The Season of Self-Love

As we enter February, so comes the season of love.  This is the season when everyone, everywhere, for the longest time, wanted to talk about how important it was to have a Valentine.

This year, 2025, we want to declare to be the year of making your most important relationship the one you send a Valentine to.  

You.

To quote actress Viola Davis, “You are the love of your life”.  And we could not agree more.

For those of you who don’t know, this is an essential element of yoga.  In fact, it is THE essential element of yoga.  The relationship we have with ourselves, honing our own discernment, aligning our actions with our values and beliefs, and working out for ourselves who and how we want to be in the world…well this is the stuff yoga is made for.

Adding into the mix is the idea of building a ritual, for us that always includes a cup of tea, lighting a candle, and pressing pause on our regularly scheduled activities.  This.  This friends, is the best self-love we can create.

So what would it take for you to make yourself your Valentine this year?  What would “put a spell on you”...about YOU?

Let’s take care of some basics of self-love first.

You need to know, from the onset, that you are still the same person you were before you took yourself on a journey to really love yourself.  You will still be messy, when life gets busy you will forget to clean the bathroom, and even when you adopt a fresh start or fresh perspective, you are still, fundamentally, you.  

Also, know that self-love is a slow process.  

Sure, you can cook things in seconds in an air fryer, but this self-love project is not that.  It is an osso buco that is put into the oven at around 5 p.m. for a 9 p.m. very late dinner.  It takes a while.  You can’t rush these things.  And you might find yourself hungry to move on to a new project well before your self-love dish has finished.  

Let us encourage you to find friends who are also waiting for their particular self-love dish to finish cooking, and make a party of it.  Someone can bring the appetizers, someone else the tea or drinks.  Enjoy each other’s company.  Ask questions about them that could also be questions about you.  Figure out what you all think about time and god and if you think humans are a plague on the planet or a wild and majestic population of creative, passionate, and interesting creatures.   

Find self-love friends.  They are the best.

One of the reasons you need those friends on this journey of loving yourself is that they will remind you that not only have you made it through your hardest days, but you have survived your longest nights. 

We find it unusual that people always say that made it through the hardest days when folks who have gone through truly trying times know deep in their souls that it is the nights that get you.  The nights where at 2 a.m. you wake up in a cold sweat trying to figure out the problem you need to solve because you can’t escape it even in your dreams.  

The nights where you toss and turn, restless, wondering if there is anything worse than the quiet of your own brain talking to you about how you flubbed, failed, and altogether let down yourself and others.  

Because when we say “This is the season of self-love”, we mean you need to take this season to love this about you too.  We mean that need to love even that version of yourself.  The version of yourself that calls you names and is convinced everyone hates her.  

That version needs some love too.  In fact, that version of you is the one that needs the love poem, the chocolates, and the trip to the movies the most.

A couple of years ago we wrote this blog called Your Favorite Self vs. Your Best Self.  Self-care and Your Mindset, and we still stand by the idea that you need to pick your favorite things about yourself and celebrate those things.  Being your “best self” is often a signal that you are on a journey to please other people, perform for others, or be what the world expects of you. Instead, for this Valentine’s Day, build a love song for your favorite self.  Find a way to remind yourself of who that version of yourself is, and sing to the heavens about how wonderful you are.  We promise you are worth it.

Want to find other folks finding their way in their self-love exploration?  Grab a month of yoga classes at the studio here, your first month is $60 for as many classes (we can call them love notes) you can fit into your schedule.  

Also check out our new tea, Love Spell, on shelves next week.  Just in time to remind yourself of how lovely you really are.  

And want to see our short video on how to create a ritual at home?  Snag it here.