3 Crystals for Self-Love

Self-love can be incredibly challenging, but it is essential to our well-being. Explore how these three crystals can support self-love each and every day.

How to Use Nature to Practice Self-Acceptance

When self-judging thoughts arise, a healthy way to deal with them is to immerse ourselves in nature. Learn how nature can provide deep healing when self-love is challenging.

Making Peace With Your Body

Release toxic programming about how you look with guidance from psychotherapist and meditation teacher Andrea Wachter.

3 Reasons Why Healing Is Impossible Without Self-Empathy

Healing can often seem like an unclear process. Self-empathy is the perfect first step in any healing journey—explore three reasons why.

Knowing the Goddess Kushmanda: The Art of Self-Love

Kushmanda, mother of the entire universe, can guide you into knowing and loving yourself more deeply. Learn more about her, and enjoy a heart-opening rose recipe.

6 Easy Tips to Help You Accept Yourself

Self-acceptance doesn't always come naturally. Try these six tips to embrace who you truly are.

25 Healing Self-Love Affirmations

Self-love doesn’t always come easy, but affirmations can help. “I love who I am becoming and embrace all that I am” is just one of these 25 self-love affirmations.

Quiz: Where Are You on the Self-Love Journey?

Are you a self-starter, self-protector, self-apprentice, or self-love rock star? Take this quiz to discover where you’re at on your journey toward self-love.

Guided Meditation: Connect With Your Inner Child

Follow along with this gentle guided meditation to get to know your inner child better and help them heal.

5 Simple Ayurvedic Self-Care Tips

Ayurvedic self-care offers holistic, sustainable ways to nourish your body for the long term. These five tips will help you manage your life with more ease.

Relearning Ahimsa

"What if we can embrace ahimsa as total avoidance of harming anyone—not only by deeds, but also by words and thoughts? What if we start with ourselves?"

Do You Talk to Yourself?

Have you tried changing the narrative inside your head? Talking to yourself may just be a healing practice—if you do it right.

Practices to Reconnect With Your Body

Want to reconnect with your body but not sure how? Discover practical steps.

My Inner Child Work Isn’t Working. Now What?

When your inner child work feels stuck, that could mean huge progress is around the corner.

Self-Consent: A Self-Love Practice

Learn to listen to your internal “yes” and “no” signals. Teach your body that what you want matters.

Create a Solo Ritual to Call in Love and Sensuality

Self-love is the doorway to sensual connection—delight in your sacred self with a solo ritual.

Gentle Self-Loving Sleep Meditation

Allow yourself to drift off with the gentle reminder of all that is good and worthy within you.

Love Yourself Unconditionally

“I fall in and out of love with myself every year, sometimes on the same day.”

Podcast: Shelly Tygielski, Radical Self-Care for Social Change

Grassroots organizer and author Shelly Tygielski discusses navigating different opinions with others, showing up with your emotions, toxic positivity, and much more.

Shelly Tygielski on Radical Self-Care to Promote Social Change

Pandemic of Love founder and author Shelly Tygielski outlines how radical self-care can change the world.

Book Review: Sit Down to Rise Up

From Self-Love to Neighbor-Love

“I am who I am because we are who we are. This inextricable connection is what I call fierce love.”

Feng Shui to Attract Love and Magnetize Pleasure

Get your cosmic vacuum ready and begin to magnetize your desires.

16 Body-Love Affirmations

Spreading compassion and kindness starts with the self.

Show Up for Yourself First

The black box is awkward at best and excruciating at worst. But it’s where change happens.

Am I Loved?

Are you loved? Are you Love? “It’s so natural to think that to feel good about ourselves we need to keep replenishing our sense of being loved by others.”

Podcast: Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion

Self-compassion specialist Kristin Neff explores fierce and tender self-compassion and becoming a compassionate mess.

Chopra, Mincolla, and Bresson on The Way of Miracles

How do you heal? The Way of Miracles suggests a better kind of recovery.

Your Relationship Patterns Could Be Related to Your Attachment Style

Attachment styles are patterns of how we think, feel, and act in close relationships. Knowing the characteristics of the four distinct styles can help strengthen our ties to others.

How to Develop Transcendent Self-Confidence

“Through the consistent practices of self-compassion and meditation, I’ve discovered a few perspective shifts that have transformed my sense of self-worth.”

