If you want more energy, then you also want more love.

If you want more love, then you also want more energy.

Love and vitality are closely intertwined.

Think about how much energy and vibrancy someone newly in love has. This is because the energy of love is flowing in them.

Fear and depletion are also closely intertwined.

Sparks of fear may bring a rush of fight or flight energy from adrenaline, but that is followed by post-rush dips in blood-sugar levels that can leave you shaky and weak, and long-term anxiety and stress is very draining on your body leading to fatigue.

It’s really hard to do life well when your energy is low, and it is really hard to access into love when your mind and/or body are predominantly in stress and fear.

The first book I wrote back in 2005 was called Relax and Eat Yourself Gorgeous.  It represented the beginnings of my understanding of the key role stress plays in health and wellbeing.  When you are experiencing high levels of stress or ongoing chronic stress, your mind and body goes into reactive, defensive survival mode.  In this state the logical, rational and creative parts of your brain are deactivated, and your body’s ability to digest and heal are limited.  Over the long term your energy becomes more and more depleted.

If you want to move forward creatively in life,

if you want to connect in an open, loving way with others and yourself,

if you want to facilitate healing in your body,

then the first thing you need to do is reduce unhealthy stress in your mind, nervous system, body and life. You cannot effectively create anything new until you do this. Trauma is also stress, whether you are experiencing it in the present, or the after-effects of it are still stuck in your body.

That’s why I teach embodied mindfulness as the basis of everything I do. When you bring your awareness to your body in the present moment then you can begin to access into all the energies that are active and held within you.

Love is the key to all effective transformation.

All pain is a request for more love – Rebecca Davison

Almost all emotional wounding and trauma is sourced from a lack of love, or the perception that love wasn’t there.– Layla Martin

As you develop your capacity to love yourself, you develop capacity to hold loving space for others as well.  Modern therapy recognises that this capacity for holding loving space is a key foundation.  In The Heart and Soul of Change Barry Duncan and Scott Millar demonstrate that effective transformation is not created by specific tools used, but by the presence of the space holder. Transformation is the movement of mental, emotional and/or physical energy. Acceptance is the key to creating change and I give more information about this in my book 10 Steps to Happiness. I also give instructions for how to hold loving space for yourself.

Living in radical self-love means meeting every experience, thought, sensation, and reality with love: allowing the experience to have a flavour of love. It is possible to meet pain and discomfort with a loving awareness of how you are in the experience, this is not necessarily an acceptance that what is happening is okay, but that you are okay within the experience that you are having.