What does it really mean, to care for the Self? This continues to be a deepening theme around total healing: respecting self-care like it was the Source of everything, vitally important to Well-Being. Yet, how does one fit this quality of ‘Care’ into daily life, in ways that make a difference to the health & healing of the body, mind, and soul?

use the outdoors to inspire movement within you!

“Being aware and intentional make all the difference when it comes to dropping into self-care.”

Positive Habits & Routines

If you believed that listening to the voice inside your body, your intuition, was the most important thing you did everyday for your health and Well-Being, how would you change the way you make decisions?

How would you greet your morning differently? Does the songbird chirp in your ears and the new dawn of the day slowly wake up your eyes? Or are you driven by the buzzing alarm that jolts your body into action mode? There are many ways to choose how to awaken into a new day. Depending on the way you begin your day, can make all the difference as to how the day unfolds.

During my recovery, the morning ritual has organically grown into a awakening of slowly opening my eyes, laying in bed taking in the sounds around me; the birds singing, water spilling into a small pond, opening my eyes to the sky, noticing if it is an open blue or cloudy grey. Once awake, I choose from a combination of reflective practices: meditation, journaling, and/or movement. Sometimes all three, others just one or two.

Imagining the energy flowing from deep in the Earth up through my body out into the sky and the Heavens above. My body includes not just my muscles and bones, but the trillions of cells working endlessly to keep me healthy. To mentally cultivate unwavering trust in the healing ability of my body to know what it needs for optimum healing.

Breathing In, Breathing Out

Try it now as you read, allow some of your attention to go to your breathing. Notice how your breath naturally moves in and out of your body. Or maybe you’re reading this in a hurry and scanning through the words and your breath follows a similar pattern. Both are fine. Maybe in this moment of noticing, you decide to make a choice about how you really want to proceed; is it to slow down and focus on your breathing as you read, setting aside everything else going on in you right now, or is it deciding this isn’t the right moment. I have too many things on my mind, I’ll come back to this when I can focus more?

We are making choices like this all the time regardless of what we are doing.

Tuning into my body in this quiet, focused way sets up an energy that can flow through and around me all day long. My focus lands on a gentle, still place where I am able to fluidly respond to what the day ahead brings me.

This body of mine is still very much in a deep healing mode and I need to continue respecting this and the timing that cellular regeneration takes. I’m learning that it takes a long time for the body to eventually become ill, so while healing can happen right here and now, the physical body still takes time to thoroughly turn itself around. In my case, this has gone from months to years.

Patience My Dear, Patience...

Patience is transformed into a newly felt experience. No more am I trying to keep forging ahead, pushing myself to complete ‘to do’ lists and 'get well' expectations. I have scaled back the amount of things I do in a day or complete in a week. Each day, I listen to my body and ask, ‘what do you need today?’ I make sure that many of these needs are tended to throughout the day. I feel how my energy level ebbs and flows as the day proceeds. I notice how I am much more protective of my personal space and choose carefully how I use it.

Some days, I wake up with a strong waterfall of energy pouring into me while other days, just a small, quiet stream.

As I cultivate a personal practice of inner directed activities, I am able to sense my body dropping into a place of waking up energetically; feeling where I am still sleepy or blocked, the sore or tight areas, the emotional tone, doing a non-judgmental inventory. Spending time focusing on breathing into my whole body from the bottom of my feet up to the top of my head allows me to begin gently connecting to the outer world and to the energies that exist beyond the boundaries of my skin.

A while back moving through treatments, my Oncologist said to me, “what’s more critical for you right now rather than going away to a rehabilitation center, is to learn how to care for yourself everyday, to make each day a ‘Rehab Day.” I was well enough to look after myself, although there was a part of me that fancied being taken care of in the Swiss Alps by a team of professionals. I felt the ring of truth when he said this to me. He was right, it was important that I begin to learn to really take care of my Self and learn to listen to what I need. I needed to begin this now.

You Are Your Own Expert!

Healing has continued for many months after this conversation occurred. I needed to become an expert in my own transformational journey of care. I needed to step into being honest with myself about what my inner voice was telling me. These are the moments where Trust, Self-Compassion, and the Power of Presence are cultivated.

This is in itself is a big challenge for anyone. For a mother, it is a big challenge because we quickly become conditioned to care for our offspring and family. Over time of caring for others, the ability to care for our Self slips away. I didn’t even notice how much this had happened with me.

The river widened as the years went by and the side of the river where my needs were housed began to be undernourished, while the other side grew with a multitude of flowers and flourished. It’s natural for a mother to want to care for the ones she loves, however it’s not healthy to do it at the expense of putting herself last or worse, never having the time or energy left to attend to her own needs.

“stay strong through your pain

grow flowers from it

you have helped me

grow flowers out of mine so

bloom beautifully

dangerously

loudly

bloom softly

however you need

just bloom”

”

— CALM instagram

A large psychological part of making a shift to greater healing has been recognizing how I had overlooked my own feelings and what my body was calling for. It wasn’t that I didn’t do things for myself, but I am seeing now that it was what I wasn’t doing, that has become of importance in changing.

The Body Whispers

This was listening to the quiet voice within that whispers to you in the night. Whispering messages you don’t want to hear because it means facing uncomfortable situations. Life is always offering you choices. When you pay attention, you notice the hundreds of choices made everyday.

Are these choices supporting your vital life energy or are they draining it away? This is the critical question?

Now today, I ask myself, does this decision or my response to a situation add to my life force and healing capacity or compromise it and drain it away? How are these choices supporting & empowering my Self, my Soul, my Spirit to heal and live in a deep creative flow with life?

How does my body feel with a decision I make? When I listen, the answer is clear. It either adds life energy or takes it away. If there is discomfort and discord, then I know I need to re-evaluate my decision. This kind of clarity has come from dealing with a severe illness where death’s presence is waiting right next door. Choices take on the essential vital essence of either, this supports my living or it supports my dying. Which do I choose in this moment?

I have no wiggle room to make a choice that isn’t in my best living interest anymore. When the body is working fine and no illness is pressing in everyday where life feels so fragile, there is a false sense of believing that I can spare living with this choice even if it doesn’t feel great for me. After all, what harm can it do? It’s easy to rationalize away decisions. There is no immediate life-threatening situation that comes from it.

Dis-embodied or Embodied?

However, what we fail to truly listen to, is the emotional, mental, or spiritual damage that is being created from the decision. Maybe you find yourself feeling agitated, angry, lethargic, or short-tempered? The body has ways of expressing its’ discomfort and if not listened to, the emotional and mental bodies then become more disconnected from the physical body. You slowly end up living in a dis-embodied state where your head and heart are not connected.

It is so important and critical to LIVE YOUR LIFE today as if you were to die tomorrow!! This is an extreme saying, but find the element of truth within it and make your small, hundred daily choices, with this awareness in mind. Why go through life watering down the fullness of your Spirit? How deeply satisfying and fulfilling will this be over the long span of your life? When I am about to pass over into the next version of my souls journey, I do not want to have any regrets.

Ultimately, it is your life to live, and your responsibility to be at PEACE within yourself, to share your LOVE with the others in your life, and remember that when you take care of yourself first, only then are you really able to offer others, the FULLNESS OF YOUR BEING.