The muscles used to make a smile actually send a biochemical message to our nervous system that it is safe to relax the flight of freeze response.

I want to accept myself completely, just as I am.

With mindfulness training we are able to recognize when we get lost in our mental dramas, and bring a kind and nonreactive presence to the feelings that accompany them.

Sometimes the easiest way to appreciate ourselves is by looking through the eyes of someone who loves us.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.

Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.

Stories about ourselves and about the world continually arise in our minds and shape our beliefs about reality.