Self Care: The challenge and 5 tips for your routine

By early April, I completed a two week #inalignedselfcare challenge. 

The premise: 

In this era, when all our routines are up-ended and even some of our livelihoods are in question, what do we do to maintain our wellbeing? Do we deal with stress and uncertainty by binging on food, substances, netflix, sleep? When are those things appropriate for “letting go” and relieving stress or when are those things distractions and/or even self-abuse? 

I saw many people starting exercise classes on Zoom and posting on social media about recreating their normal schedules in virtual settings. How amazing is it that we have that technological capability?! To some extent, all of that is necessary right now. I also started offering online classes… However, I have always been uneasy with what has been considered normal for our work schedules and our work-out routines. They sometimes seem based on models for living that are unhealthy and unbalanced for most humans. Why would I want to recreate those patterns? Maybe this upended time is an opportunity to explore other ways of being…

I wanted to provide a space to offer self-care rituals, tips, and routines for our well-being. I was curious what I could offer and what others do to keep centered, their energy balanced, and spirits high. I wanted to bring to the conversation how fitness is only a small part of our self-care (just like “exercise” is only a small part of movement).

Here’s a recap of what I explored:

  • Sleep Hygiene

  • Juicing (Celery Juice specifically)

  • Skin Care & Self Massage (abhyanga)

  • Squatty Potty - or movement inducing home environments

  • Yogic cleansing techniques such as nauli, trataka, and pranayama

  • Sunshine and Nature

  • Hot and Cold temperature variations for health

  • Earthing and Grounding

  • Restorative Exercise

  • Community: Friends, family & pets

  • Natural Movement and how it puts many self-care elements together

  • Gratitude - how viewpoint and attitude affect wellbeing

  • Stacking - The concept of putting it all together

  • Not overdoing it - ie: Do Less

You can find all the full instagram posts about these things at the end of this blog post!

What I left out:

There’s so much more I could have included in this list such as:

  • Intermittent Fasting

  • Herbal tonics and remedies

  • Tidying

  • Nourishing healthy boundaries

  • Developing sense of purpose

  • and much more…

I think this will be an ongoing conversation, and I will keep adding to the hashtag #inalignedselfcare as I keep adding posts to my Instagram feed.

What I learned:

When I organize my routines around self care, I certainly feel more grounded, energized, purposeful, healthy, secure, and grateful. However, since there’s so many techniques, tips, hacks, routines and rituals out there, it’s easy to approach self-care from the same scheduling mode that has led to so much stress and dysfunction. It could be a full time occupation. There are certainly people who get addicted to life hacks and self care in such a way that they aren’t very functional in society and create more anxiety if anything is out of place (I didn’t get my run in today! This kale isn’t organic! ) So, overdoing it is a possibility.

Here are my tips for developing a self-care regimen:

  1. Let it be a playful experiment:
    Curiosity, play, experimentation are good attitudes with which to approach new self-care techniques. Those attitudes will give you permission to keep checking in with yourself by asking How does this feel? Do I like this? Is this for me?

  2. Don’t get too strict or serious:
    In the end, it’s all about your well-being and what makes you feel good. If we’re getting too serious, we’re probably also judging ourselves and adding more stress into our lives.

  3. Alternate between the long and short term perspectives:
    Creating new habits takes time. So, if it’s not done perfectly right away or if you don’t see the benefit right away, or if you miss a day, remind yourself to take the long term view. Also, if it’s not rewarding in some way in the moment, that may be a sign to re-examine your reason for doing it.

  4. Stack Your Life:
    There’s literally no way to do everything for our health, our job, our community, and our pastimes if each is compartmentalized into a separate activity. So, start figuring out how to put them together. Ask what activities can serve multiple purposes. For example, a walk to the market with friends can put together your needs for community, health, nourishment, and a daily chore all in one. I talk about this with Natural Movement which takes care of play, exercise, sunshine, nature, earthing, and community all in one activity. You can also look at how your environment can work better for you: such as how standing desks can give your body more nourishing movements while you are working.

  5. Give yourself permission to Do Less:
    Sometimes the most important part of self care is not what you are adding to your life but what you give yourself permission to subtract from it. What is unnecessary and causing unease or dis-ease in your life? Every single self-care technique may be unnecessary for you. Maybe your routine changes over time or cycles throughout the month. But by giving ourselves permission to do less, amazingly, we often will find ourselves doing the things that mean more to us.

What’s Next?

I’m starting a new challenge this week!

#alignedhomemovement

From Wednesday 4/22 through Friday 5/1 we’ll be exploring ways of getting more movement of our bodies in our home environments. This will explore the notion of stacking your life with reimagining your home environment to encourage better use of our bodies throughout our days.

There are other challenges out there such as #furniturefree where people are providing examples of putting more movement in their lives through the decreased use of furniture. This challenge will incorporate that concept, but I’m interested in not only being “free” of furniture, but maybe how you can use your furniture differently.

My one disappointment in the previous challenge was not getting more people to participate. So, this time, I’ve invited some other movement professional friends to join in and if you feel inspired, I hope you will too!

