Self Love Art Therapy

Today I'll show you how to make art when you need more self-love. I invite you to create with me and do some self art therapy. This exercise will help you listen to yourself and practice compassion to the parts of ourselves that need the most love and healing. First the materials you need are a rag or paper towel, watercolor or gouache paint, a cup with water, brushes, and you can optionally include drawing media like color pencils and markers. And finally you also need watercolor paper of any size. (I just used a multimedia sketchbook) To make ourselves most comfortable and cozy we can light a candle and brew some hot tea. Setting up the space and atmosphere allows us to relax and focus. Before the art, let's invite mindfulness and become aware of our physical body. Gently place your attention on your breathing - in and out. Invite into your awareness how you feel in your body in this present moment. Say hello to your feet, legs, stomach, chest, arms, and your neck and shoulders. See how your face feels. Let's invite gentleness and mindfulness. When we do the self art therapy exercise we want to practice non-judgement and acceptance.

There is no right or wrong in this - simply focus on expressing yourself. So let's get started. Think about what you have a difficult time with, in relation to yourself. Maybe you have disappointments, regrets, feeling of hopelessness, or just frustrated with yourself. Create an image reflecting this feeling or relationship that you have with yourself. You can create this in an abstract way with colors shapes or lines or you can create it with figures, with realistic drawing - however way you want to express this feeling or idea. I think love can be a very loaded word. But I see it as a form of acceptance and allowance. I think that when we allow we can love. When we resist or fight against parts of ourselves that we don't like we feel bad. It is important to practice openness and an attitude of allowing, even for the less desirable feelings, thoughts, and actions we take and we're doing that actually right now with this art process.

We are allowing ourselves to feel and allow parts of ourselves to be seen especially the ones we want to reject. What is your view on self-love? Please share it in the comments below. I'd love to see what your view is. After you finish this part there is a second part so let's use a new page and create an artwork or image that is a compassionate response to the first image you created.

What would be a more compassionate, or more gentle, or perhaps a kinder image for that first picture? How can we soften that first picture? Can use any shapes lines and colors to express this. I think that there is a being inside of us that has unconditional love for ourselves. It's just full of pure love and support. And whenever I feel like I'm not caring for myself Whenever I feel I don't have self-love. I always try to imagine how would this unconditionally loving being inside of me feel right now? This unconditional being doesn't have limiting beliefs, doesn't lack anything, doesn't have conditions for feeling love and happiness. So I always try to imagine, what would this being feel? I have finished my second picture and when you have finished yours it is time to do some reflection. For this part you may need a pencil or pen and a journal or any notebook you can use to write in. For the reflective writing, you can answer the following questions: What is it like to try to love yourself? And how was it today to do this through the art? Was it more easy or was it more difficult? And the second question is: if you could put a title for each of these pieces of work, what would they be and why? After you have finished writing there is one last thing that you could do and this is optional.

You can take the compassionate artwork and hang it where you see easily - on your desk wall or on the mirror to remind yourself of the feeling of self-love Better yet. Let's spread this self love and create a community of people on the same path. You can share your artwork on social media and I'm on Instagram. So if you hashtag it thirsty for art, you can all see your artwork and we can share this journey of self-love

As found on Youtube