Self Care – it isn’t what you think
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Self Care – it isn’t what you think
The term self-care often conjures up images of hot, steamy bubble baths with candles, luxuriating on the couch with a good book and a cup of tea or booking into one of those fancy spa centres for a massage or other treatment. All of these sound lovely, but what if none of these activities were actually self-care in the true sense?
What if there is more to self-care than doing something relaxing or blissful for ourselves?
But, before you stop reading, let’s not say that any of those activities are bad or wrong, because they are not, and there will be instances where these activities support us.
What if though, there is more to self-care… that is, caring for our self?
"The greatest knowing you will ever know is the totality of your body."
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, Volume I, ed 1, p 255
In other words, the only way we can have a true relationship with ourselves is by knowing our body, therefore, we need to be in touch and connected with our body in order to care for it.
Let’s say that you arrive home from a big day at work feeling tired, if not exhausted. You don’t feel like cooking, you want something quick and easy and need some down time to let go of the day. We’ve all been here, right?
There are many avenues you could take at this point that you may consider are taking care of yourself, such as going for a hard run or doing a gym workout to let off some steam, have a few drinks to chill out and try and forget about the day, flop on the couch and turn on the TV to focus on something completely different or talk to a friend or loved one about your day and as you do, you re-live all of the day’s events all over again.
What if these and the other multitude of ways we use to cope and manage the stresses of life were just that – coping mechanisms – but that they don’t truly nurture and nourish our body and support us to return to being our true ‘self’.
What is self-care then?
Could self-care be as simple as connecting with and feeling what your body needs in any given moment? Can it really be that simple?
It could be something like taking a stop moment for yourself before you tend to all the other things you need to do. That moment might be in your car before you get out and walk in the door, on the bus, sitting at your desk, etc. And in that moment, you close your eyes gently and purposefully and feel where your body is at.
Then, if in this stop moment your body feels like it is racing at a million miles an hour, then acknowledging this and considering why? And in this moment, you may well get a sense of what it is you need to bring yourself back to a point where you feel your ‘self’ again?
It could be as simple as slowly and gently getting out of the car and walking through the door of your home, or walking from one room to another and feeling every step you take to bring more presence to your body.
What if these were examples of self-care? Not prescribed, no list of things to do for yourself, no treats or rewards in fact nothing to do except tune into you and your body and see what it needs in that moment to bring yourself back to a state where your mind and body are not miles apart, and you can start to hear again what the wisdom of your body has to say.
Taking moments like this to stop may not sound like much, but they are monumental and crucial steps to returning to a way of living where our body leads the way with its innate wisdom.
This is the opposite of relying on a set of prescribed go-to’s that at best make us temporarily feel better but don’t support us to live in a way that is based on staying connected to our body, and making self-care a moment by moment way of being rather than something that we do to ‘fix us’ after a hard day or week.
Filed under
Body awareness, Connection, Self-love