Now without further ado, here’s all the posts from #inalignedselfcare

Self Care Challenge Posts:

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In Aligned Self Care Challenge Day 5: Nauli. Also known as stomach churning. The yoga tradition is rich with self-care techniques. Nauli is part of the Shat Karma or 6 actions for purification. It is said to massage the internal organs and aid in digestion and elimination, as well as stimulate the whole gut region which is the seat of much of our immune system. It’s also great for developing those belly dancer muscles 🧞 I’m including this here not because you must do this technique but so often the gut area is ignored except to work it to death trying to achieve 6 pack abs. And the excessive tension built up there can adversely affect your breathing, your digestion, and even the movement of lymph which is crucial for your immune system. the whole core should be supple and able to bend, twist, compress, stretch, as well as support your body with strength. To assist with relieving excessive tension, there are many other techniques: - “gut smashing” - or laying over a ball and allowing yourself to sink into the pressure - chi nei tsang - a style of massage focusing on the abdomen - stretching as in yoga asana (just be mindful to align your pelvis and ribs... contact me for more info on this!) - just practice moments of releasing and breathing into your belly when in quadruped or laying down (again, contact me for more instruction on these things) #inalignedselfcare #nauli #shatkarma #gutsmashing #guthealth #bellyrelease #bellybreathing #corecontrol #moveyourdna

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In Aligned Self Care Challenge Day 10: Grounding. Our modern world is comprised of much that disconnects us from the earth. This has deleterious effects on our mental and physical health. Our buildings, floors, shoes, and pavement literally keep us from connecting our bodies to the earth. Also, our lifestyles, technology and consumer based economy keeps us disconnected mentally from the awareness of from where things come (ie: our food, supplies, clothes, products) and the effect they are having on the earth. Being grounded also has psychological implications for wellbeing such as being centered, resilient, calm in the midst of a storm, etc. Without such grounding we’re flighty, anxious, stressed, searching. But there are remedies both man made and natural. In this photo I’,m displaying a type of bio-mat from @healthylineshop which is a sort of heated pad which emits negative ions from crystals, and the other is my earthing sheet from @earthing which is lined with silver and connected to the grounding wire of an outlet to also deliver negative ions to the body. I use the sheet for sleeping and the mat for rest and meditation. The earth itself is said to be negatively charged and when our body connects with it, the negative ions enter our body and can actually act to neutralize positively charged ions from free radicals thus acting as a natural anti-inflammatory! It also decreases stress levels, induces a sense of restfulness, and increases immune function. The 3rd way to achieve this is of course to walk outside barefoot! This is something I do everyday! #earthing #grounding #biomat #inalignedselfcare #barefoot #mowgligang #connectiontonature #touchtheearth

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In Aligned Self Care Challenge Day 11: Exercise or more precisely Restorative Exercise. One of my favorite self care habits is practicing some sort of Restorative Exercise throughout the day. I might not even do a whole routine or class, but I prefer to add in movements to restore my body’s function regularly whenever I can. The difference between “exercise” and RE is that exercise is sometimes approached as a task to “break you down” and tire you out so that you’ve gotten your movement dose for the day. RE, on the other hand, teaches you to undo habitual tension and restore innate and healthy motor programs so that you are moving better and more of yourself all the time. I think of it as my preparation for living and it’s a great sister program for the natural movement play I do outdoors. Plus, by learning how to move habitually unmoved parts of yourself, you are bringing better health to your whole body on a cellular level AND you are likely to get that lymph moving to improve your immune system when you enervate habitually unused places that store lymph nodes such as the pelvis, hips, armpit area and ribcage. Are you moving some of your body some of the time? Did you know all of your body needs to move in order to thrive? #inalignedselfcare #restorativeexercise #restorativeexercisespecialist #movemore #movemoreofyou #lymphmovement #movebetter #movementlifestyle #moveallday #mechanotransduction

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In Aligned Self Care Challenge Day 13: Play... and Stack your life. It was hard to categorize this one because it encompasses so many things. The essence of this self care tip is find time to play. And align your play-time with something that brings you alive. The second aspect is to relax and restore... now this may seem weird for a video of jumping and climbing through the woods - but that is often because when we are over-tired, worked, sleep deprived and stressed, the notion of relaxation only conjures doing less. Maybe stopping and napping and sitting on a beach drinking mai-tai’s. That’s how we know we’re off our self-care game. Because once we are rested and have given ourselves some self-care, the notion of play may merge with relaxation and you may feel the calling to the things that bring you alive. Even self-care can become so much of a stress producing chore if it means we have to DO MORE. And this is where the concept of “Stack your life” comes into play. How can self-care, play, relaxation, and maybe even our work all become one and the same? This is why I love Natural Human Movement or @movnat : it stacks so many things I need for self-care. - Being in Nature - Earthing - sunshine - Movement - community - breath work - a meditative focus on flowing through the environment - Play How can our self-care become a way of life? How do you stack your life to actually do less and align your activities with your true nature? #inalignedselfcare #movnat #stackyourlife #doless #lessismore #play #relax #restorativeplay #findyournature #mowgligang #hanumanhealthclub

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