Self Love Guided Meditation: How to Practice and the 11 Primary Benefits

Regularly practicing a self love guided meditation brings benefits to every area of our life, including benefits we can’t even imagine before starting. Whether we realize it or not, self love lies at the heart of literally everything. Our capacity for self love impacts our moods, inspiration, motivation, and confidence. It impacts our reactions, anxieties, attachments, and addictions. Our health and wellbeing depend on it. And, as much as we might like to deny it, our level of self love determines how much love, care, and respect we feel, or don’t feel, in all of our relationships – from romantic to familial to all of those in between. 

Since our capacity for and skill with self love has such an enormous impact on the quality of our entire lives, having supportive tools, like self love meditations, matters. Developing our ability to relate consciously and authentically with ourselves allows us to show up fully and authentically in all of our relationships. With that in mind, as we commit to having a more loving relationship with ourselves, it’s important to notice the barriers we’ve built against self love so that we can eliminate the beliefs and conditioning that tell us we shouldn’t love ourselves. A self love guided meditation offers us a direct route to both eliminating anything that stands in the way of a strong, and deeply loving relationship with ourselves, as well as practice in compassionate care and kindness with ourselves.

If any part of you feels a resistance to the idea of loving yourself, you’re not alone. Many of us have been taught to set ourselves aside and sacrifice our own wellbeing in favor of another. If you’ve been told this, if giving to others has felt like your path to receiving love, then of course, you will find the idea of self love a bit intimidating, if not outright challenging. 

Take your time on this journey of self love, and simply discover how a self love meditation can support your intentions. 

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The absence of self love

A good self love guided meditation will serve many purposes. To begin with, the relationship you have with anyone else can only be as strong as the relationship you have with yourself. In other words, if you don’t know, honor, respect, and express yourself then the person you are in a relationship with doesn’t truly know you, nor do they know what matters to you. That means they can’t love and care for you in the ways you most need. 

Also, when we have a weak relationship with ourselves, wel tend to feel like our needs and desires don’t matter, or that they pose an inconvenience to others. If we feel our needs are problematic we’ll deny them for as long as we can. Yet eventually our unmet needs rise to the surface and turn into resentments that destroy relationships. Similarly, when we feel like we don’t matter, we tell the people we’re in relationship with that something is ok with us, when it’s truly not. In the absence of self love, we “go along to get along” but that always damages a relationship in the long run. 

Additionally, if we are unkind and unloving to ourselves, if we beat ourselves up, it makes it difficult to imagine that we deserve love. If we don’t feel we are worthy of love, it will motivate us to settle and self abandon as we strive for love. Unfortunately in all our striving, rarely do we actually feel loved. This is where a regular practice with a good self love guided meditation makes a big difference. 

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The purpose of a self love meditation

Let’s look closer at the many purposes that self love guided meditation will serve.

First and foremost, taking the time to do a self love meditation, by definition, builds and strengthens your relationship with YOU because it invites you to get present to you, to get to know you. As you build that conscious connection with yourself, you will begin to feel more confident, become more sensitive to your intuition, and even trust yourself enough to follow it. 

When you strengthen the relationship with you through guided self love meditations, you will also start to discover your own true needs, wants, desires, and boundaries – the knowing of which is critical to a healthy conscious relationship. Eventually, as you come to know your true self, you will then start to express yourself in conscious ways. In turn, your life and other relationships will begin to transform right before your very eyes – all because you built a loving relationship with yourself. 

As we mentioned earlier, doing a self love guided meditation regularly will help you identify and resolve various beliefs, stories, and vows you may hold, consciously or unconsciously, that tell you it’s not ok to love yourself – or that tell you you’re not worthy or enough for the love of another. Of course, this paves the way to much better relationships with everyone else. 

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Benefits of a self love guided meditation

Now that we know the purpose of self love meditations, let’s consider all the benefits you’ll reap when you decide to make self love meditation a regular, even daily, practice in your life. 

