As cheesy as the Valentine's Day holidays can be I kind of gotta admit, I love it.
We're told that this month is all about finding and cherishing someone outside of yourself which
can be wonderful to be sure, but I'm not gonna lie to you I use this month as a very selfish
opportunity to totally dote on myself and you can too. I'm Asia Suler at One Willow
Apothecaries and these are some super potent self-love spells to celebrate this month of amor.
Self-love has become a kind of buzzword in our culture, almost as much as self-care. And for
all that said as much as I've heard this word over the years I remember thinking "oh I have
that down." But reality is the deeper I go into self-love the more I realized that it's like a
relationship with someone else. There are always new deeper levels of loving and cherishing. So as
I go into this video I also want to acknowledge that this is something that I am working on. That
one of my life goals is to continue to go deeper into self-love. Because truly why else are we here
if not to appreciate who we are in this lifetime? One of the things that I think is important to
remember especially if you're having doubts or worries about narcissism or egoism come up is that
you aren't just a self, you have a self. So from this perspective is this idea that you are this
wider being this spiritual being that's coming here to have a human experience. And so in order
to have a human experience you have to have a self. So you're not just celebrating who you are,
you're celebrating the self that you've come here to be. So in this way of thinking it can sometimes
drain out some of that self-judgment that we have around celebrating our being, to know that
you have this self and it's a wonderful thing to celebrate the gifts that you've been given,
one of which is yourself. So here are three spells that I use to bring myself back into
loving appreciation and joy of my own being. The first one is affirmations everywhere. So
I know that some people are gonna think this is cheesy but I love it and in February I tend
to write down my affirmations about myself and I put them everywhere. Especially the
night before Valentine's Day I often set up a whole little gift or alter space for myself
to surprise myself the next morning. And I will have little affirmations on there like "you are
beautiful," "you are so loved." You know people I think sometimes get in this phase where they
think "ah, you know. affirmations—that's kind of cheesy." But really affirmations are spells,
spells being enchantments. And if we break down the word "enchantment" what we see is that an
enchantment is literally the speaking of a chant, the speaking of words that put people into a state
of wonder, awe, possibility. That frankly put you under a spell. So affirmations are spell
words. So remember that when you're writing your affirmations for yourself. What is it that your
self, the self that you have, needs to hear? Write them down on post-its, or pieces of paper,
and put them up around your house. You know really inundate yourself with these spells and so that
every time you see it and every time you speak it out loud to yourself you know that you're
actually casting a spell of self-love this month. The next thing is to begin the day with rose
medicine. Now I love this in particular actually on Valentine's Day but you could do this any day
this month or any day of your life. But roses are really powerful and it's actually something that
we've glossed over as roses have become really popular as love gifts, as Valentine's Day gifts.
We forget actually how potent and amazing this plant really can be. So one of the doctrine of
signatures about roses that's super important to keep in mind is that roses are these big,
beautiful, open, luscious, delicious blooms but the reason why they can bloom so wide and so big
is because they have thorns. So roses are these perfect emblems of a totally open heart of joy,
love and celebration and good boundaries. This is important when it comes to self-love. So in
order to really appreciate ourselves we have to know where that boundary is between the self and
other. So roses are really helpful with this. And especially if you have any influences or people
in your life that are feeding you negative stories about yourself, definitely look to Rose medicine.
If you're a sensitive or you're an empath, Rose medicine will help you hold a really cool, calm,
loving environment around yourself. Rose medicine is also anti-inflammatory. It's very nurturing for
the heart. And it is in general very calming, and even for some slightly sedative for the nervous
system which is just wonderful this time of the year. So you can buy yourself a bouquet of roses,
you can begin the day with a special rose elixir or tea that you've made. Sprinkle those rose
petals after your flowers are done into the bath or give them back to the earth afterwards. There
are endless ways that you can keep working with roses and just maintain that relationship. And
I promise you that your feeling of being able to have a good boundary will create so much lushness
in your life. The last tip is to do a journey to yourself. So I talk about shamanic journeys
on my blog and also here on my youtube channel and you can find out more about that in both
of those places. But really a journey is just going into a meditative state with a focus. So
your focus can be "I want to connect to myself" meaning the self that you are in this lifetime
or even other selves that you've been throughout your life. You could journey to a younger self,
an older self. But doing a journey to meet a self and really love up on them. So I had this
experience years ago but it was so profound that stays with me to this day. I did a journey—not
even thinking about journeying to myself—but I did a journey and I was in this wide landscape,
almost like the Great Plains. And I saw this person who was totally bedraggled,
this person who seems like they had really just been through the wringer. And I went up to her and
I realized she was me. And I realized it was the part of me that I was still having trouble loving,
the part of me that maybe I distance at times, the part of me that doesn't have her stuff together,
the part of me that feels really wounded or traumatized. And I looked her in the eyes and I
said to her "I will love you and protect you until the end of time." And I'm gonna tell you in this
journey I just had tears streaming down my face and this has now been an affirmation that I use
whenever I feel really vulnerable or whenever I feel like there's parts of myself that I'm having
a hard time looking at. I imagine holding my own self in my arms and I say "I will love you and
protect you until the end of time." And it's true because this is the one person that we absolutely
need to love and protect if we're going to live out this lifetime and be who were meant to be. One
practice that I have that is definitely cheesy but I definitely love it, is to actually put on a song
and for the duration of that song really celebrate myself. So oftentimes that means actually hugging
myself, I will twirl around sometimes, I'll sort of pat out my hair or put my hands over my heart.
But really loving up on my body like I would love up on my beloved. One of my favorite songs to do
this with is Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years" which is from the Twilight soundtrack, which
honestly I love as a self love anthem. You know I think it's great to apply it to other people too,
maybe that resonates with you, but when I listen to the lyrics I'm like this is about loving
yourself. And I actually—in one of my retreats—I had all of the participants listen to the song
and hold themselves the whole time in the midst of doing some pretty intense self work and it
lightened the mood and it brought such a feeling of silliness and joy into the air. So if you want
to you can give this a try, give yourself a hug, and just sink into what it is she's saying here.
So this month is all about the heart, right. This is the the center point of this Valentine's Day
metaphor. Well in Chinese medicine the heart is literally the place where our wider self comes and
sits to have this experience as a smaller self. We've been told that the heart is just a pump,
but if we look at many different cultures around the world we see this idea that the
heart is way more than that. That the heart is the seat of consciousness and awareness,
and that when we learn about the heart and really embrace all of the roles that our heart plays for
us we can actually open up whole new avenues of perception, magic, and awareness. So if you're
interested in this idea of the heart as a literal gateway then you can check out my online class,
Herbs for the Heartgate. The entire class explores this concept of the heart as a gate,
looking at emergent science, and talking about the different herbs and medicine making practices that
can help us really engage with the power of our heart space. The course also includes several
guided meditations that can help you drop in to this month of self-love and self-healing.
So if you like this video share it with all of your beloveds in your life. Let's really
celebrate this month for the possibilities that it has, these possibilities of really
loving and embracing and accepting ourselves for exactly who we are. And if you have your own
Valentine's Day practices of self-love I'd love to hear about them in the comment section below.