All Parts of You Belong | A Somatic Self-Love Meditation
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All Parts of Me Belong: How to Create Inner Belonging Through Self-Connection and Attunement
Valentine’s Day tends to shine a bright light on romantic love. During this time, there’s so much focus on connection, partnership, feeling chosen, and feeling cherished. And while those kinds of relationships can be deeply meaningful, this time of year can also bring up really big feelings of loneliness, longing, self-doubt, and old emotional wounds around relationships.
For many of us, it’s a time when we become more aware of what feels missing, what feels tender, or what still feels unresolved. We might notice ourselves comparing our lives to what we think they “should” look like, questioning our worth, or feeling quietly disconnected even if things are going well on the surface.
It can also bring up something more subtle: awareness of our relationship with ourselves. We may start to notice how we speak to ourselves when we’re hurting, whether we tend to offer ourselves understanding or criticism, and whether we feel emotionally supported from the inside or mostly left alone with our struggles.
One of the most meaningful forms of love we can cultivate is this inner relationship. The relationship where we feel met by ourselves. Where we know, in a real and embodied way, that we can turn toward our own experience and not be abandoned there. Where we are building an internal sense of safety, care, and companionship that doesn’t depend on anyone else’s presence or approval.
This is where real belonging begins.
What “All Parts of Me Belong” Really Means
In my work, the phrase “all parts of me belong” isn’t meant as a slogan or a mindset shift… It’s meant as a description of a relationship that we are slowly learning to build with ourselves.
Belonging, in this approach, isn’t something we decide through positive thinking. It isn’t something we talk ourselves into. It’s something we build, gradually, through attention and attunement.
We build it by turning toward our inner world and actually listening to it. By feeling what is here in the body. By staying present with sensations, emotions, and impulses long enough that something inside begins to trust, “I don’t have to disappear in order to stay connected to myself.”
“All parts of me belong” means that we are no longer organizing our inner lives around which parts get to stay and which ones have to be managed, hidden, minimized, or fixed.
It means the anxious part belongs.
The angry part belongs.
The part that feels needy, ashamed, tired, or confused belongs.
The part that resists belongs.
The part that hurts belongs.
Even the parts that learned awkward or painful ways to survive belong.
In this work, belonging doesn’t come from approving of everything we feel or do. It comes from not abandoning anything.
Why So Many of Us Struggle With Feeling at Home in Ourselves
Most of us were never taught how to stay emotionally connected to ourselves.
We learned, often very early, that some feelings were easier for other people to handle than others. That being strong was safer than being scared. That being agreeable was safer than being angry. That being independent was safer than needing support. That being “low maintenance” was safer than being emotionally complex.
So we adapted.
We learned to judge certain emotions. We learned to suppress certain needs. We learned to move away from parts of ourselves that felt inconvenient, overwhelming, or unacceptable. We learned to override our bodies and emotions in order to function, perform, and belong.
These were intelligent, protective strategies that helped us stay connected and safe in the environments we grew up in. But over time, they also created inner worlds where not all parts were welcome.
And when parts of us don’t feel welcome, we begin to live in quiet conflict within ourselves. We manage ourselves. We monitor ourselves. We criticize ourselves. We stay somewhat guarded inside. Many people carry a subtle sense of emotional loneliness, even when they have full lives and meaningful relationships.
How Attunement and Deep Listening Create Inner Belonging
The foundation of my approach is this: belonging is created through attunement.
Attunement means learning to turn toward our inner experience with curiosity and care. It means sensing into the body, noticing sensations, listening to emotions, and paying attention to impulses, needs, and longings. It means becoming interested in what is happening inside us, rather than immediately trying to manage it or make it go away.
Over time, we learn to ask ourselves, sincerely and without pressure, “What is happening in me right now? What does this part of me need? What is this feeling trying to communicate?”
And we practice staying present with what we discover so that we can offer all of our parts care and presence.
When we do this consistently, our nervous systems begin to learn something new through lived experience: that our inner world is a safe place to be. We learn that emotions can arise and be met. That vulnerability doesn’t automatically lead to rejection. That discomfort doesn’t mean we have to leave ourselves.
This is how true belonging is cultivated inside.
