On Friday, I facilitated an interactive virtual workshop of self-care. Unfortunately, a lot of people confuse self-care as the activities one takes to maintain their outward appearance, but self-care is so much more than that. Self-care is any intentional action or decision made to take care of our physical health, mental health, and emotional health. I like to think of self-care as the three prongs of our personal foundation…body, mind and spirit.
Our national quarantine period has given us an opportunity to assess how we practice self-care and it’s become critical because it directly affects how we show-up at home, with our loved ones, in interactions with others and on ZOOM. If one of our prongs is bent or not holding any weight it starts to affect the other prongs. It’s that like the popular adage, put the oxygen mask on yourself first.
At the beginning of the quarantine, I was having a lot of dance parties at home, but as the weather has improved my dance parties have shifted to walks. As a person that doesn’t love working out, it’s delighting that I now recognize and acknowledge physical activity is a necessary component of my self-care practices. If I go two or three days without any type of physical activity I start to feel uneasy. Furthermore, the mornings I skip my morning meditation prayer time and capturing my gratitude reflections my days always seem to be a little off-kilter. I even try to put on a little make-up on daily because looking somewhat together ties into my mental feelings.
You only have one body, one life and there’s only one YOU. If you don’t take care of yourself why would you expect anyone else to?
How do YOU take care of YOURSELF?
If you aren’t taking care of YOURSELF, how do YOU PLAN to start taking care of YOURSELF?