Here are just a few of the many benefits… 

1. You’ll make better decisions because you’re more in touch with your true feelings and needs.
2. You’ll feel better because you learn to honor and release emotions so that they don’t get and stay stuck.
3. If you need to cry, a good self love meditation can help allow the tears to flow and release you from the stuck emotion, often brightening your mood and day.
4. Even if it has been hard to express your needs and desires in the past, as you get to know and acknowledge them each day in your meditation, you’ll naturally have the courage and inspiration to express them, allowing others to better support you.
5. You’ll begin to feel a new level of self appreciation and satisfaction because you are finally taking the time to see, acknowledge, and even celebrate the things you’ve done well.
6. You’ll learn to forgive yourself and let go of self judgment for mistakes you think you’ve made, so that you don’t carry judgments or self recrimination forward as baggage that limits your future progress. 
7. You’ll become better at receiving as you begin to recognize your own worth, value, and lovability.
8. You can release perfectionism and embrace the natural and beautiful imperfections we all have so that you have a deeper sense of peace in your life.
9. You’ll start to drop the unrealistic expectations and demands you have of yourself, and start to develop a kind and compassionate attitude toward yourself and others.
10. You’ll give yourself permission to let go of what no longer serves you – whether that be permission to stop overdoing and overgiving or if that is permission to say “no” to activities that don’t align with your heart and soul.
11. Because you know you more, you’ll be less likely to build resentments and act with the self abandonment that harms relationships. 

Finally, because Love itself always invites us to relax, your regular self love guided meditation can help you to step back from the frantic busyness and frequent stresses of today’s world so you can simply relax and be nourished by the slow pace. 

Depending on your current relationship with yourself, you’ll see these benefits start to arise in perfect timing. For most, the shifts will happen gradually. If you already treat yourself with kindness and compassion, then the deeper benefits of your self love guided meditation will arise more quickly. If on the other hand, you’ve tended to carry a lot of self judgment, and even self hatred, the process can take a bit longer. 

No matter where you start, the journey to self love is well worth taking. The further you feel from self love now, the more you are encouraged to stay on the path of regular practice. Self love will, without a doubt, come if you practice. And, of course, if you struggle to get started, please seek support and join a community of like minded souls. 

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Self love guided meditation outline

A supportive self love meditation practice can take many forms. Since we have many dimensions to our relationship with ourselves, our self love guided meditations will also have many dimensions. Below you will find an outline of many different practices that you can incorporate into your personal self love meditation practice. Please know that there is no right way to do a self love meditation. The best way is whatever way it happens for you and each time will be different of course. 

Some days you can do a longer meditation and connect with more aspects of yourself and your love. Other days, when available time is shorter, you can choose what feels most supportive to you. 

As we now list the various potential parts of a self love meditation, you’ll always want to start with getting present with yourself, saying hello, and welcoming yourself as you are in the moment. We’ll include a sample meditation below and the list below includes various meditation parts that you can choose from as you customize your own. 

No matter which parts you choose to include below, always start by closing your eyes and taking several deep breaths in. As you breathe in, draw your attention and awareness back from all the places outside yourself — from your tasks, from your loved ones, from your to-do list, from your job, from any place other than yourself. 

Next, you’ll want to greet yourself as if you were greeting a dear friend or beloved. Say hello. Notice yourself. Check in with yourself and welcome all that you’re feeling and experiencing, no matter what it is. 

Then, each time you meditate, you can choose which of these self love meditation practices you want to include that day. 

1. Scan for feelings and embrace them. Slowly scan your body and notice any emotions that you find. As you notice emotions, simply welcome what you feel. Don’t make it wrong. Emotions, when you allow them, tend to dissolve more quickly. If you fight or resist them, they tend to find back and stick around. Embrace your emotions and see if you just might not feel more space and peace in your body. 

2. Scan for sensations and notice their message. Again, slowly scan your body and notice any sensations alive in your body. This could be anything from warmth and tingling to tightness, contraction, or numbness. Our sensations tell us we’re alive. They serve as indicators of what’s good for us as well as show us what’s not aligned for us. Again, embrace your sensations as they are. Don’t try to change them. In that, the good ones might get strong and the not-so-good ones may dissolve. 

3. Embrace the sacred and shy parts of you. Many parts of ourselves have felt judged and rejected. In your self love meditation, practice welcoming every part of yourself, especially focus on welcoming, embracing, even loving the parts of yourself that you might least want to love. This is a practice in unconditional love. 

4. Acknowledge and celebrate your efforts. Acknowledge everything you’ve been doing, all that you’ve accomplished, even all that things you’ve tried to do. Everyday, we always work hard to do well. Some days we have more internal resources than others, that means that some days  we do better than other days. That’s normal. We always do the best we can we the energy, consciousness, and resources we have available internally at the time. Therefore, we want to acknowledge and celebrate ALL that we’ve done or tried to do NO MATTER the results. That’s self love. 

