Self-care, Brigid – again!

It wasn’t that long ago I started talking about self care as a spiritual practice (last April to be exact!) Now, there are of course mentions of self care previously on the blog and if you do a search on the side bar, you’ll see all that.

But in relation to this as a specifically spiritual practice, not so much. So today, for a few different reasons (one being it’s my first day back in work after a week off so my brain needs time to settle…) I’m going to dive into what my self care looks like. I’ll also throw some practical ideas at you to see about getting you started.

To get us started, here’s a definition of self-care from dictionary.com

the act of attending to one’s physical or mental health, generally without medical or other professional consultation (often used attributively):

How do I work my self care

Above are two images of what self care might look like. And, I’ll be honest, the second one happens more often than the first for me.

Here’s the thing. I looked at the various sources on the internet and looked at what my health needs on a regular basis. And by health, I took a seriously holistic view here.

I looked as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, started at the bottom and worked my way up. No, seriously, this is what I did. And I defined for myself and my darlin’ husband, what that meant for us. Both in terms of self-care and in terms of what we need for daily life!

So, yes, we started at the bottom. Air, despite the rain we have in Ireland, isn’t a massive issue in Ireland. Most of the time anyway. Particularly when you live in the Irish countryside. Obviously air pollution is an issue world wide, but we are in a better position than most!

About eight years ago, we moved to a different house. Bigger, suits us better, in an environment that allows us to sleep better and get the peace we need in life. Even my darlin’ husband admits he sleeps better in our semi-rural location than he did in the middle of town. For some reason, cattle lowing is a lot easier to sleep with than motor bikes revving up and down the street…

When we realised how much of a difference that had made to our lives we worked further up the chart. While money isn’t mentioned specifically here, “resources” appear in the second tier – looking at clearing our debt was an early action. Feeling that we had enough money and resources to live made a massive difference to us and it took a combination of things. Mainly clearing debt and earning more, but there were other things as well.

My four pillars of self-care

I came down to 4 pillars of self care for us. And I’ll throw some ideas for each as I go.

First is sleep. This is absolutely foundational to my health and well being. When I start going off track on pretty much anything, it comes back to sleep. Part of this is making sure the bedroom is at the right temperature; it’s (relatively) tidy; dark; calm; I’m wearing comfy jammies; sheets are clean.

It sounds a lot, but it’s worth it. And when I start feeling off, or disgruntled, or whatever, sleep is where I look at first. This also includes struggling to get up in the morning, or waiting until my 3rd or 4th alarm to get out of bed. This usually means I need to go back to looking at my bedtime, making sure the last hour before bed is conducive to calming down.

Second is water. Now, because I spent many years using water to suppress my appetite, water can be a bit difficult for me to maintain in moderation. But equally, as part of self-care, hydration is important. And, to be fair, I usually drink 1 cup of coffee a day and other than that, it’s water. So, drinking 3 L a day isn’t the end of the world. However, I am also really bad at recognising cues from my body until they get extreme, so to an outsider, I can go from “absolutely grand” to “holy hell, dehydration headache from hell” in a split second.

I don’t of course. I can just ignore most of my body signals for a long time!!

Next comes food. Now, I’ve mentioned before that I have had some issues in the past with disordered eating. Food is a major problem for me a lot of the time. It’s easier to push it all out to someone else. Or ignore food until I’m starving and then I just grab a chocolate bar. Seriously – if I feel nauseous, the answer is usually to eat something. But, there are other complications. I know I feel better when I eat a broad range of fruit and veggies. When my food intake is based around “eating a rainbow” and making sure I get lots of protein, rather than basing it on carbs. I tend to have more energy that way. But it’s hard. And usually require prep work.

Finally, movement. This is another one that’s tough for me. It’s another way of expressing self-care to use “movement” rather than “exercise”, by the way. Another hangover from my disordered eating days. Because to me, movement encompasses more than exercise. But it’s also less scary. It doesn’t mean exercising til I throw up. It means dancing, yoga, stretching, walking. So much more.

Time for some solid ideas

So here some ideas.

• Sleep: Do you get enough sleep? There are times in life that no one gets enough sleep. If you have a small baby, even 2 hrs in a row might seem like luxury. So don’t take this as gospel. But a bit of journaling around what helps you sleep might help bring some ideas to light. I’ve mentioned what I need above – it’s a nice short-ish, succint-ish list. It has also taken years to compile. So why not take a few mins and journal around sleep, how you feel about sleep and what you want from your sleep?
• Water: I understand that not everyone drinks water like I do. And indeed, as part of self care, there are a lot of time, especially when I get too hot, that a fizzy drink is really what I want, so I get it. And I do occasionally enjoy an alcoholic drink or two. (Ahem, there are friends of mine reading this that will actually LOL at that. But my drinking has reduced dramatically in recent years!) So maybe “hydration” will work better for you than “water” here. Make these ideas work for you!
• Food: Again, there is no One True way with food. You may have eating habits that work extremely well for you, support you, fit with your life… which is brilliant and I’m delighted that food isn’t an issue for you. But you might also be like me where eating is a massive challenge at times. it helps to have snacks around that taste good, are easy to eat, fit in with your view of good eating, that sort of thing.
• Movement: This varies a lot for me. There are days when it feels really good to get all sweaty, and tired, and achy. There are other days when it’s as much as I can do to get my physio exercises done. And there are days where no amount of self-care or motivation will have me engage with movement at all. But this is about what you do most days, rather than once in a while. What does a nice self-care-y movement practice look like for you?

Moving on from here

I do have a five day challenge that’s run by email and gives you 5 days of journal prompts – closely following the four pillars above, with a few extra bits thrown in. You can sign up here and see what it’s about.

The most important thing is to see what works for you. Yes, of course, there are times when a nice massage or body treatment is exactly the best self care for you. But there are other times when putting that money or energy towards paying bills or cleaning the house would be better for you.

You are the important thing though. You are the centre of this work. Brigid needs you to look after yourself, so you can do the work she has for you. But you get to determine what that self-care looks like. No one else.

And if all of that is just too much, that’s ok. Go back to one deep breath a day. If all you have is those 5 seconds before the baby starts crying or the phone starts ringing or whatever it is that starts your adrenaline pumping: take one single deep breath. And commit to it. And work on from there.