Self-Care (part 1: physical)

Self-care is a BIG pillar under the self-love roof. To me, it is almost synonymous. Today, we’re talking about physical self-care, listening to your body and the helpfulness of routines and rituals.

Defining ‘Self-Care’

Since self-care is a well-known term, I don’t have to come up with a definition all on my own. While many definitions involve the phrase ‘managing stress levels’, I like how the OED fairly simply defines self-care as: “The activity of taking care of one’s own health, appearance, or well-being.” I also like this definition by Megan McCormick a lot: “Self-care is a sustained and intentional practice in one’s life to preserve wellness and maintain a wholeness in being,” especially the ‘intentional’ part. Combining these two into one then, I’d say self-care is: ‘the intentional practice of maintaining one’s holistic health and well-being’.

Physical self-care

In this post, I’ll focus on physical self-care, and later discuss mental and emotional self-care. I realize that physical, mental and emotional health are all intertwined and influence one another, but since self-care is such a broad topic, I want to zoom in on the physical aspect first.

I think many of us already know what physical self-care includes. We all know we need to exercise every now and then, eat as healthy as possible, get enough rest and keep our bodies clean. However, effective self-care looks different for everyone. So I want to focus less on the what and more on the how. Because every body is different, we need to start paying attention to the specific needs ours has.

Tuning in

To really be able to take care of your unique body, you need to start tuning in to what it tells you it needs. That means that you need to start paying attention to discomfort, pain, tension, hunger, thirst, restlessness, fatigue, changes in temperature; to name but a few important indicators. If you don’t feel so connected to your body just yet, a good way to start listening is by doing a body scan meditation every once in a while. This allows you to mindfully notice anything that is happening in your body, while scanning through it from your scalp to your toes.

Get curious about your body, inside and out. Examine your skin, is it dry or oily? Take inventory of the foods that cause some type of reaction. When do you feel the most energized during the day? And when the most tired? What kind of pain do you experience most often? Are you cold most of the time or hot or comfortably in-between? This is essentially more physically focused self-exploration, and it’s a very important step on your way to personalized self-care.

Your body is constantly telling you what it needs. When it’s difficult to keep your eyes open, you probably need some sleep. When you’re shivering, you need to put on a sweater or have a nice hot shower. When you notice that your hair and nails are breaking off more easily, it’s time to stock up on some extra vitamins. It’s up to you to take action and fulfil your body’s needs.

Routines vs rituals

When you got the assessing your needs part down, you can start incorporating self-care activities into your daily life. For some people, this can seem like a chore, which I understand. We don’t always have the time or energy to perform extensive skin-care routines every morning and evening. But self-care ultimately needs to be something that makes your life easier and more comfortable, so we have to adapt our self-care practices to our lives (read: time, energy and stress levels). A good way to do this is to make use of routines and rituals, because they both have their own unique advantages. In her book Breaking the Good Girl Myth, Majo Molfino defines routines and rituals as follows:

• routine: automatic, habitual act with a focus on function
• ritual: mindful, intentional, nourishing act with a focus on pleasure, beauty and sensuality

I like this distinction, because physical self-care does not always mean managing and repairing, it can also be done just because it feels good. Depending on all sorts of circumstances, we need to choose when to make self-care activities part of a routine and when to perform them as a ritual.

Personal examples

Since I don’t know what routines and rituals y’all already established for yourselves, the only thing I can do is give you some inspiration by sharing mine. So here are some personal examples of my self-care activities around the four most mentioned facets of physical self-care: nutrition, sleep, exercise and hygiene.

Nutrition/eating
Routines: having the same breakfast every morning, filling my water bottle back up as soon as it’s empty, taking a multivitamin supplement every day
Rituals: cooking with intention, adding each ingredient mindfully while being immersed in the smell; eating without distractions, tasting the flavours and textures and stopping when I’m full

Movement/exercise
Routines: taking an hour long walk three/four days a week, standing up from my desk a few times a day, taking the stairs instead of the elevator
Rituals: dancing to express myself or work through an emotion, doing a full body stretch to feel connected to my body

Sleep
Routines: having a consistent bed time, having a cup of tea before bed, putting my phone away/on air-plane mode
Rituals: guided meditation to fall asleep, letting a candle burn out on my bedside table, putting lavender oil on my pillow to induce relaxation

Hygiene
Routines: brushing teeth, taking off make-up, showering, putting on day/night cream
Rituals: scrubbing, putting on a hair/face mask, showering by candlelight while visualizing the water cleansing everything I don’t need off of me

Doing it badly

When you’re just starting out with incorporating self-care into your life, all of this may seem a bit overwhelming. But you don’t have to expect yourself to do it all perfectly, especially in the beginning. Focus on one thing at a time. Make sleep a priority for a month, for instance. Then switch to exercise and see if you can get that down. This way, you’re slowly building up your routines without too much pressure on yourself. Also, in the words of philosopher G. K. Chesterton: “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly”. I love that. It means that when you really don’t have the energy to fully commit to something, you just do as much as you can at that moment. For example, when the thought of taking a shower seems like too much, just wash your face and feet. Or when you’re having a bad day and the thought of cooking stresses you out, warm up some noodles so you at least get some food in your system.

In short, be patient with yourself. It may take some time and effort to develop your personal self-care plan and keep consistently practising it, but it absolutely helps you in the long run. Because ultimately, on days when you can’t make your self-care a ritual, you can fall back on your routine. And it won’t be such a chore, because you’ll do it almost automatically.

Exercise of the day

Assess what routines you already have that revolve around physical self-care. Now see if you can add something that your body specifically needs.