If we want love to save the day…🥰

So many of us are running on empty with the stress dial turned right up! Driving is where my stress shows its head—I catch myself snarling or wanting to bite a chunk out of the car in front of me. Or if I’m in mellow mode, I get someone else wanting to do the same to me. It’s easy to lose it at the drop of a hat, so frayed and jagged are our nervous systems. In these crazy times where everything seems to boil down to just two things: love and fear we need to make sure—it’s imperative we make sure—that we’re looking after ourselves. When I say selves I really mean bodies, all four of them!

SELF-CARE AND YOUR 4 BODIES

Yes that’s right, not just your physical body—I’m talking about your emotional body, your mental body and your spiritual body. When I studied to be an Open Floor movement meditation teacher we spent a lot of time on the ‘bodies’. Of course they’re all intertwined but learning to be with and attend to each one of them separately is incredibly helpful when it comes re-filling our cup.

OUR PHYSICAL BODY

This is the one we’re most familiar with when we think about prioritising self-care. Our negative self-talk usually involves the words ‘too much’ (you fill in the blanks): I’m eating too much ____; drinking too much ____; blobbing too much. Or the words ‘not enough’ echo in our heads: not enough exercise, not enough sleep, not enough water and so on. And then of course there’s the ‘regular’ wishlist that never seems to materialise: a regular massage, a regular yoga practice, gym workout etc. It’s so easy to feel like we’re letting ourselves down when it comes to looking after our physical body but none of it eventuates in BEING IN our body…

PHYSICAL SELF-CARE NOW

TIP 1: Be GENTLE on yourself and remember; the art of return is key. Keep returning to your intentions and keep on starting again, no matter how many times you fall off the horse; start again/return. So you end up doing some yoga or exercise or saying no to that ‘thing’.

TIP 2: TUNE IN daily—try it right now—to the breath. Go on! Let your belly go soft and feel your lungs fill with oxygen and your ribs expand. Exhale with a sigh. Repeat.

TIP 3: TUNE IN daily to your resting heartbeat. Try to remember to feel the sensation of your heartbeat each day. It’s very soothing for your nervous system.

OUR MENTAL BODY

This is the one that’s the most unwieldy and thrives on running rings around us. You met it just before, via the words ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’. As well as being a hard task master, it can also go wild with the chatter that involves fear of loss, fear of persecution and fear of death—all on overdrive in a pandemic. 

MENTAL SELF-CARE NOW

TIP 1: Be KIND to yourself. Your mental body is running a marathon right now in a new and vast terrain, whilst constantly being bombarded with too much stimulation.

TIP 2: Try to CATCH YOURSELF out at negative self-speak and self-chatter. This is the first step to breaking patterns of worry...noticing when you start leaning into the future with your thoughts and worrying about things that aren’t real or are out of your control. 

TIP 3: COMMIT to less news, less social media, less screen time full stop.

TIP 4: TRY something new and choose to prioritise your senses for a change, so that your mental body can go off line for a time. Listen to your favourite song without doing anything else. Delight in the sense of touch—self-pleasure or with another. Seek out beauty to behold and delicious aromas to swoon to. Treat yourself to your favourite food/tastes. Stare out the window and daydream (only positive meanderings).

YOUR EMOTIONAL BODY

Emotional embodiment involves a capacity to feel emotion (really feel it), to stay present to it and to express it. Easier said than done! Being able to track our emotion as a movement of energy in our own bodies takes practice. So too does being able to respond to them authentically (does my outer expression match my inner experience?).

EMOTIONAL SELF-CARE NOW

TIP 1: Put your hand on your heart and call to mind and heart someone (it can also be an animal or a place, or a tree) that you really, really love/d. Bring them into your mind and heart so that their presence fills you up, starting in your heart. Feel how this summoning of them fills you with a sense of love. Allow this love to flow into every cell.

TIP 2: Tears are said to be natural anti-depressants so don’t swallow them down or hold them in—if they’re there, let them flow. 

TIP 3: Ask for a hug. Yes, I know it almost feels illegal to hug but hugging is what makes us human so make a wise choice with ‘who’ and make sure you do.

YOUR SPIRITUAL BODY

Spiritual embodiment involves feeling our place in the larger field. Like we belong or a meaningful part of something bigger. The opposite is a deep, unmet yearning; a sense of feeling separate and disconnected.

TIP: Use your imagination and tune into something bigger than you. Something you’re in awe of because of its beauty or greatness: a flower, a mountain, a tree, the flame of a candle, a river or an ocean, one of the planets, planet earth! A goddess, a god. You’ll think of something. Tune into its essence and be with it for as long as you can, attuning to the beauty. Allow yourself to be filled with awe and reverence. If this is a struggle, think back to when you were younger, when there was a time when you were in awe of something. This memory will live in your body somewhere and if you can reignite it, it’s a pathway to tapping into that larger field.

Self-care of these 4 bodies, all our ‘parts’ involves going kindly and gently at every turn. With ourselves and each other. Even—especially—during these crazy times.