Self care is not self grooming

To most adult the idea of self care is not something that was passed on from the family. Personal hygiene is usually taught by parents or carers during childhood development taking a shower, mouth cleaning… which we can take with us on our life’s journey.

Self care on the other hand goes deeper than personal hygiene or self grooming. Some people also confuse self care with self grooming. Self grooming is a thoughtful methodical process in which one looks after parts of the body like nail care or hair care.

What is Self Care?

Self care is act of self love

Self care is the art and practice of caring for all of our being. It can include personal hygiene, self grooming but it goes further by paying attention and listening deeply to our soul needs. You may have planned to go to a close friend’s birthday party but realise after work that you are tired and would rather be in bed with a cup of herbal tea to unwind from the day.

A form of self care will be to listen to your soul needs and actually stay in bed and enjoy the cup of herbal tea.

And from a place of health you can contact your close friend and make it up to them. Self care is different for eac individual due to our taste, preferences, and what we are willing to explore.

Types of Self Care

Self care is part of holistic health, you learn to care for different areas of your wellbeing, so that you can live more healthily and peacefully.

Physical Self Care

Is not about exercising, pumping muscles or doing the latest yoga or workout routine on social media.

Physical self care is caring for you physical wellbeing and needs. I use the words needs because most people don’t understand that certain practices/tools are a need for them. For example some of a person’s primary physical self care need may be daily exercising and drinking lots of water, and for another it may be going for a walk regularly and a massage. Usually there is a list of different tools, practices, and systems that a person benefits from for self care purposes, the journey to discover the “self care toolbox” is a journey of openness, trial and error, discovery, and working with a professional to identify the key self care tools that is unique to an individual, which also may change depending on what is going on in the life of the individual and the environment.

Spiritual Self Care

They say we are are a spiritual being having an human experience

Spiritual self care is an area most people do not pay much attention. Feeding one’s spirit with spiritual practices such as prayers, meditation, rituals, connection and commune with nature are some of the most overlooked medicines. Cultivating and developing a spiritual practice is essential in our modern life for the health of each individual and for all of existence. Being part of a healthy spiritual community can be a healing, healthy, and joyful experience and can inspire one to live a life of morality and ethics.

Mental Self Care

What you feed your mind is very important for your self care

What are you feeding your mind? What are you exposing yourself to? Input determines output. If you choose to expose yourself to programs, medias, ideas, environments, people that pollute your mind with toxicity, negativity, fear, anxiety… this will affect how you function as a human and your overall health.

Mental self care is caring and making conscious choices about choosing to feed your mind with things that are healthy for you. That are not fear based, or based on other people’s opinion of you.

Energetic Self Care

Everything is energy

We are all energetic beings. We are made of energy, energy is all around us in the universe, energetic self care as I have termed is the process and procedures of looking after the energies that are within and around you. We are made of many energetic systems that drives us to to be social, creative, courageous…. If we do not learn, use, or know how to care for these energetic systems properly, we end up out of balance and can become unwell.

Some energetic self care can be developing an awareness of the energies around us and choosing to be part of the energetic system or to leave the energetic system. For example if you are in a space like a gym and you sense that someone’s energy does not vibe with you, you can choose to leave this space as an energetic self care, if you choose to ignore this energetic disturbance you may unconsciously lash out at the gym attendant and unconsciously the energy may affect you much longer after the gym.

Emotional Self Care

People ignore their’s and other people’s feeling because they are too in the mind

Emotional intelligence is a valuable investment for emotional self care. This can help you to understand your emotions and to develop compassion, empathy, loving-kindness for yourself and for others. Emotional self care is learning tools and practices for safely and healthily processing and expressing your emotions. Emotions such as anger can be expressed in a safe space by doing certain activities such as throwing a ball, or going to kick boxing class. Sometimes is all about getting the emotions out safely and kindly without hurting self or others in the process. And sometime is coming to the realisation that it too shall pass.

Purpose of Self Care

To realign and bring self back to a state of harmony

When you are in a state of disharmony i.e. emotionally (sad, angry..) or physically disturbed, it can be difficult to see things clearly and process the present moment in a state of peace and calm.

Creating and developing a unique self care routine can help you to accept or change the disturbances or disharmony into a state of peace and/or harmony. It is a way we rebalance and realign ourself to health and our core values. It is a self investment worth investing in.

Self care is important…

In a world where people are more mobile, more connected, and our lives are busier, creating a self care toolkit is essential and is an act of self love. Slowing down to realign to our core to our values, for our health, the health of others, and the health of our planet is very much needed when we are in a state of disharmony and out of balance.

Simple things such as taking a walk in nature, taking a warm aroma therapeuticbath can be the medicine the soul need. Understanding the purpose of self carecan encourage and motivate us to develop and use the types of self care we need for health. Self care is important.

If you would like to know more about any of what has been discussed, or learn and be guided towards developing a holistically health self care routine then please contact me.