4 Practices for Cultivating Feminine Magnetism

Are you feeling stiff, sluggish—as if the energy within you is in stasis? It may be time to reconnect with your intrinsic feminine magnetism.

Loving a Postpartum Body

Your one-and-only body has done something transformative. Embrace it.

Fierce and Tender Self-Compassion

Kristin Neff, PhD, created the scale that psychologists worldwide use to measure self-compassion. Now she reveals the hidden superpower that makes being kind to yourself a primal force for justice.

The Stradivarius in the Spruce: Writing Heals

Let writing be your liberator. There may just be a violin trapped within you, just waiting to emerge.

February Is the Month of (Self) Love

Is love only for relationships? Discover new ways to be in relationship with yourself this February by committing to self-love.

Self-Love Meditation

“Self-love isn’t a given, it’s a practice.” Begin your self-love practice today through guided meditation.

Self-Love Practices for Valentine’s Day

Be your own valentine this year. Recommit to “the most important relationship of your life: the one you have with yourself.”

5 Qualities to Build in Yourself Before Committing

Everyone wants to be loved, especially romantically. But before committing to a romantic relationship, commit to yourself.

Practice of Self-Love

The practice of self-love isn't one-size fits all. Your body knows what it needs. Create your own practice by tapping into your emotions and listening to your body's signals.

Self-Care This Season

Self-care is vital, especially in the winter months when darkness—quite literally—settles in. “We respond to the weather, the seasons, the moon, our emotions, and the food we eat.”

Passion and Presence: Aging, Intimacy, and Mindful Sex

A conversation with sex therapist Maci Daye on the importance of bringing play, adventure, and curiosity into the bedroom and why “Great sex has more to do with the state of our mind than with the function of our body.”

Casting a Vote of Confidence in the Indwelling Divine

Passionate about voting this year? How many “votes” do you cast each day with your own actions?

The Antidote to Toxic Positivity

Difficult emotions are there for a reason. There is one cure for toxic positivity.

Writing Yourself Back to Yourself

Meera Lee Patel’s latest journal, Create Your Own Calm, is publishing as anxiety levels across the world are rising dramatically. Patel shared her creative process and personal journaling practice with S&H.

How to Forgive Yourself by Practicing Restorative Justice

“Learning about and trying to practice a form of restorative justice can help you work toward self-forgiveness.”

15 Mantras for Healing

Here are 15 affirmations for powerful healing support.

3 Ways to Find Your Way Back to Self-Compassion

Self-criticism is often an attempt to preempt criticism from others. Self-compassion can help you be more motivated by a desire for growth.

Poem: Gemseed by Mark Nepo

“Loving yourself is like / feeding a clear bird / no one else can see.”

Growing Apart? 5 Ways to Revive Your Couple Bubble

Has your once passionate relationship morphed into a roommate marriage? When couples grow apart they can try these five tips to reintroduce intimacy and revive their couple bubble.

Poem: Most Valuable

“You want to love fully, yet at the same time / you have to keep a measure of love / for yourself.”

Poem: The Jewels with Which to Make Do, the Jewels That There Were

"Because it means you see what beauty is / here, and what she ought to have: / jewels in a complete set,"

“I’m Committed, But I Didn’t Sign Up for Celibacy”

It's normal for sexual urges to slow down a bit as we age, but that means intimacy is more important than ever.

Practicing Radical Self-Acceptance

“With genuine self-acceptance, it becomes impossible to sustain negative judgments of others. We naturally do unto others as we do unto our self. We stop casting stones both inwardly and outwardly.”

How Our Wounds Can Help Us Heal

Unlocking the wisdom of past hurts can help you heal yourself and others.

Developing Self-Forgiveness and Self-Compassion as a Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse

"Tell someone you were sexually abused as a child and soon the word 'forgiveness' pops up. 'Have you forgiven your abusers?' the curious predictably ask. Why does this concern, I wonder, supersede others?"

5 Questions with Lissa Rankin

Guided Meditation for Self Love

Tantric Meditation and Orgasmic Bliss

Bliss and pleasure are enhanced by presence. Imagine making love that way.

Compassionate Unmasking with Kelly Boys

Kelly Boys talks about unconscious patterns of behavior and the benefits of being aware of them.

