All You Need Is Love

What happens when we stop looking for love outside of ourselves?

“All you need is love.”

It’s one of those phrases we’ve heard so many times that it can almost lose its meaning.

Love is everywhere. We love our partners, our friends, our families, our dogs, our favourite songs, our morning coffee, our jobs, our homes. We fall in love, fall out of love, look for love, lose love and sometimes spend a ridiculous amount of time wondering whether someone has liked our Instagram story for the right reasons.

But yoga asks us to look at love a little differently.

What if love isn’t just something we feel?

What if it isn’t something we have to find in another person, achieve through success or earn through being “good enough”?

What if love is actually something much closer to home?

Love is already here

One of the central ideas in yoga philosophy is that beneath all the noise, thoughts, identities and stories we carry around, there is something steady underneath it all.

You could call it consciousness. You could call it the Self. You could call it divine love.

The ancient Upanishads point towards this again and again: That is what you are.

In other words, the thing you are searching for might not be somewhere out there.

It might already be you.

Think of a block of gold being melted down and made into hundreds of different pieces of jewellery. A ring looks different from a necklace. A necklace looks different from a bracelet. They have different shapes, different purposes and different stories.

But underneath it all?

They're still gold.

Yoga uses this kind of thinking to describe our relationship with one another. We might look completely different on the outside. Different personalities, bodies, backgrounds, opinions, lives and experiences.

But underneath the individual shape, there is something shared.

We are not separate from love.

We are expressions of it.

And perhaps practice is less about creating love and more about removing the things that stop us from recognising it.

Enter Krishna, the heart thief

In the yoga tradition, Krishna is often described as all-attractive.

He is famous for stealing butter, but perhaps more importantly, he is known as the thief of hearts.

Krishna represents divine love - something unconditional, constant and not dependent on whether life is currently going according to plan.

This becomes particularly important in the Bhagavad Gita, when Krishna speaks to Arjuna in the middle of a crisis.

Arjuna is overwhelmed. Confused. Frightened. His mind is doing what minds do when everything feels too much: spinning.

Yoga calls these fluctuations citta vrittis - the whirlings of the mind.

Sound familiar?

We don't need to be standing on a battlefield to experience them.

Sometimes the battlefield is our inbox.

Sometimes it's a relationship.

Sometimes it's our own head at 2am.

The teaching is not that difficult things will disappear. It is that there can be somewhere steady to return to when they don't.

That place of refuge is sharanam.

And in this context, that refuge is divine love.

Truth, but make it kind

Love doesn't mean pretending everything is fine.

This is where satya, truthfulness, comes in.

Satya is one of the yamas - the ethical principles of yoga - and asks us to be truthful in our thoughts, words and actions.

But there is an important distinction:

Truth without compassion can become cruelty.

Being “honest” isn't an excuse to say whatever we want and call it authenticity.

If our deepest nature is love, then truth should have love running through it.

Before we speak, perhaps we can ask:

Is it true?

Is it necessary?

Can I say it with kindness?

This is yoga off the mat.

And sometimes the most loving thing we can do is say less.

The power of making space

Two traditional practices that support this are japa and mauna.

Japa is the repetition of a mantra. Mauna is the practice of silence.

Neither is particularly glamorous.

Neither requires a new outfit, a fancy retreat or an expensive wellness gadget.

They simply ask us to create enough space to hear what is already there.

Because underneath all the notifications, opinions, conversations, plans, worries and endless internal commentary, there is something quieter.

Practice gives us a chance to hear it.

This is why mantra isn't simply about repeating words.

It is about remembrance.

We repeat something so that our attention has somewhere to return to.

A mantra traditionally used in Jivamukti Yoga is:

Om Shri Krishnah Sharanam Mama

Krishna is my refuge.

Whether you connect with Krishna as a deity, a symbol, a spiritual teacher or simply as a reminder of something greater than your own busy mind, the practice is an invitation to return.

Return to the breath.

Return to the body.

Return to the present.

Return to love.

Open your heart - literally

There is a reason so much yoga practice involves opening the chest and heart space.

Backbends can feel vulnerable.

They ask us to expose the front of the body, breathe into areas we might habitually protect and trust that we can be supported while opening.

In yogic tradition, the heart centre is associated with Anahata Chakra - often described as the centre of love, compassion, connection and devotion.

And you don't need to be able to drop into a perfect wheel pose to experience it.

Sometimes opening the heart looks much less impressive.

It looks like letting someone help you.

Listening without planning your response.

Saying “I was wrong.”

Forgiving someone.

Letting yourself be seen.

Choosing softness when your instinct is to close off.

Or simply taking one full breath when your brain is screaming at you to do anything but.

What are you taking refuge in?

This might be the question to sit with this month.

When life feels uncertain, where do you go?

Your phone?

Work?

Food?

Exercise?

Other people's approval?

Staying busy?

Controlling everything you possibly can?

None of these things are inherently bad. But yoga asks us to notice when we start using temporary things as permanent sources of safety.

Because everything outside of us changes.

People change, bodies change, jobs change, relationships change, plans change.

Even the version of ourselves we are so certain about today will probably look different in a few years.

So perhaps the practice is learning how to return to something that doesn't depend on everything going right.

Your breath.

Your awareness.

Your heart.

That quiet place underneath the noise.

Love, off the mat

You don't have to spend an hour meditating every morning to practise this.

Try noticing your speech.

Can you be honest without being harsh?

Can you listen without immediately trying to fix?

Can you leave a little more space between a thought and your reaction?

Can you sit in silence without reaching for your phone?

Can you let someone else have the last word?

Can you offer yourself the same compassion you seem to have endless amounts of for everyone else?

And perhaps most importantly:

Can you become a place of refuge for somebody else?

Because love isn't only something we receive.

It is something we practice.

Sometimes it looks like a hug.

Sometimes it looks like showing up.

Sometimes it looks like sitting beside someone and saying absolutely nothing.

Sometimes it looks like community.

That is part of why we practice together.

Maybe the whole point of practice is not to become someone completely new, but to clear enough space to remember who you were before all the noise.

And if you need somewhere to start?

Take a breath.

Come back to your heart.

And remember:

All you need is love.

And maybe, all along, you already had it.