Becoming a Safe Home for Your Emotions and Inner Parts
As we practice attunement and deep listening, something slowly begins to change in how we relate to ourselves.
We start to experience ourselves as a place where our feelings can land. A place where vulnerable parts are met rather than dismissed. A place where even protective and resistant parts are treated with respect.
We begin, quite literally, to become a safe home for our own experience.
This is what “all parts of me belong” looks like in real life.
When anxiety shows up, we listen instead of immediately trying to get rid of it.
When sadness arises, we allow it to be felt instead of minimizing it.
When shame appears, we respond with gentleness rather than piling more judgment on top.
When resistance emerges, we recognize it as a part that learned its role for a reason, rather than treating it as an enemy.
Over time, our inner system learns that it doesn’t have to fight, hide, or perform in order to stay connected.
Self-Belonging as an Ongoing Relationship
Belonging isn’t something we achieve once and then keep forever. It is an ongoing relationship that we return to again and again.
We will still resist sometimes.
We will still judge ourselves sometimes.
We will still override our needs at times.
That doesn’t mean we are failing; it simply means we are human. And each time we notice and come back, each time we listen again and soften again, we are strengthening this inner relationship.
An Invitation to Come Home to Yourself
In a season that emphasizes love and connection, I want to offer this as an invitation.
We don’t have to become someone else in order to belong to ourselves. We don’t have to fix ourselves first. We don’t have to earn our place inside.
We can begin right where we are, by listening.
By turning toward our own lives with curiosity.
By staying with our experience a little longer.
By responding with more care.
Over time, those moments become something steady and trustworthy.
They become a quiet knowing: All parts of me belong.
Try the Somatic Meditation for Self-Love and Inner Belonging now!
Episode timing:
00:00 - Cultivate Inner Belonging to Deepen Your Self-Love
04:35 - Somatic Meditation for Self-Love: Regulating Breathing
09:35 - Somatic Meditation for Self-Love: Iffirmations for Inner Belonging
20:02 - Conclusion and reflections
Learn all about Iffirmations here
This episode is lovingly dedicated to Olivia, Carla, Nancy, Rachel, Elizabeth, and Kelly! Thanks for being my first-ever retreat participants! You are amazing! 💗💗💗
Iffirmations for Inner Belonging
What would it be like to truly belong to myself?
What if I can become a safe place for my own feelings?
What if I don’t have to push anything away to be okay?
What would it be like to meet myself with presence instead of resistance?
What if I can include all parts of myself in my own compassion?
What if I don’t have to get rid of any parts of me to be whole?
What if I can become a place where all parts of me are welcome?
What if I can become a place where all parts of me are safe?
What if every part of me belongs here, just as it is?
What if inner belonging is something I can cultivate by listening and allowing?
What if every part of me deserves belonging?
More and more, I’m learning to relate to all parts of me with compassion.
More and more, I’m resting in the truth that I belong here.
🐠 Somatic Self-Love Retreat in Costa Rica 🐠
Join me in Costa Rica this winter for a deeply restorative Somatic Self-Love Retreat - a gentle, immersive experience designed to help you reconnect with your body, soften old self-protection, and return to your truest self.
Through daily somatic practices, heart-opening workshops, and healing time in nature, you'll learn how to cultivate embodied self-love from the inside out.
We’ll snorkel in turquoise waters, hike through sun-dappled forests, and go on an ocean safari in search of dolphins and whales. This retreat is a sacred pause - a nervous system reset and a return to the parts of you that are ready to feel alive again.
Space is limited! ✨
How was that Somatic Meditation for Self-Love and Inner Belonging for you?
How did those iffirmations feel? And how do you feel now?
Please let me know in the comments!
➡️ If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this podcast!
And please join me every Friday on this beautiful journey out of your head, and into your more embodied and authentic self. 🩷🩷🩷
Thanks so much for joining me today!
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Enjoy more like this: Embodied Self-Love Series, Iffirmations, Deep Relaxation Meditations
About me
Hey, I’m Karena!
I’m a somatic emotional healing coach here to help you quickly identify and heal the subconscious blocks, old emotional wounds and self-sabotaging core beliefs that are holding you back!
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