Do you think self-care is a bubble bath? I once thought that. That was the quintessential form of nurturing and solitude in my eyes, the only way a person could recharge and rest. I also thought stress and self-care went hand-in-hand, that without one you wouldn’t need the other. It turns out that mindfulness and meditation are at the core of self-care. If you want to live a more meaningful life and learn tools to be less stressed, you need to learn how to practice mindfulness and meditation. So, ladies, step out of the bathtub! Here you’re going to learn how to really check in with yourself and take care of your needs.
Mindfulness
Practicing mindfulness opens a door in your mind that allows you to focus on the simple pleasures of everyday, like the simple miracle of oxygen filling your lungs or listening to the sound of a complete stranger laughing in the distance. You become aware of what’s in your life and you become grateful for it. It’s magic how practicing mindfulness/gratitude changes your life. Try these exercises to learn how to make magic of your own.
Mindfulness Exercise #1
Practicing ‘three good things’ every day before bed is proven to completely transform your life, particularly if you’re suffering from depression. It helps you notice the subtleties of every day that bring joy, like the things your kids did or how someone made you feel good. You can look back on your day and remember things that made you smile, not things that made you pissed or sad. It gives you a birds-eye view on what kind of life your actually living. You can learn how to practice this here.
Mindfulness Exercise #2
Another way to practice mindfulness is to stop what your doing and observe your thoughts when you feel overwhelmed. Try this exercise: Sit down in a quiet place, take a few breaths and close your eyes. Imagine your thoughts passing through your mind much like water passes through a riverbed. Often times we let our thoughts consume us, not ever taking into account that our thoughts are just that: thoughts.
When you’re trying to figure out the meaning behind every thought, it’s the same thing as being immersed in water and drowning. Imagine yourself getting up out of that river and sitting on the riverbank, watching your thoughts without judgment (meaning, don’t ask yourself why you’re thinking what you are). When you do this you understand how much thinking is actually going on in your brain and how not judging, just letting the thoughts be what they are, is the key to not over-thinking, over-analyzing and over-stressing.
Mindfulness Exercise #3
When you’re feeling overwhelmed and want to bring yourself into the present moment, try this exercise I learned from ZivaOnline:
- Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and ask yourself these questions:
- what am I feeling? (physical sensations, like feeling the air conditioner on your arm, etc.)
- what am I seeing? (with your eyes closed)
- what can I hear? (wind blowing, etc.)
- what can I smell?
- What can I taste right now?
The subtle and the pronounced is what you want to notice with every sense you go through. Then, you want to try to hold on to as many senses as possible at the same time. Sit with this for a few moments and feel what it feels like to be exactly in the moment. It’s pretty powerful.
In sum, practice mindfulness so you can discover things to be grateful for. Carve out time for yourself every day to do this.
Meditation
Meditation is a platform to help you get better at living your best life. According to zivameditation.com (n.d.), it helps you sleep better, it helps you react to stress more gracefully, it helps you think clearer, speak more articulate, become more forgiving with yourself and others, and have fewer migraines. I can’t recommend it enough for daily practice.
Debunking the Myths
Meditating seems to come with a mental image of someone sitting crisscross and floating around a room, with absolutely nothing going on inside their brain. Luckily this myth has been debunked by research. Not only are thoughts okay to have during meditation, it’s encouraged. Our brains think, it’s just what they do. Meditation helps us learn to embrace this.
Meditation has been proven to strengthen your corpos colosseum, the thick nerve that connects your two brain hemispheres together (zivameditation.com, n.d.). When you’re able to access both hemispheres better, you become a total boss. This is the power of meditation and one of the science-y reasons it helps you live your best life. Plenty of meditation practices are out there, many free on Youtube. I recommend learning a formal approach here.
Like mindfulness, you need to meditate every day. You don’t workout on an as-needed basis because that’s not how you produce lasting results. Think of your mind as another body part and meditation as the gym. Take your brain to the gym every day to make yourself strong.
Putting it Together
To sum up what you’ve just read, I’ll leave with a quote I found from one of my favorite blogs, Dwell in Magic: “”Self-care is a deliberate action one takes to communicate with their own soul. It’s a respite from the outside world, a chance to take deep breaths physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Self-care is the act of loving oneself so that that love can then flow out into the world around them.””
I repeat: self-care is not a bubble bath. It’s a lifestyle of self-reflection and self-love made possible through mindfulness and meditation. The more you practice real self-care, the more you will be able to give to yourself and the world.
Much love!