The month we celebrate love is upon us. This February we chose a delightful hardcover as our Editors’ Pick that will help you uncover a deep love for yourself. Bowing: A Moving Meditation for Personal Transformation by Dahn Yoga Education (now Body & Brain Yoga) makes a great gift, for yourself or someone else. Its colorful illustrations warm the heart while the ancient moving meditation it guides you through opens your heart.
The act of bowing has been used in many ways in many different cultures to honor others or oneself. The bowing meditation practice described in Bowing is derived from Sundo, a Tao practice originating in Korea. The full-body prostrations in this practice involve most of the body’s muscles and joints and forces the mind to focus on the body in order to accomplish them.
This is an act of love. With each bow, you increase the circulation of your blood and energy, strengthen your muscles, loosen your joints, and deepen your breathing. By improving your health in this way through bowing, you are loving and caring for yourself.
Your mind focusing on your body as you bow is another way you are giving yourself love and attention. Just as when you pay attention to a family member, a lover, or a friend, when you pay attention to your body, you are telling it: “I like you. You mean something to me.” Just as a relationship thrives when we pay attention to it, so does the body.
Love is also received from outside of you during bowing meditation. Through each movement of a bow, you are connecting to the heavens and the earth. With gratitude, you take in their intrinsically loving energy and consciousness and circulate them inside you, magnifying the love already there.
Bowing meditation is also an act of unveiling. With each bow, you put down your cares and worries, you set aside your preconceptions and ego, and you clear away layers of old emotions. Underneath is the purest part of yourself—the tender yet strong part we don’t always have the confidence to show others. By setting this part of yourself free through the act of bowing, you are also saying to it, “I love you.” And since this part of you is, in fact, love itself, you are making it easier to love everyone around you.
The intention you set before bowing can become an act of love and care as well. Offer a bowing meditation session for the purpose of strengthening and supporting your authentic self. Then your thoughts and movement will align with your intent during the session and feed your true self love.
As an act of love for you, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, we are offering Bowing at 30 percent off, just $12.57. This precious Valentine’s Day gift will show your love for yourself or a loved one over and over, bow after bow.
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