How sad that so many people have crippling body image issues to which their only solution is, “I have got to look better.” But we’re all built into bodies that have innumerable socially unacceptable realities like susceptibility to illness, elimination, and deterioration, to name only a few. To deny any aspect of your actual body and functions is to cut yourself off from life and reality–not only from your own, but from others’ as well.

Bodily ideals, although diverging wildly in different cultures and periods, challenge and judge every individual–even the seemingly “beautiful.” While such aesthetic standards can encourage healthy self-improvement, they often impair self-acceptance. We have constant proof of our corporeal failings–and of our inevitably temporary and comparative successes. An exalted, unrealistic sense of one’s bodily perfection cannot substitute for a realistic, healthy body image. How can you separate your identity from your body, and show your body as much kindness and compassion as you might show an honored guest? If you aim to grow your psychological capacity for healthy relationships, learning to love your body unconditionally is a good place to start–after all, you’re rather attached to it!
Daily  Healthy Sex Acts:

• Look in a full-length mirror and note your reaction. Does your body consciousness react like a being that’s connected, present and mature, or like an overly disciplined or neglected child?
• Ask your body consciousness how you may forge a meaningful connection to your body over time.
• Send love to your body. Promise to love, esteem and care for your body in any condition, at least as much as you love, esteem and care for others in your life. Allow your most loving energy to flow through your body today.

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For many in our society, televisions or computers have replaced spiritual shrines. People create sacred space in their environments for hobbies and habits, while beloved treasures like healthy love and sex must often clamor for any attention. Where is the special location set aside for exploring feelings? The vision-for-life room? Sex addicts often create a sacred space in their homes for porn and sexual materials at the expense of sacred space for entertaining friends and family. Do you grant your truest ideals sacred space around them, and if not, why not?

What is the nature of your sacred space in this exact moment as you read these words? How can you create a greater circle around yourself to preserve your own sacred space throughout the day? While all space may become sanctified, most of us know that we do not always live at our full potential for consciousness. So a self-determined sacred space can work like a mirror to reflect and magnify our fledgling attempts at mindfulness. The more defined our sacred space in time and place–the more charged with holiness–the more successful our attempts to embody our healthiest values.

Daily  Healthy Sex Acts:

• Notice your environment. Where do you spend your time? What can you do to preserve and consecrate your everyday space so it reflects your highest personal values?
• The atmosphere of a bedroom is a shared sacred space designed by the preferences of both partners. Just as you have made your relationship reflect the shared value of remaining in relation to each other, how can you transform your space together to celebrate your respective values?

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Like all organisms, the human organism is encoded to move towards health and healing. But any type of healing takes time, and psychic healing especially requires sustained effort and a lot of deliberate repair work. Love is the remedy that will make your relationship sound or whole again, but you must take great care and have great patience to restore its health, particularly if you or your partner’s sexuality was vandalized in childhood or if there’s been a betrayal in the relationship.

The road to healing begins with your commitment to stop hurting yourself, to tend to your partner’s heart and pain, and to ask to be tended to if you’re in distress. Long after you’ve done the repair work you both may need to do, you must keep a keen eye on the love you and your partner need in order to keep moving forward in the relationship. When this care is done consciously, when you feel you can trust of your partner to be solid for you, and when reactions aren’t taken personally, sex can be a powerful arena for healing old wounds.
Daily  Healthy Sex Acts:

• Assess where your partner might be hurting. Does s/he need reassurance? If so, how–a kind word, compliment, gesture, or laugh?
• How current are you with where s/he is in the internal healing process? Get curious, ask questions, then follow through with actions that demonstrate your love.

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In ancient civilizations, beauty was conceived as the state of being ruled by gods. When we see inner or potential beauty in ourselves and around us, we invite this godly state of being into our life. This perception plants a seed of beauty that will sprout and grow. You are the beauty that you long to be if you conceive of yourself as beautiful by feeling lightness in your heart and soul.

Ask yourself what qualities you attribute to whatever pleases you and satisfies your aesthetic sense, and consider whether you experience these same qualities internally. To help in this, recall that often our external environment expresses how we feel about ourselves. So take stock of your living environment and consider how you might arrange it to invite more divine beauty into your life. You can also plant seeds of beauty within you by selecting beautiful foods to nourish your body and taking walks in nature to feed your soul.

When you truly feel beautiful, you’re no longer dependent on the favor of the gods. Instead, you are putting into practice your desire to have and create beauty all around you. Bring your aesthetic sense to your sex life, and experience yourself as a place of beauty to share and express with another.

Daily  Healthy Sex Acts:

• Find a way to radiate your inner beauty today.
• Smile at everyone you meet and recognize your own beauty in the sights you see in nature. When you’re in awe of the vast blue sky, recognize your own inner vastness. When you stand in wonder of the blanket of snow on the ground, see that as the wonder of your own self.
• Find your own, unique ways to spread beauty wherever you go.

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“Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value.”
~ Albert Schweitzer

What we affirm to ourselves becomes our reality, because it’s what we’re choosing to see. Is the glass half empty or is it half full? When we affirm that it’s half empty, we see lack and limitation in our life; when we see it as half full, we see a life of possibility. And when we see the glass as completely full, we affirm a life of abundance. Do you affirm yourself daily? Are you willing to take a leap and state in the affirmative what you choose to see in yourself, even when those affirmations hit the most shameful places inside you? If you can’t affirm in yourself what you choose and what you love, you won’t be able to receive love from your beloved.

Once you become more comfortable affirming yourself, you can begin to affirm your partner. Look past your petty preferences (“I don’t like his haircut” or “I don’t like that dress on her”) and see that person with loving and understanding–with your god eyes. Affirm your partner’s beauty, sexuality, body, and soul. Melt into a sensuality of recognition for who your partner really is. In this way your affirmations about what you love in yourself and in your partner actually create a reality that’s genuinely open to and supportive of the richest possibilities.

Daily  Healthy Sex Acts:

• Make a list of the qualities you want to embody, then turn that list into personal affirmations you speak daily–into “I am” statements made in the here-and-now: “I am beautiful, whole and complete just as I am.”
• Ask your partner to make his or her own list, then share your lists with one another.
• Take turns affirming each other using the lists you’ve made for yourselves.

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