Love is a fundamental human need. It’s part of the emotional needs category on a Ladder of Needs. As humans, we long for love, we search for love and we even hurt for love. Love is hard-wired in our psychology and neurology of our body. Let’s look closer into what kind of love there is and how we can make our life more enriched with a healthy kind of love.

Many of you know, when you fall in love, a hormone dopamine is released in your body so you feel almost ‘attached’ to the object of your attention. It works both for a human object and an objective. A motivated person ‘falls in love’ with an idea or a project in a similar way they fall in love with a person. Here is a danger. Your brain does not distinguish good from bad on its own. It works based on a set of values you form in your childhood and hence, learning skills such as compassion and loving-kindness, high morale principles and humane values are important early in life. Be mindful of what objects you choose to fall in love with. Especially when you teach your children these life-important skills.

Loving someone is different hormonally. It is determined by a set of hormones with a leadership of oxytocin. You know this hormone as a ‘trust’ hormone. It is developed when you hug, when you breast-feed babies, when you have orgasms. That’s why it is so important to know who is next to you, because you learn to love people who are close to you and especially who you hug and who you sleep with.

Also, oxytocin is developed when you exercise any mindfulness practice, expand you compassion and pray. Generally, spiritual practices enrich your heart to feel more love. If you are searching for love and want to feel loved by another person, find your spiritual quest and go back to your meditating practice. That brings out the best of your hormones and balances yourselves from inside out. You really don’t need someone to feel love. You can love no-matter-what by learning how to. By practicing meditative states of consciousness, by praying, by feeling grateful, by forgiving, by feeling humble and by feeling deeply yourself you learn to love in a healthy way. Not to depend on someone. But to be able to give and love no-matter-what. In this way, your mind gets enriched and it creates space for healthier thoughts and actions.

What helps you love?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Until next week,

With love & gratitude

Darya