The Art of Self Care [VLOG #73]

Click above to watch my VLOG – The Art of Self Care, or feel free to read the transcript below instead!

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Hi Beauties,

Today we’re to talk about the art of self care. I used to hear things like, the more you love yourself, the more you can love and connect with other people. I didn’t get it to be honest, for a long time. I think for a lot of us, especially as women, we feel safer, we feel good pouring our hearts out, taking care of others.

We can often push our own care to the side or we don’t take the time to really connect with ourselves. I’ve found that it’s 1000% true. The more that we truly take care of ourselves and we truly infuse ourselves with love, everything starts to flow better in our lives. Our relationships become more connected and compassionate, and our bodies feel cared for.

It becomes more easeful. There’s more clarity in the choices we make in our lifestyle choices. We have this sense of connection. We have this greater sense of peace. We have this greater sense of presence. 

Whatever we’re doing, whether it’s talking to our child or in a staff meeting or being with our friends at dinner, when we’ve taken care of ourselves in a deeper way. We show up in a much different vibration. We’re not as rundown. We’re not as stressed out. Our adrenal fatigue and our nervous system isn’t totally thrown off and sort of frayed, so that we can’t really be there. We just enjoy life so much more.

Asking What Your Body Needs

Let’s get right into it. The first thing is to ask your body what it needs. I started doing this a bit of bit of time ago, and I was amazed if I sat with that question, what do you really want to eat? What do you need?

When I started sitting back and taking that pause and really listening to what my body was saying to me, then I started to learn, oh, you know, I really need a bowl of fruit right now, or I really need to rest and shift my plans and stay in tonight, or whatever it was. And I would just start to ask more, because I never used to ask.

I used to go along with what my friends were doing or what I had decided I was going to do at the beginning of the week, even though I felt very different by the end of the week. I encourage you to really take the time. Inquiry is very, very powerful, just to sit and ask yourself the question sometimes of what you actually need.

Stop Comparing Yourself

Next, stop comparing yourself to others. This is one of the most debilitating ways to slowly dissolve and dissipate all the energy, all the good feelings that we built up about ourselves and our journey–when we start looking to the sides and comparing ourselves.

We’re always going to feel better or worse than anyone else, that’s just the way it is. Either way, it’s this unequal footing, which is stressful and it’s not our nature. Our nature is to be more connected, to be in oneness. When we compare, we emphasize the disconnection and then we just feel like crap.

This is a huge subject of my recent book, which if you haven’t got it yet, here it is. It’s called Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life. It’s not just food recipes, which are in the back. There are the life recipes such as hearing self judgment, getting past body shame. There’s a lot of tools here for really connecting with the deepest part of yourself.

When you do that, then you realize that we are this unique energy that’s beyond the form of what we look like or our career or our family even. But there is a part of us that’s this consciousness, this awareness, this pureness of being and you just can’t compare that to anyone else.

Connecting in, is to me the ultimate form of self care, which I personally do through still time, meditation, breathing, just being, saying no to more things. My whole nighttime routine where I take a shower and chill and just have time to myself. I think more stillness is so healthy and it’s an essential part of self care.

Gratitude Practice

Next thing is gratitude practice. I think of things that I’m grateful for at certain junctures, to shift the mood. For instance, right before I eat, I say a prayer. I’m grateful for the food, but then I usually extend it out to gratitude for the people that I’m eating with, the family, the friends, the planet, what happened that day or whatever it is.

For me that really works. I don’t usually do it with my GGS, but I do it with lunch and dinner. So any form of gratitude practice is just going to bring in those wonderful feelings and help to expand and grow anything that’s good and working in your life.

That’s what gratitude does. It puts an emphasis on the good and helps to cultivate more of that. I highly recommend bringing more gratitude into your life. You could write it down, it can be part of your journaling practice or something you say out loud like I do before meals.

Turn Up The Music

Lastly, I want to say you can turn up the music and have a little dance party to yourself. There is something very therapeutic and healing about free form movement. I do it in the shower to be honest, like I move a lot. I like to go side to side. I get a little self conscious doing it in front of anybody else, including my family members.

Sometimes bubby and I dance together. There’s different meditation techniques in India that talks about shaking and getting all this stress out of your nervous system. There’s something about dancing that can release trauma and stress in your body.

How often do we really dance anymore? Maybe you’re someone that goes to clubs all the time, but for a lot of us, this free form way of moving and shaking and getting out stress isn’t something that we regularly do right now.

Even if it’s just a song and I do it before or after or in the shower. I think free form movement can be really healing and a wonderful way to take care of yourself. It can be a nurturing form of self care. It’s something to think about.

Get that playlist out, or create a new one for your solo dance party, so you don’t have to feel self conscious and no one is watching. It can just be the most organic thing in your body, the way that your body wants to move and release.

In Closing

These are my tips today for self care, self love, which is such a huge theme in our Solluna community. And again, if you haven’t gotten your copy of Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life, pick it up today in a bookstore or on Amazon.

I hope that it also benefits you very deeply in connecting with the amazing, beautiful soul that you already are. I’ll see you back here soon. Have an amazing rest of your day and lots of love.