It’s the beginning of April, dear ones, and I would like to invite us all to start this month with loving kindness towards ourselves.

The month of April at COR will be all about renewal and self-care.  We will cover several important aspects of those themes, so look for some wonderful newsletters to hopefully inspire you to be loving and kind towards yourself, which seems to be one of the greatest challenges of humanity.

As some of you know, I personally have been dealing with more or less constant lower back trouble. Besides being painful and annoying, this has been such a beautiful and profound lesson in gentleness. One of the strategies of my survival/defended self has been to be Super Woman— to do it all and push hard through any kind of challenges. Well, this little lower back of mine only likes gentleness lately; no challenging cardio work-outs anymore, no competing in Yoga class in bending the furthest, no heavy weights and no pushy, unloving conversations either— neither with another nor with myself.

Just gentle loving kindness is what my body seems to want these days— otherwise, it hurts more. Although I hope you are not experiencing pain, I am sure you have something that your body and/or your soul are telling you these days too.

So here is my April Self-Love Challenge: How can you be more loving towards yourself this week and each week to follow in April?

My goal for this week is 30 minutes of gentle lower back stretches every day (except Sunday), and starting with a prayer to God to let the love in— something like what I do here in this picture below (Which I will use as my visual reminder). What’s yours?

Leave a comment on our blog below and name one specific and concrete action step you can post here and have us all hold this for you.

For some inspiration, I’m posting a poem that came to me about 10 years ago at a week-long silent retreat where I was struggling a lot with a particular rite of passage in my life. Let these words be spoken to you personally from deep within where Love is calling, always calling, to take you into its mystery:

Be Gentle
Be gentle, my Beloved
Be gentle
No pushing, no forcing, no punishing
Be gentle
Let it happen
Let it come to you in its own time
Be gentle

The precious gem of your being
Needs gentle loving kindness
No hammer, no chisel and no axe
Will force it to the surface
Only patience, love and gentle persistence
Are like sunshine and water
To your fragile inner flower

Be gentle
Forgive yourself and forgive the other
For we all did not know what we were doing

Allow your innate intelligence to do the work
It’s all happening in its perfect time
Always…
You’re exactly where you are meant to be
RIGHT NOW

Keep going strong
But tread gently on your path to freedom
Yes, please keep going, and never ever ever ever give up.

And always remember
Be gentle, my precious Beloved!

Love and blessings,
Britta