How to love yourself on Valentine's Day

For the month of LOVE we offer you a staple, ride or die self-love, self-care exercise and recipe: a therapeutic herbal bath featuring our February’s botanical hero: hibiscus.

Jump to recipe + excercise

Oh oh oh, it’s the month of love. Loving yourself, loving your friends, loving your lovers. Also, every month is the month of love, amiright? We believe in love.

February can bring up bad feelings for many folks. First of all, we take issue with any holiday like Valentine’s day. Why do we not celebrate love and romance all the time? Why do we not celebrate our friends, allies, neighbors, family members and the love we have for each other in building community every day with flowers, sweet with gestures? Why don’t we regularly take the time to express gratitude, commitment and care for one another?

Then there’s the overwhelming heteonormative and monogamous messaging that continues to painfully exlude Queer and non-normative expessions of love, or that tells us that being single or “alone” is indicative of our worth as a human-being.

As a company based on the belief that love and pleasure is the foundation to change, joy, and collective well-being, we propose to do things differently this year. Recently, Alok Vaid-Menon said:

This year, let’s remind ourselves to keep bringing in the love all year round. To expand our gaze of love beyond the definition of partner, and include yourself, your friends and your family. Let’s continue to set aside time to cherish one another. Let’s feel romantic towards our breakfast, towards our bathing experience, towards our daily activities, and all the living beings that surround us.

But this year especially, many more folks this year may not be able to be with those they love this Valentine’s Day. The sense of “loneliness” may set in extra deep as we continue to understand what intimacy and love are during a global pandemic.

The first and foremost loving kindness we believe in — the foundation of all love — is to love yourself. We mean true love. We do not mean ego love, or vanity, or arrogance, or setting yourself above others. Self-love does not mean that we create a hierarchy with others, it does not mean we are more important than those in our lives. It means that radical love, radical self-love, can be a vehicle change. And if anything, it's such a crucial part of finding pleasure and desire with yourself.

Since, our company is run by a deeply Pisces, ocean-loving, aquatic person, for the month of LOVE we offer you a staple, ride or die self-love, self-care exercise, and recipe: a red hot therapeutic bath featuring our February’s botanical hero: hibiscus.

Water is our source, it is the foundation of all life, it is what makes up the majority of our material being. So when we need to return to ourselves, this is such a divine and available way to do it.

Take. A. Bath. And if you’re going to take a hot bath, your skin becomes one of the most amazing organs to absorb medicine, particularly plant medicine. With your pores soft, supple and open, let these plant friends in. This month we are featuring Hibiscus, also known as Jamaica, Mar Pacifico among many other beautiful names. This plant is brightening — its gorgeous deep red color and tangy flavor will energize and elate you. It is long known to be a refreshing and soothing tonic and definitely a symbol of love.

THE RECIPE: Hibiscus Love Bath

Therapeutic, herbal bath for adoring, passionate self-love and romance

Ingredients: what you need

• A tub of any kind (if you don’t have a bathtub, use a big bowl or pot and do a footbath!)
• 1-2 cups Epsom salts
• 1/2 cup Cornstarch
• Essential oils of your choice. A combination that we love: Lavender, Frankincense, Rose, Clary Sage
• Hibiscus flower to float in the tub (it is actually the calyx that is used, but you can also put the petals and leaves in your bath if you want.)
• Candles, incense if you like it
• Decorations to adorn the bath and space, beautiful things you like to have around you
• A delicious beverage, this could the Chocolate Love Cordial, wine, a shrub (sparkling water with apple cider vinegar and lemon), tea, iced or hot, juice, particularly something rich like pomegranate, blueberry, mango, or coconut water

How to prepare & enjoy your bath

Run the bath, infusing your herbs, Epsom salts, and cornstarch. Get it as hot as you like it, light candles, burn anything aromatic, set up the area so it’s beautiful, quiet, and uninterrupted.

Once everything is set up and your bath is full, drop in the essential oils that you have chosen.

Take a deep breath and wrap your arms around yourself. Open your heart and let yourself feel all the love that you have, fill your whole body with it, weave it around yourself like a cloak or a blanket. Holding this, keeping it, slide your body into the hot water, and let yourself completely undo. Breath deeply and slowly, smile, feel your heart wide open and full, feel your cells relax. Know that you are back in your birthplace, in the salty cave of life. Laugh, run your hands down the length of your body, put your head under the water.

Take yourself to the depth of relaxation.

Take all the time you need. Soak in every bit of this care and adoration, this act of devotion to yourself and your wellbeing. Everything single thing in your life will benefit from this act of self-love.