how to celebrate non-romantic love to keep an open heart?
They say that love is the opposite of fear, that you conquer fear by finding love. What about those that are afraid of love, afraid of connection and of openness of the heart?
It’s Valentine’s day this week and, of course, I had to do a Valentine’s special.
I have had these goals to keep my heart open, not only metaphorically but also physically.
With an open heart with vulnerability, we can face what stands in our path with truth and honesty.
Why do I want an open heart? Why love?
We sometimes forget that love is not only romantic, but that love is everywhere.
Love is in the things you touch in what catches your attention. For me, love is in the Sun and the Moon, my constants.
For you, love can be different, but what its real is that love is a feeling that is expansive not limiting.
Love is what the Grinch felt as his heart was bursting open and expanding.
I don’t think you can feel too much love, but yes, more than what you have ever experienced, and I am pretty sure that it will feel Grinch-like.
We might be instants, and the people that come through our life might be instants as well. That could be the reason we are afraid to feel and experience love, because we are scared of losing it. I think love stays with you. You have it within yourself.
It is a feeling that you find with life. And when you stop and look for it wherever you are, you are brought to the present ,moment, to the now.
It slows you down and speeds you up at the same time.
We want an open heart to feel alive, to fully experience everything that it has in store for us. And we want love to move away from fear. We want to love to feel present even in the saddest moments.
Why do we celebrate love?
The short answer is capitalism. I’m pretty sure you didn’t expect it to go that way, right? But it’s true Valentines day profits from the way people show love to each other by giving things.
Giving flowers, giving chocolates, giving dates, wines, rings… e.t.c.
It is hard to escape that, and I am not saying that is bad. Valentines‘ can be pretty fun, but if what we seek is to celebrate love (unromantic) we have to do it a bit differently.
The longer answer is that we celebrate love for the reason we celebrate anything else. To commemorate that it exists, that it opens up to us and that it gives us eyes to see the world differently.
Some lovely ways to celebrate love and feel into its energy.
This is going to be about creating your own rituals, creating your own ceremonies, and playing with your own energy.
This is not going to be about burrowing practices or trying to explain to you practices that I have no idea about.
My idea here is to share with you different intentions and different aspects of love that I believe you can make part of your Valentine’s week (of course I have made it a week now).
1. A container- a space
This is not about the physical space that we have, whether that be a tiny bed or a big event hall. This is about the energetic space that we need to create for it to feel safe for us to open up to all of this love and abundance.
You can make this container whatever you want, but the main point is that general sense of safety of feeling like you can actually relax. We all know that we can’t relax everywhere we go (I mean, some people do have that super power but a lot of us don’t).
The space doesn’t have to be silent or apart from others if you don’t want it to, but it does need to be safe.
It is important to remember that love towards oneself is one of the most important kinds of love. Make space for love within yourself as well.
2. The activities
Like the child I am, I like to always have an activity in every kind of celebration. It is a way to unite people or even if you are alone, to keep the vibe going.
The most common activities are those that invite us to create something. So I believe that arts and crafts are always the best option, but you can also include games or dynamics that encourage people to open up their hearts and to be a little more vulnerable than usual.
Make sure that if you are having a party or something similar, people actually feel comfortable being that vulnerable, as it can be hard for some people to open up and we have to respect that.
3. Mother Earth
There isn’t anything more loving that I can think of that hugging a tree. With love comes gratitude, and a big part of that gratitude and love should go to the real host of the party.
Love towards the Earth, towards nature, to all of its resources is something that I believe always needs to be present in us, no matter if it’s Valentine’s week or not.
The connection that we have with her and the way that it accepts us and hugs us is a love that is so different from any other type of love (very motherly).
So I suggest including in your celebration whether that is a party of one or of a 100 a celebration of Mother Earth and all that it brings to us and allows us to see.
4. Community and Connection
Galantine’s parties are on the rise, and I completely understand why. As we have discussed previously, there is so much more to love than romantic love, and that is our other connections. Our friendships, our family and our community.
There is always time to appreciate the love that we have for those that are close to us and those that support us when we are in need.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much community we seek as human beings and how beneficial it is for us to be close to other people and share our hardest and the most important moments of our lives with others.
Be open to sharing this love.
When I was a kid, we used to write Valentine’s letters to everyone in our classroom and each of us would have our Valentine’s box, which we would decorate, and people would put cute little letters appreciating your friendship. Maybe we should bring that back.
Remember that giving back to our community is also a big way to show some love.
5. From fear to love
There is a constant shift that is happening inside of us. We are learning and we are growing. A part of that shift is shifting fear to love. As I mentioned before, a lot of people say that the opposite of fear is love, so ask yourself how can you find that love within your fears.
What are the questions that you need to ask yourself (which I have a lot within every blog that I have written) to find that part of you that has that inkling of curiosity? From that curiosity, from that what if is where you can feel the love bubble up and inundate your fear?
6. Heart openers. A lot of heart openers.
They say that your posture shows a lot of you. And we all know that sitting upright can feel a little uncomfortable, not only because we are not used to sitting like that, but because they make us feel vulnerable.
In yoga, heart opening asanas are for healing our heart and literally opening it up emotionally to the world. Opening your body like that also allows the flow of energy to your heart and allows the release of trapped emotions.
Before your celebration of love, you can do heart opening postures that set the mood for being vulnerable.
Prompts to open your heart
With all of this, I think it’s significant to add 5 prompts that will open your connection with love.
- Being vulnerable can be a hard thing to do. How are you choosing to be vulnerable this week?
- With your heart open, what fears are you choosing to dive into with curiosity?
- How are you choosing to express love in your community and in your environment?
- Where does love show up in your body and where does it come out from?
- Energetically, what does the celebration of love mean to you?
I think we never hate love, we sometimes get mad at it (romantically especially) because things don’t work out the way that we want or because sometimes it is fleeting and not permanent, but that is the beauty of life, the impermanence of it. Yes, it is sad, yes; it is weird, but at the same time, it can be freeing and again from that fear of love, we can find actual feelings of love.
For the sake of being just a tad more bubbly, I will say “everything is love!” although sometimes I also believe that it isn’t, everything is love because we can find that love within ourselves.
