With all the images and messages of love in the media this month, why not take the time to awaken to your own sexual self-love? What does that even mean?

I wrote an article for the February Issue of "Vision Magazine" on this topic, while delving into body-image, meditative masturbation, and self-expression. I've posted the beginning of the article here, with the link at the bottom if you would like the read the entire piece.
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Learning to love ourselves can be a challenging task and a long journey. Lying at the core of self-love are the abilities to know ourselves, like ourselves, and appreciate our strengths, while accepting our weaknesses. Expanding self-love into the sexual arena can offer even more avenues for personal growth. Unfortunately for many people, self-love and sexuality are mutually exclusive. Sexuality is often relegated to its own discrete box and does not receive the same knowledge, appreciation, and acceptance as the development of self-love and personal transformation in other areas of our lives.

When expanding self-love to our experiences and meaning around sexuality, it may be easier to first state the opposite of sexual self-love: guilt, shame, embarrassment, disconnection, body-loathing, and lack of knowledge. These emotions and mental states are the result of fear-based learning about sex and sexuality from various sources, such as restrictive religions, embarrassed parents, ignorant teachers, and idealized media images. If you begin with sexual topics where you feel anxiety or discomfort, you can identify where you have opportunity for immediate growth. The areas of body-image, masturbation, and freedom of expression can be a great place to start.
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To read the entire article, please follow this link to Vision Magazine.