Self-care is a bit of a buzzword these days, but the reality is, there’s nothing trendy about the topic of taking care of you.
In an increasingly busy and bustling society, it’s more important than ever that we turn off the noise from the outside world and turn inward to ourselves to take good care of our body, mind, and spirit.
Otherwise, we risk succumbing to the demands of society that urge us to push forward faster, which often leads to burn out.
And let’s face it, when you’re burnt out, you don’t have the ability to help anyone other than yourself to get back on your feet, which prevents you from being fully present with the ones you love to making the impact you seek to make through your work.
It’s a painful and exhausting experience, one that can be prevented with consistent self-care practices in place.
Thus, self-care is an act of service, to yourself, to your loved ones, and in the big picture — to society at large.
Here are some of our tried-and-true self-care practices that we stand by for cultivating your self-love and enhancing your overall wellbeing and life experience.
Mental Self-Care Practices
1 ) Practice Kindness
The words we think and say to ourselves are the most powerful in their impact on our beliefs and stories, which means that positive thoughts produce positive outcomes, and the inverse is also true.
Kindness can’t merely be extended to those that we encounter, but also to the soul we share every breath and moment with, our own.
Starting a mental shift into positivity or accepting a lifestyle with self-care at the center first starts internally. Speak kind words to yourself and consider to these couple guideposts to help you:
1 – Don’t say something to yourself that you would never dare utter to someone else. If you wouldn’t ever say it to someone else, it’s likely not something that is fair to say to yourself.
2 – Talk to yourself the way you would hope someone spoke to you as a child. We’re all children on the inside, our hearts are tender, our souls crave playfulness, our spirit wants love. If it is something that would hurt you to hear as a child, it will hurt you now.
2 ) Conscious Develop Self-Trust
A common side effect of neglected self-care and negative self-talk is a disintegrating intuition.
Doubt floods in and questions our every move leading to inaction, discontent, or stagnation.
To evolve and grow, we need to take aligned action in life and feel empowered and equipped to do so, and that occurs when we can trust our gut and intuition.
Some ways to begin developing self-trust is through things like practicing self-respect (aka speaking kindly to yourself), actively listening to your own thoughts and with others, self-awareness in how you feel and what triggers your range in emotion as well as taking dedicated time for yourself to enjoy things that make you happy.
3 ) Meditation
Consciously clearing the mind of all thought to reach a state of calm and stability is one of the most ancient practices of self-care.
Start by simply focusing on the ins and outs of your breath and breathing naturally, and start small. Meditation takes practice and patience to find a flow that works for you, so aiming for 2-5 minutes of meditation a few times per week is a great place to start.
We love guided meditations for staying focused while meditating and not letting the mind stray to all the things we have to do so that we can be.
Physical Self-Care Practices
4 ) Sound Bath
Just like a shower does more than cleanse the surface of the skin, but also relaxes our muscles and clears our mind, a sound bath works to wash away the stress of the subconscious mind and enter into a state of meditation through the sense of sound.
Using the human voice as well as instruments such as chimes, gongs, drums and singing bowls, sound therapists create an atmosphere of ambient sounds to send the body into a deep meditative state to trigger benefits such as:
- Increased energy, focus, and creativity
- Reduced feelings of anxiety, depression and other pent up negative emotions
Often you can find sound bath meditation sessions hosted by sound therapists and practitioners at wellness centers, yoga studios, or special events.
5 ) Aromatherapy
The olfactory (smelling) senses are some of our most powerful for immediately recalling memories and emotions such as those associated with childhood or an important person in your life.
While those sensations of smell can’t always be controlled, the use of aromatic essential oils can serve as a powerful way to intentionally trigger cues of calm, energy, tranquility, strength, and more.
We love to use aromatherapy as a grounding practice within our daily routines by diffusing essential oils or applying them topically with a roller. For a deeper, full-body aromatherapeutic experience, massage is another way to layer the senses of touch and smell to get back in tune with your mind/body/spirit connect.
6 ) Create a Vision Board
Law of attraction states that the universe supplies us with the things we think about most, and for many of us, seeing is believing.
It’s not uncommon that in the pursuit of success and achievements, whether they be personally or professionally, we become fanatically focused on doing rather than thinking.
Thinking, pondering and dreaming is a form of self-care in that it brings us clarity and self-assuredness, thus one way to practice thinking in the tangible sense is through making your dreams visible on a vision board.
From envisioning your dream home, to your ideal daily routine, or your favorite things you want to be, have, or do more of, creating a vision board is a self-care practice all about inviting in and attracting more of what you desire.
Spiritual Self-Care Practices
7 ) Take a Full Stop
Part of taking care of yourself is giving yourself permission to pump the brakes and come to a full stop for no other reason than to take a breath, think, and collect yourself.
Few matters in life hold our fate in the balance, and taking time to come to a full stop whether it be for 5 minutes or five days will likely not lead to a full unraveling, however, if we push through our need to pause, it can lead to an experience that feels out of control.
However, it’s critical to remember this: you are always in control.
And you get to control when you need to set something down and stop. Everything can be picked back up.
8 ) Pursue New Interests
Have you been holding back on trying a new hobby, looking into that trip you’ve said you want to take, or dreaming of a monthly spa day?
This is evidence of lack of self-trust (refer back to Self-Care Practice #2!), and part of trusting yourself is making the decision to research, pursue, and take action on the things that consume your thoughts.
If your consciousness is filled with the desire to learn, have or do something new, it’s your responsibility to yourself to follow those divine breadcrumbs.
9 ) Create Daily Rituals
Whether it’s a daily aromatherapy ritual, or meditating in the morning, or having a mug of tea and reading for 30 minutes before bed, creating daily rituals fosters continual self-care so that it doesn’t become another item on your “to-do” list, but rather a core component of your lifestyle.
One way to solidify a habit or make a ritual is to anchor it to another activity and/or a reward.
For example, if you want to develop the ritual of reading before bed to help you unwind, have time to yourself, and ease into sleep, anchoring that activity to a reward such as a mug of your favorite nighttime tea is a good way to turn that activity into a ritual.
Also, making your reading time start right after cleaning up the kitchen from eating dinner or getting your lunch prepped for the next day, or after a shower is another way to cultivate your ritual as it becomes part of your existing routine.
10 ) Invest in Yourself
Investing with your resources whether that be with time and energy or monetarily are all karmic exchanges, thus, when you invest into yourself, you receive the energy payout and dividends.
Circling back to the Law of Attraction as we mentioned earlier, there’s a signaling to the universe that happens when you invest in yourself, which results in a return on your investment in the form of mental, physical, and emotional benefits.
Now that you have a plethora of self-care ideas to get you off and running, which area of self-care will you focus on first?
We’ll give you a head start with our upcoming Self-Love Event featuring a sound bath experience, reiki, aromatherapy oil blend crafting, a Gua Sha class, mini treatments, guided meditation and more.