20 Affirmations For When We’ve Messed Up

Regain self-love, even when not feeling worthy of it, with these affirmations after mistakes.

Connect to Your Sexual Energy as a Life Force

When we're connected to our sexual energy and spirituality, we’re connected to our libido, our personal power, our sense of self, and our ability to go after what we want in life.

Grow-In an Internal Journey

Love yourself in a way only you can. Treat yourself as you would your most adored person, place, or object. Why not?

3 Steps to a Kinder Mind

How to cultivate and strengthen our capacity for kindness and compassion.

The One Relationship You Can Never Leave

Do the work of being in a loving, healthy, committed relationship with ourselves or suffer the rest of our lives with an internal roommate we hate.

What Not to Say to People With Low Self-Esteem (and What to Say Instead)

Some things not to say to those of us who tend to hate ourselves — and why, and what you might tell or ask us instead.

5 Ways to Claim Body Acceptance

Instead of making resolutions, reshape your attitude about your body.

#MeToo: A Teachable Moment

The nuances of assault, harassment, sexual advances and responsibility.

The Tao of Chronic Pain

Suffering is Optional. Here’s how to find the teacher inside.

Train Your Brain to Calm the Inner Critic

Our ability to be resonant with ourselves is a key for bringing healing into our life.

7 Gifts of Expansion for the Holiday Season

These practices will alter your relationship with time and shift your perspective towards gently open and fully present.

The Surprisingly Simple Secrets of Tantric Sex Part 3: Listening with the Body

When it comes to sex, listening goes a lot deeper than hearing.

Mindful Sex Part Two: Forget Goals

When the only goal of sex is pleasure through play for the sake of itself, we can surprise ourselves with how much is actually possible.

5 Self-Love Exercises

Here are five self-love exercises to incorporate into your weekly routine.

Audio Meditation for Connecting to the Heart

How to Believe in Yourself

If you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t trust yourself, here are ideas to nurture faith.

A Solo Journey for Radical Self-Care

A self-described mother martyr goes on a solo journey and rediscovers the value of her own joy.

Finding Rest in a World that Just Wants You to Keep Going

Step away and create an “oasis time” for restoration, communion, and grace.

The Magic of Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is about allowing our­selves to be us, to eliminate the need to compare ourselves to any­one else.

5 Techniques to Fight Back Your Inner Critic

Talk back to your inner critic with these tactics, including using funny voices with fake accents.

Cooperation, Meaning and Mission

What does it feel like to practice self-acceptance? This type of gentleness creates a whole new environment in which we can start to flourish.

More Reasons Why Social Media Makes Us Hate Ourselves

You’re not seeing yourself clearly, and social media may be to blame.

How to Stop Speaking Harshly to Yourself

Harsh self-talk is a pattern of learned behavior, and the good news is we can unlearn it.

Your Unchosen Lifelong Companion Is ... You

3 Radical Ways to Stop Beating Yourself Up

Here are three ways to banish the rituals of self-flagellation.

7 Self-Care Practices to Support You

Self-care is about nourishing ourselves mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

The Self-Loathing Look

Ten Ways to Overcome Guilt and Perfectionism

Sponsored Content from New Harbinger Publications

Are You Being Toxic to Yourself?

Sponsored Content from Tammy Adams, Intuitive Life Coach & Spiritual Healer

You're Not Fighting That War Alone

3 Ways to Practice Self-Compassion

Self-compassion can make a person feel more energetic, alive, and optimistic.

Doing Less, Being More

A cue for life and writing from Anne Lamott's "The Sacrament of Plop"

Eye Gazing: See Your Soul Shine

Excerpts from Yoga Beyond the Mat by Alanna Kaivalya

Fall Health And The 5 Elements: How Ayurveda Helps

Did you know that the seasons are governed by the five elements? As we enter fall, we are shifting from fire-dominated summer to wind-dominated autumn.

Listening to Polyamory

As more relationships open, I wanted to learn if this can be a spiritual practice for growing love.

Meditation Is Hard When You Hate Yourself

Maybe at some point you decided to try meditation. Maybe the practice you began back then fulfills you still. Or maybe not.

Self-Love as a Practice

What Causes Fear of Intimacy? 4 Reasons

For anyone who’s struggled with getting close to someone (even someone you want to be close to), listen up.

