mental exercise.” I loved her honesty and insight into the practice which to me indicates her awareness and progress in the it.
At times it may begin as simply a mental practice. With repetition, though, as mentioned above, the thought coupled with the mental focus will wipe away enough of the opposite voice that greater possibilities are experienced. The words and their meaning will then be experienced (felt!) and not just thought.
If you are doing the practice, and doing it doesn’t have you change what you are doing in the poses or how you are doing it—at least from time to time—then it means either that your love is perfected… OR you are on autopilot and have allowed an opposite thought to dominate. The opposite thought could be something essentially like, “I’m willing to say ‘I love you,’ but I really just want the pose to be some particular, predetermined way!” or “I love you, but I would love you more if you were as I think you should be.”
After that woman shared her observation, I started reflecting on how many things to which that statement—“It works best when you do it”—applies: basically anything that we already know would be good for ourselves or others! This being the end of the year and time to think about New Year’s resolutions, which I’ve written about before, I might suggest you joining me in contemplating what in your life—or your mind—would work best if you actually did it—if you took it from the thinking-about-it realm to the doing-it realm? It’s possible it was the first thought in your mind when you just read that. That’s how it works: our Innermost Self knows the best actions for us to take—always!—though the mind often makes it difficult to hear that deep inner guidance.
“I love you” is a very important practice because it can help us move powerfully toward the perfecting of “our” Love and will inevitably reveal where we are blocking the flow and the guidance of Love. The practice is important because when we finally get quiet in ourself, the obvious Truth dawns that IT (whatever “it” is) is all about Love—it’s ALL LOVE—and that ultimately we are made of Love, we are Love and that we live in Love. Those words, though, are meaningless if we don’t experience the Truth of them for ourselves. Please check out their truth in your own experience, or just chuck ‘em immediately and focus on the “I love you” practice and all your other good efforts for a long time without break and in all earnestness, to quote Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (I.14).
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