EMBODY
Photographed by Ryan McGinley
Love is not something you search for. Love is not something you wait for. Love is not coming ‘one day’. Love won’t ride in on horseback. Your job is not to seek love, then, but to be it, know it as your essence, feel it infuse your very being, hear it drip from your in-breath, and shimmer through your out-breath. Call off the search. Love is You.
— Jeff Foster
Embody the Art of Love
Embody is where we let ourselves be fully touched by life again. It is the ripening of the fruit after the flower has bloomed, bringing all that we have nurtured and discovered into something we can taste, share, and live.
The concept of embodying love is paradoxical because, at our core, we are love. From the moment we enter this world, we’re pure, unadulterated love.
As children, we eagerly explore the world, driven by curiosity and joy. We don’t fear getting dirty or tasting life’s experiences. We don’t stop to wonder whether we are too loud, too sensitive, too strange, or too much. We simply throw ourselves into being alive. Our hearts are wide open, and love flows effortlessly.
Photographed by Angelika Kollin
Photographed by Takako Noel
However, as we grow, layers of conditioning accumulate. Well-meaning parents tell us to be cautious, to put on clothes, and to avoid strangers. Fear takes root, and we start perceiving the world as a dangerous place rather than a playground waiting to be explored.
Then comes heartbreak. Disappointment. And we start to build walls around our hearts to shield us from pain.
These walls isolate us, trap us in our minds, and disconnect us from the love that life continues to offer.
As the walls around our hearts grow stronger, love begins to carry conditions. “I’ll love you if you don’t hurt me,” “I’ll love you if you take care of me,” “I’ll love you if you behave.” We’ve traded our open-heartedness for fear and caution.
We begin to bargain with love. We give a little and wait to see what comes back. We say yes when we mean no. We hide what hurts and hope someone will notice anyway. We pull people close, then push them away.
We want to be loved, but we are terrified of what it might cost us.
Photographed by Regine David
Is this love, that I’m feeling?
Love is not something we must earn, search for, or wait to arrive. It is the essence of who we are, woven into every breath, every touch, every moment of presence. And yet, we spend much of our lives protecting ourselves from it—holding back, closing off, keeping our hearts guarded.
To embody love means to choose love in every moment, to peel back the layers around our hearts, and to taste life fully once more.
It is one thing to understand love. It is another to live it when we are tired, frightened, disappointed, or hurt. When an old wound is touched. When someone does not meet us in the way we hoped. When life asks more of us than we feel ready to give.
Photographed by Yosigo
Photographed by Elsa Marie Keefe
To the Place I Belong
So much of what we know remains in the mind. We may know that we are worthy of love and still abandon ourselves when we fear being alone. We may believe in honesty and still hide what is true. We may speak about compassion and still become cruel. We may long for intimacy and still close our hearts the moment someone comes too close.
Embody asks us to bring what we know in the mind more deeply into the body, until it becomes something we can feel, trust, and live.
This does not happen all at once. We return again and again. To the breath. To the body. To the present moment. To the part of us that knows how we want to meet life.
At first, even returning can feel unfamiliar. We have spent so long bracing, holding back, and living behind our walls that opening can feel more frightening than staying closed.
Ultimately, it becomes a choice we make again and again. A chance to choose differently. A chance to let love have a place in what happens next.
Artwork by Shintaro Kago
Artwork by Erik Sandberg
And each time we do, love becomes more deeply rooted. It becomes less like something we are trying to do and more like a place within ourselves that we know how to find.
The more deeply we embody love, the less it depends on everything around us being comfortable. It becomes something we can carry into uncertainty. Something we can return to in conflict. Something that can hold joy and grief, tenderness and anger, closeness and distance, all at once.
Love is not always soft. It has many forms. It can forgive. It can confront. It can stay. It can leave. It can hold us gently, and it can bring us to our knees.
Sometimes love gathers us close. Sometimes it asks for distance. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it roars. Sometimes it is a warm and generous yes, and sometimes it is the clear and unwavering no.
To embody love is not to deny our feelings. It is to let ourselves feel all of it without closing our hearts to ourselves, to each other, or to the world around us.
We will not always get this right. There will be moments when the old walls rise again. When fear takes over. When we close, react, withdraw, or return to the habits we thought we had left behind.
Photographed by Rony Hernandes
Photographed by Takako Noel
What a Wonderful World
Over time, we begin to notice love in the smallest of moments. In the pause before we react. In the courage to admit we were wrong. In the willingness to listen without preparing our defence. In the way we honour our own need for silence, rest, movement, or change.
We begin to see miracles in every moment. A glass of water quenches our thirst, a gentle breeze soothes us on a hot day, and a child’s laughter fills our hearts.
Little by little, love begins to seep into every part of our lives. Into the way we greet the morning. The way we feed ourselves, tend to our spaces, honour our limits, and make room for beauty.
These moments may appear ordinary, but this is where love takes form. Not only in what we feel, but in what we practise. Not only in the promises we make, but in the way we show up. Not only when love comes easily, but in the moments when fear is present and we choose to keep our hearts open anyway.
Photographed by Lisa Sorgini
There is a quiet freedom in this. We stop chasing the perfect version of ourselves and begin inhabiting the life that is already here. We become more rooted in our bodies, more present in our relationships, and more able to respond to life as it unfolds. We trust ourselves not because we will always get it right, but because we know how to return when we lose our way.
And as love becomes more at home within us, it begins to reach beyond us. Not as something we force or give away until we are empty, but as something that naturally overflows. It enters the spaces we create, the words we choose, the way we welcome others, and the possibilities we help bring into the world.
Love is the question. Love is the message. Love is the answer.
The choice is yours.
Photographed by Francesco Ormando
Photographed by Ana Cuba
Once More, With Feeling
But that's not the end. The journey has just begun.
Held within the fruit is another seed.
Another beginning. Another part of ourselves waiting to be embraced. Another possibility asking to be explored. Another moment inviting us to embody love more fully than we ever have before.
The journey of love does not move in a straight line. It moves in cycles. Each relationship, each loss, each creation, and each new season of life brings us back through the journey again.
We turn inward. We open outward. We bring what we discover into the way we live.
And each time we return, we do so with a little more love. A little more freedom. A little more life.