Receiving Compassion and Generating Your Compassionate Self

An excerpt from Overcoming Destructive Anger by Bernard Golden, PhD.

How Mindfulness Can Help Us Forgive Betrayal

Is it possible to forgive infidelity and to overcome the emotional pain of betrayal?

The Happiness Track: Are We Really Worlds Apart?

New research shows men and women aren't so different after all

Esther Perel: Rekindling Desire

Unlocking the mystery of sexuality, intimacy and desire in the 21st Century

The Science Of Touch

Scientists now know the mechanism behind the sensation of touch.

10 Romantic Love Habits

Valentine’s Day stirs up the concept of romance, but what, exactly is it and how do we create it?

Look At Me, Look At You

One way to rewire your experience of yourself and with other people is by paying close attention to eye gaze and its importance to your relationships.

Want to Be Close to Someone? Ask These 36 Questions

Can you create a sense of closeness or intimacy with a complete stranger? Psychology research says, yes, you can.

Nourishing Heart: Yin Yoga for Fearlessness

Nourish your heart with this yoga and meditation video designed to explore themes of self-love.

Heal Your Relationship with Your Body

Write Your Own Self-Compassion Proposal

The Cure for Laziness

When we call ourselves lazy, we do it innocently. Unconscious about what's really going on, the inner critic kicks in and decides the issue is our laziness.

8 Things to Do Before Starting a Relationship

70 Affirmations for Love

So the honeymoon is over? Use these 70 affirmations to love your partner then, now, and forever—no matter what may come.

How to Transform a Lack of Passion Into Greater Intimacy

How can a lack of passion in your partnership be a good thing? When you use this opportunity to grow into the next phase of your relationship: rediscovery.

How Living Authentically Heals Shame

Shame hides the best of our being and all we have to offer. Here’s a tested path for coming out.

3 Exercises for Being Kinder to Yourself

Healing Body Image Through Belly Dance

Appreciating Our Body, Imperfections and All

An Excerpt from Parenting with Presence

Cultivating Intimacy Through Meditation

Intimacy is, at its essence, a practice of presence: showing up and paying attention, whether it is to your best friend, the moss on the trees, or to the heaviness in your heart.

Four Approaches to Desire

A clear answer—even the answer you want—is just a few words away

The Five Fingers of Touch

Understanding your partner’s desires for touch is a key to restoring intimacy

For a Positive Body Image, Choose Self-Compassion Over Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is the practice of seeing yourself as above average. And in a world that's constantly comparing, keeping a high level of self-esteem may feel more like a challenge than a relief.

17 Questions to Ask Your Partner to Deepen Your Connection

Couples who have strong bonds remain interested in each other. Relationship experts provide meaningful, fun, or thought-provoking questions that partners can ask each other.

Book Review: Yoga and Body Image

Creating Deeper Intimacy

5 Ways to Let Love In

Experience new love and intimacy with these practices and mantras

How to Practice Self-compassion

The secret to empowered action is learning not to beat yourself up.

Nourishing the Different Types of Intimacy in Your Relationship

When we talk about being intimate in a romantic relationship, we often equate it to sexual intimacy. But sex is just one form of intimacy.

3 Techniques to Inspire Your Sex Life

Sex therapists and coaches share the innovative approaches they use to inspire greater intimacy

4 Ways to Constructively Criticize Yourself

Being hard on yourself isn't the way to become a better person. Here's why and what to do instead.

For Love That Lasts

Couples who have celebrated their golden anniversary share tips for a marriage that goes the distance.

Plastic Surgery: Six things I learned about this emotionally loaded, spiritually conflicted choice

Sacred Space at Home

Create an “inner sanctum” where you can connect with your partner.

4 Ways to Stop Shame in its Tracks

Shame sabotages our desire for emotional intimacy, says Brene Brown.

Lacking Self-Love? Adopt These 7 Habits

Brené Brown: How Vulnerability Holds the Key to Emotional Intimacy

And shame sabotages our desire for closeness.

True Intimacy

Sex Outside Marriage: Possibility or Pipe Dream?

Review: "The Intimate Life"

The Many Possibilities of Joy in a Small Cup: Yoga, Life, and the Second Chakra