Valentines Day. I have always tended to ignore it, brushing it aside as a ploy to sell tacky cards, over-priced chocolates and to fill mediocre restaurants with swooning couples.

But recently I have been thinking about it in a different way. The roots of this saint’s day are about outwardly expressing love. In yoga we are always working to open the heart, to find ways to love ourselves, and our lives more fully. So a festival celebrating love must be a good thing, even if the outward expression of it is a little kitsch.

And Valentines Day shouldn’t just be seen as a couples thing. If we are focusing on love for a day then why not direct some, or all, of that love to you!

In fact if we want to receive love we have to give it, and if we love ourselves we are much more attractive to others. This is as important for those in relationships as it is for people who are single. Quite often when we are too busy caught up in loving the other people in our lives we can forget to take some time out and be nice to ourselves.

We all want to be happy and when we love ourselves we love our lives, which makes everything, even the boring stuff, better. Lori Deschene, author of ‘Guide to Loving Yourself‘ hits it pretty much on the head when she says: “We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.”

We are with ourselves 24/7 so our first love, and our last love, should be ‘me, myself and I’. I challenge you to make the love of your life – you – feel really special on Friday. Give yourself a treat, a present, or just simply a big smile and a pat on the back for loving you, and loving life.

And if you can make it, why not join me for a heart opening Dru Yoga class this week? We will be working with the ‘Awakening the Heart’ Sequence and then lighting our ‘Inner Fire‘ for lots of natural confidence and integrity.

Listen to the playlist on Spotify here