Social Workout

Spirit Guides

Love Hurts. But Not Loving Hurts More.

Patricia Moreno (Via Angela Jimenez.)

[Hello Love Challengers! It's Monday, President's Day observed, and a holiday across the land. It's also Day Four of our challenge, and many of you have outlined amazing feats of love, and begun to accomplish them. Bravo! Thus, it's high time to hear from our challenge Spirit Guides. (When was the last time you had a Spirit Guide?) We asked all of our Guides for some wisdom on the subject of "How to train for love?" Patricia Moreno, creator of the intenSati method and general New York City fitness rock star, offers the following....  -The Eds.]

In my classes, I invite all my students to be "intenSati Warriors." An intenSati Warrior is someone dedicated to living a life they love in a body they love. Much of the conversation we have centers on how to be more loving, how to fall in love with yourself, your life, and others.

Here are two basic points: First, if you want to experience love, you have to be willing to be loving. The more you give love the more it grows, and yet so many of us walk around closed off, hoping one day someone will come along and melt the armour around our heart. Also, you can't expect to experience love if you focus on what is not going well, or what might go wrong, or on criticizing yourself incessantly.

The key is to practice, in as many ways as you can, every single day, to be more loving towards yourself, towards others, and towards all of life. Which is why The Love Challenge is a great idea. The things we do, think, eat, speak and believe every single day become the fabric or our being. Napolean Hill says "We can't become who we want to become by remaining who we are." And although that quote is from his book Think and Grow Rich, it is certainly applicable in every area of our lives.

If I am not feeling in love, I work out. It is my daily ritual. Working out is a gesture of love. Making time for working out is my way of staying in a high vibrational state of mind. The endophins that are released during exercise are the body’s natural painkillers, and they also play a key role in long-term relationships. Endorphins are released during sex; they are also released during physical contact and exercise. When you are feeling, cold, unloving and you want a breakthrough go workout!

The other way I suggest training for love is by practicing being your "authentic" self. What I mean is this: If you want to feel loving towards yourself, the first and most important step is accepting yourself as you are. “We all have light and dark sides," writes Deepak Chopra. "And when you are willing to be yourself, omitting nothing, self acceptance expands until there is simply nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide.”  When you are being yourself and allowing others to really get to know you, you are available for intimacy and connecting to another human being, and that is where love lives and grows. One of the affirmations I use in the intenSati method is “I love and accept myself exactly as I am. I am perfect with all of my imperfections.”

Dealing with the fear of being hurt is what keeps so many people unwilling to really give their hearts to another person. I remember talking about that fear with one of my spiritual counselors, and she said to me, "We are always going to be hurt by other people. It is inevitable."

When I realized she was right, that in relationships there will be times when we get hurt, I was able then see things differently. I no longer held my focus on looking for the one who may not hurt me, cheat on me, or leave me, but instead I could focus more on being more loving, intimate, and open, so that I would attract someone with the same quailities. I then realized that to avoid love because I was afraid of being hurt was a high price to pay, and meant I would never experience the true love I was so wanting to experience.

So, I suggest that instead of trying to find someone who you think may not hurt you, be the person you want to attract. Be loving, open, honest, trustworthy and communicative and any most dificulties can be solved in the presence of love.