Self Care

Self-Care

What is self-care? What does this mean to you? Does it conjure up ideas of soaking in a clawfoot bathtub submerged up to your neck in a boundless amount of white soapy bubbles while thin slices of cucumber cool your eyes, and a cold bubbly glass of champagne sets waiting for you as the quintessential cherry on top?

Wouldn’t that be grand! And by all means an amazing way to show yourself how much you mean to yourself, but self-care does not have to be that elaborate.  

Self-care is simply giving yourself the attention and respect that we typically give to others, yet forget to find time to give to ourselves. Most people tend to give some pretty good advice to their friends, but when it comes time to take a dose of their own medicine, it’s sometimes difficult to get it down.  We tend to leave out the spoonful of sugar. When I find myself getting run down and needing self-care, I always tell myself, “It’s now time to treat yourself like a client.”  I will put my phone on Do Not Disturb, meditate to high frequency music, recharge my internal energy, and top it off with an amazing Epsom salt bath with Himalayan pink salt, Bergamot, sweet orange, and baking soda.  But that’s when I’m burning the candle at both ends and have ended up becoming a little depleted. I recommend trying to implement self-care into your daily life so that we can prevent from becoming depleted. 

Self-care does not have to be as overt as the scene I described above with the bubble bath, and I feel called to share a personal story of one of the ways I found healing.

WALKS OF GRATITUDE:

About six years ago I got a dog, Rikki. This was the first dog I owned in over seven years, and was reluctant to get another due to all of the traveling I was doing at the time. Once I got this little guy, I knew I now had to change my lifestyle to help accommodate him and his needs.  Because of him, I came up with what I call “Walks of Gratitude”. These walks helped to decrease the depression I was facing at the time because they helped me to start seeing the silver lining in things, and understand that there was always another side to the coin.  They helped change the way I talk to myself, and the way I registered the actions and words of others.

These walks of gratitude started in the winter of 2016 a few months after my first Sacred Plant medicine ceremony. Like many, I struggled with the weight of Seasonal Adjustment Disorder, but I had to force myself out of the bed and off the couch so I could walk Rikki. After all, he deserved it. We would take about 30 minutes every morning to walk around the block, and during these walks, I chose to have ONLY thoughts of gratitude. These weren’t always grandioso and Earth shattering realizations I was being thankful for; they were simple. 

“Thank you for the blue bird day we are having today. Thank you for the clouds that are gently scattered across the sky.  Thank you for the way my dog smiles during these walks.  Thank you for the light breeze that rustles the leaves on the trees and makes that beautiful meditative and hypnotizing sound. Thank you for the energy to get out of bed this morning. Thank you for this walk. Thank you for the sun on my face.  Thank you I’m saying thank you. Thank you I’m feeling thankful.”

I started to notice that the more I did this, the more the feeling of happiness and joy would build in my chest. That’s not saying it happened on the first day I took a walk of gratitude, but after I started to rewrite my negative programming I learned how to conjure these feelings when needed. And if any of you are into manifestation, this my friend is the key. You have to feel it before you get it. 

Gratitude is the answer to all things, and as I’ve heard it put, “Gratitude is the keys to the Kingdom.”  These walks of gratitude were my first step in acknowledging  self-care and consciously attempting to help myself. What I noticed is that in a few short weeks, my thoughts during my daily life started to become more positive, and I was becoming less reactive. 

I’m a huge fan of the little things actually meaning a lot. So if self-care is something that is difficult for you, start with the little things, and go for a walk of gratitude. That bathtub will be waiting when you get back.