5. Apologize to yourself / Forgive Yourself. It’s easy for us to be unkind to ourselves. We’ve often been taught to judge ourselves. Yet, self judgement never serves and it’s never love. So, we step towards self love when we forgive ourselves for anything we’ve done that we wish we might have done differently, including forgiving ourselves for judging ourselves. In your self love meditation, imagine yourself looking yourself in the eye and truly saying I’m sorry for all the ways you’ve been unkind to yourself, all the ways you’ve held unfair expectations of yourself. 

6. Give yourself permission to make mistakes: Too often, especially if we’re good at being hard on ourselves we expect, even demand, a level of being and performance that’s impossible to attain. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. We’re all imperfect. Again, in your self love meditation, look yourself in the eye and genuinely tell yourself it’s ok to make mistakes. Then take a deep breath and receive that permission. Let it sink into your cells. 

7. Tell yourself what’s great about you. During your self love guided meditation, take some time to imagine yourself sitting before you and as you see yourself before you, take the time to acknowledge as many good things about yourself as possible. In the beginning you might only come up with a few, but each time you do your self love meditation, notice that it’s easier to come up with and acknowledge more and more good parts of yourself. We all want to be seen and acknowledged for who we are by others. Being able to really take in the acknowledgements of others, starts with being able to see and acknowledge these parts of ourselves.

8. Clear out old limiting beliefs about yourself. Sometimes we’ve told ourselves we’re not ok or that we should be different than we are. These are simply stories we’ve told ourselves or stories that someone else told us that we bought into. They are not true. You are not too much or too little, no matter what you mind says. So, in your self love meditation, you can invite yourself to take every judgement your had about yourself and remove it from your body and being. As you remove it, you might imagine putting that old judgmental limiting consciousness into a purifying fire of love, or let it be washed away in a flowing river, or blown away by the wind. Simply let the old judgments be released and cleaned, leaving you in deeper love with yourself.  

9. Ask yourself what you need. We all have needs and sometimes in our busy lives and in our care for others we forget to pay attention to what we need. If we wait too long to notice and care for our needs we can get grumpy, exhausted, and resentful. We can feel depleted and empty and to often we take that out on the people we love. So, in your self love meditation, take some time to genuinely ask yourself what you need. Ask the question and truly listen for your answers. Then, based on what you hear from yourself, do your best to make arrangements to meet that need in the near future. The more you honor and care for your needs, the more love you’ll feel and the more energy you’ll have.

10. Ask yourself what you desire. While our needs must come first, our desires also matter. Our desires bring great joy to our lives and too often we set our desires aside in favor of productivity or care of others. This will never have us feel truly alive nor satisfied. So, in your self love guided meditation, take some time to explore your desires. Then, just as you did with your needs, see if you can commit to yourself to tend to those desires in the near future. 

As you see your self love meditation can take on many forms. Each time you stop to meditate, simply follow your inner guidance. You can check the list above for ideas and always listen to your own heart and what you need each day. Your heart knows best for you.  

Remember that the act of choosing to do a self love meditation is love in and of itself. So, just by doing the meditation you are loving yourself. 

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H2 – Sample Self Love Guided Meditations

Here you’ll find two sample self love guided meditations that you can use as you learn to customize your own personal self love meditation. The first is a shorter meditation that simply invites you to connect with yourself and honor yourself as you are. The second self love guided meditation takes you on a 15 minute journey of self forgiveness and self acceptance. 

Self Love Guided Meditation – Connect with you

Self Love Guided Meditation – Self Love Clearing

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As you regularly practice your self love guided meditation, over time you’ll start to notice more frequent feelings of peace, compassion, joy, appreciation. You’ll begin to notice more beauty in yourself and in the world. Most often you’ll notice the pressures of the world lessening, even if circumstances haven’t actually changed. You’ll have more patience with yourself and others. And, you’ll likely notice that your relationships have changed – they’ll feel deeper and more authentic.

Remember that learning to love yourself consciously takes time, just as it takes time to have a truly conscious relationship with a beloved. You won’t likely get flooded with profound love the first day. That’s why it’s a practice. Yet at some point in the near future, you’ll look at yourself in the mirror and know that surely you have changed. Your heart will be soft and your love for you will be strong.

In the meantime, you might also consider learning more about authentic self love or start speaking these 77 ways to say “I love you” to yourself.  

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