This guide presents a list of my favorite self-love workshop exercises.
If you’re looking to attend a self-love workshop, this guide will give you an idea of what to expect.
If you’re planning to host your own self-love workshop event, you’ll find plenty of ideas for exercises to do.
As an experienced life coach, I know these exercises will do so much to help self-love workshop attendees feel amazing.
Let’s dive right into it.
1. Get Out Of Your Shell Exercises
Start your self-love event with a physical exercise that’s a bit silly. Perhaps it’s shouting. Perhaps it’s singing. Perhaps it’s introducing yourself to the group and answering a silly question about yourself.
An exercise like this will have attendees feeling free, loose and happy. It’s in these environments that people are more open to sharing their feelings.
2. Self-Love Journaling
Have your audience write down three things they truly love about themselves.
Consider sharing other self-help journal prompts such as three good things they did today, three of their biggest strengths, three ways they made a difference etc. Encourage people to read out their answers.
3. Gratitude Journaling
Gratitude for the small things in this world allows us to appreciate the life we have, and this makes self-love easier to achieve.
So, share the idea of gratitude journaling with your audience too. Encourage them to share the small things they have been grateful for today.
4. The First Impression Exercise
Group exercises are a great component of self-love workshops.
In this one, everyone takes it in turns to say something positive about each person in their group.
After each compliment, the recipient has to accept and repeat what was said in the first person.
5. Body Language Exercises
Show your audience the power of positive body language. Start by demonstrating an example of positive affirmations being made with negative body language. Head to the floor. Hunched over. Arms crossed protecting the body.
Next, show them the ‘hero stance’. Encourage them to try it themselves and notice the difference in how they feel after expressing their affirmations.
6. Shameless Public Speaking
Volunteers are invited to speak about their strengths in front of the group. Perhaps they could mention the results of the ‘First Impression’ exercise.
For many, public speaking will be a difficult comfort-zone challenge. This exercise will depend on unwavering support from the host and the audience to work effectively.
7. Communicating With Your Inner Child
Guided meditations are a great tool for self-love, as they allow us to quieten our conscious mind and communicate with our subconscious. Our soul.
A great example of a guided meditation like this is the ‘inner child’ exercise.
Participants are guided through a subconscious meeting with a younger version of themselves. They are encouraged to show this ‘inner child’ all the great things they have as an adult – and to tell them all the supportive things that they may not have heard from others while growing up.
8. Communicating With Your Inner Demons
Guided meditations can also be used to communicate with that little voice inside your head that says ‘you can’t do it’.
With the right guidance, you can be shown that this voice exists to protect you from things that aren’t real.
To achieve self-love, we must learn how to talk to ourselves in a positive way – and this is a great exercise for learning that.
9. Trauma Releases
Guided meditations can expand into trauma release exercises, where the participants realise that the inner ‘voice’ is no longer serving them. They can be guided to release their trauma away from their body. A soul-cleansing practice like this can change one’s life, but it requires an experienced guide.
10. Exploring What You Love
When we spend time doing what we love, it becomes easier to love ourselves. The problem is: many of us sacrifice our hobbies and passions as we get older.
Encourage a large group discussion about each other’s hobbies and passions, how much time they spend doing it, why they love doing it and why they’re no longer engaging with their passion (if applicable). What’s holding them back from doing it more? Can they change their life to free more time for their passions?
11. Exploring Each Other’s Goals
Ask the group: ‘What would you do with your life if you knew you could not fail’. Have everyone write down five things.
From there, explore why your attendees aren’t doing these things. It’s important that your audience feels free to pursue their dream life. This alone can fill them with self-love.
12. The ‘I Am Beautiful’ Exercise
This beautiful practice involves staring in a mirror and affirming that you love every part of your body.
Use this exercise to teach attendees that their words matter! Their words really can influence their thoughts. It’s possible to become more confident in your skin by performing this exercise regularly.
13. Discussion On Healthy Use Of Social Media
No modern self-love workshop is complete without a discussion on the harmful effects of social media.
Include examples of potentially harmful social media posts from ‘influencers’ – and suggestions for how to use social media in a healthy way.
Encourage attendees to think about the accounts they follow, whether they’re truly authentic, their impact on their life, and how they end up feeling after a social media binge.
14. Call Out Your Haters
It’s important that attendees understand a lack of self-love is usually passed onto someone. It doesn’t occur out of nowhere.
Often, it stems from a turbulent relationship with parents, teachers, childhood bullies, abusive partners. These individuals have a lot of power over our self-worth, especially during childhood. It’s entirely possible for them to make us feel like the worst person in the world.
If the host has personal stories of dealing with their own haters, they should share what they learned. Attendees should be encouraged to know who made them lose their confidence – and what that person told them. That’s an important first to making a change.
Conclude that no-one ever needs to take a hater’s opinion at face value.
15. Healthy Eating Discussion
Offering lunch at your workshop? This could be an opportunity to discuss how our diet affects our mental health, especially the way we think about ourselves. It’s arguably the most important form of self-care, alongside exercise.
16. Relationship Roleplays
You can’t love someone else without loving yourself first. The video below demonstrates that fantastically well.
Even the most loving relationships are doomed to fail in this case. A roleplay game is useful for helping people see that.
Create the character of a self-hating partner for one half of the group to play. Now, have the other half try to compliment them during a date. Ask the self-hating partner to explain how they’re feeling in this moment. Often, an individual with no sense of self-worth won’t ever let a compliment land.
It can be fun and engaging to have attendees act out a loving relationship – but these interactive discussions also make it easier to learn.
17. Confrontation Roleplays
One person plays the role of a ‘hater’ and the other person answers them back. The hater starts off with low energy, but grows more confident as the roleplay lasts longer. It’s the other person’s job to also grow in confidence too.
The exercise shared should be playful and silly, not negative or aggressive.
Even so, as people without self-love tend to hate confrontation of any sort, some may still struggle to raise their voice and stand up for themselves.
With the support of the audience, hopefully they can overcome their aggressor.
18. Guest Speakers
Perhaps it’s possible to hire a well-known guest speaker with some understanding of the knowledge of self-love psychology. This can take pressure off the host’s shoulders as far as carrying the whole event.
The guest speaker might be able to promote the show themselves and attract more people to join and see them talk.
There are many self-help experts with experience of self-love workshops who are available for hire.
19. Networking
It’s true that ‘we become the five people we spend the most time with’. We tend to adopt their moods, beliefs and levels of inspiration.
For that reason, it’s important to create plenty of time for workshop attendees to connect and get to know each other.
Any Questions About These Self-Love Workshop Exercises?
Thank you for reading my guide on self-love workshops! I hope this list helped you to learn what to expect from these events.
If you have any questions about these exercises or attending self-love workshops, feel free to leave a comment below.
I would really love to hear your thoughts on these exercises, what you’ve learned from self-love workshops – or on the concept of self-love in general!
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