Most of us have said it to ourselves at one point or another: "I have to take better care of myself." Unfortunately our commitment usually comes on the heels of illness, fatigue, or worse, some life altering event. We understand the importance of self care and yet we repeatedly put ourselves on the back burner. Interestingly enough, even people who are not motivated to take better care of themselves, find greater motivation once they begin. The key to getting started is just getting started. Once you begin, it's like your whole system follows. Our organism is geared toward maintaining balance.
Taking care of ourselves involves a lot more than taking our vitamins and hitting the gym. Our bodies are just one aspect of our total wellbeing. A balanced self care routine, involves the mind, body and soul. Often our emotional and mental wellbeing can have a significant impact on our physical wellbeing. Some of us take great care of our bodies, but pay little attention to our feelings, our stress level, or the negative self talk we engage in daily; all just as dangerous as the toxins found in our food and environment. Some of us, (raising my hand sheepishly) take great care of our mental and emotional wellbeing, reading books, listening to inspiring audios, attending seminars, meditating, being with and expressing our emotions in healthy ways but pay little attention to our bodies' signals and pleas for help.
As a life and spiritual coach and woman on her own journey, I am constantly looking for ways to create more balance in my own life and the lives of my clients. The following are what I consider essential parts of a balanced self care routine.
Know your needs and wants
What do I need and want in my life? What are my basic human needs and how am I doing at fulfilling them? Abraham Maslow's theory based on his observations of exemplary people, suggests that there is a hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self actualization. Knowing what you need, gives you direction and a sense of where you may need to set some goals and create experiences in your life to fulfill those needs and desires. If I am feeling fearful, how can I create more safety in my life? Journaling is an excellent tool for identifying your needs and wants. If you reread your journal entries, you will be able to see the common themes that continually come up. You can then brainstorm some ways you might be able to meet your need for love, safety, etc.
Be aware of your energy
We are beings of energy and as we experience challenges in our lives, we can become blocked or drained. It's important to identify what is life giving and what is not. What drains us vs. what infuses us with excitement and passion. Being aware of your energy throughout the day, can help you stay grounded, and proactive so that you don't suddenly find yourself exhausted and overwhelmed at the end of the day or week. There are many small ways you can manage your energy throughout the day through deep breathing and grounding techniques. There are also some amazing ways to keep your energies aligned, such as aura and chakra balancing, reiki, and sound healing, to name a few. The goal is to keep our energy/life force flowing freely.
Be with your emotions
Although it's seems easier to stuff them, numb them, eat them, brush them off, medicate them, we pay the price of avoidance eventually. Emotions are meant to be experienced, and let go. They are part of the human experience, but we have become very clever at building dams and erecting walls, to avoid them. A good question to ask several times a day is "how am I feeling"? Being with whatever is coming up simply means letting yourself experience the anger, sadness, frustration, breathing into it, and letting it pass through you and out. For those blocked emotions from past hurts and traumas, we may need a little extra help from therapy or coaching. I have found Gestalt therapy and Core Energetics to have a real impact in releasing blocked emotions.
Taking care of your physical body
Taking care of our bodies, involves paying attention to signals as well as living a healthy lifestyle. Your symptoms are often signals of emotional issues you may not be dealing with. A great resource for mind body connections, is Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life. She lists illnesses and their possible emotional component.
A healthy diet and regular exercise are basic ways of taking care of your body. There is so much out there on superfoods, foods as cures, juicing, ways to exercise depending on your particular body issues and simple changes we can make to reduce the toxic load in our bodies. Know your body and its own particular needs and make a plan based on what you need and want for your body. Having a physical and a full set of lab work done on a yearly basis can give you essential information about your physical health, information you can then use to create your own unique plan for greater physical health.
Change Your Self Talk
The things we say to ourselves can be painful, toxic and a danger to our wellbeing. We all engage in negative self talk. We say: I can't, I'm not good enough, I'll never find someone. You name it we say it and we say it over and over, reaffirming what we don't want, thereby calling it forth into our lives. If we have the power to call forth what we don't want, we must also have the power to call forth what we do want. Affirmations and mantras are two great ways to change the way we talk to ourselves. There are also some thought stopping techniques, like mentally saying, STOP or DELETE, when we find ourselves engaging in negative self talk. Shifting our focus, distracting ourselves through doing, is also an effective way of getting out of our own heads. Meditating is a way of emptying out the mind. Gratitude works wonders since you can't hold a negative thought a thought of gratitude in your mind at the same time. Take time to feed your mind inspiring and positive images and words.
Creative Expression
Express yourself! Find ways to create. It doesn't matter if you are an artist, writer, accountant, restaurant owner, dry cleaner, there are always ways to express yourself creatively. We are meant to envision, imagine, produce, create. Find your way to express who you are and leave your unique imprint on your world. Nurturing your creative side keeps you active, excited and feeling alive and purposeful.
Setting Boundaries
Learning how to meet our own needs, means sometimes we will have to set up boundaries, such as saying no to the people in our lives. For some of us this can be extremely difficult. Asking for time to think about the request, gives you space to evaluate whether the request is something reasonable, within your value system, but more importantly whether it is something you even want to do. Checking with yourself and whether it will interfere with your needs is self care.
Developing healthy intimacy with ourselves is vital to setting healthy boundaries and having healthy relationships with others. We often try to create intimacy with another person, without having a healthy understanding of ourselves. We cannot be truly intimate with another if we are not intimate with ourselves. As within, so without.
Spiritual Practice
It doesn't matter what you believe in; a spiritual practice, whether it is spending time in nature, in prayer or meditation, yoga, or attending mass or the synagogue, can be a very special part of your self care process. Even atheists have what may be considered a spiritual practice in which they focus on nature and love rather than a deity. Find what resonates with you. Developing a spiritual practice allows you to get quiet, to experience the magnificence of your life, to answer questions you cannot answer with only your mind, to be in the now, to hold your life as a sacred.
Self care is about nurturing, feeding and caring for ourselves so that we can fully engage with life, love, be loved, and live happy and successful lives. First we do it for ourselves and then for those we love, for when we practice self care, we teach others how to treat us and how to truly live.
