As summer draws to a close, let’s revisit the importance of SELF-CARE. Before we dive in, I have an important reminder that fits nicely into our topic-du-jour, self-care:

21 Days of Self-Care, Fully-Supported!

Registration for The Body Sass® Cleanse Fall 2020 Group Program is OPEN for another week, until Tuesday, Sep. 8^th at noon ET. Get yo’self registered HERE. As a reminder, during the Body Sass® Cleanse, you will:

• never be hungry and will eat satisfying, delicious food and drink nutrient-dense shakes.
• learn how to plan for success with food, for the long haul.
• strengthen your immunity.
• make shifts in your ongoing relationship to food.
• very likely lose weight and gain energy and improve sleep quality.
• reduce the toxic burden in your body.
• induce a gentle re-balancing of hormones.
• experience a re-set and recalibration in your body’s digestion, metabolism and all-over function. For instance, people have dropped over 100 points on their cholesterol, halved their triglycerides, and/or improved their blood sugar balance as a result of this program.

I invite you to join our growing group and give your body the support it needs to re-set, recalibrate, re-size and heal. Learn more and REGISTER HERE.

Programs like The Body Sass Cleanse (September) and my 28toGreat Intermittent Fasting Program (October) are powerful ways to jumpstart your self-care, your health and your mindset. Highly recommended! AND, there are some simple things you can do to get started today.

Self-Care in a Wild World

Why would you get started today on putting more intention and action into your self-care? Because self-care is absolutely foundational to EVERYthing else in your life being more healthy, joyful and productive—even when life seems to be “going your way.” Yet when our life experience feels more challenging, one of the first things to go tends to be our self-care. And holy moly, has this year felt challenging for many people.

We are living in the most polarized, fear-based time that I can remember. We, in the USA, are polarized over so many large and important topics:

• Wear a mask/COVID-19 is a huge threat v. Don’t wear a mask/COVID-19 is just another virus
• Kids should go back to school during COVID-19 v. Kids should do distance learning
• Democrats v. Republicans (now more than ever)
• The upcoming presidential election
• Black Lives Matter v. Stop the Protests
• Global Warming is a huge issue that threatens us all v. Global Warming doesn’t exist 

And those are just the top few that come to mind as I’m writing. We seem to have increasingly eroded our ability to see any opinion other than our own. We seem to be labeling and judging others, based on whether or not their opinions align with our own. And people are struggling, mentally and emotionally. A discussion on this dramatic polarization of the UNITED (?!) States of America is beyond the scope of this blog post. What is squarely IN the scope of this post is your self-care, while navigating all of this.

Choose One Self-Care Habit to Commit To Daily

One suggestion is to intentionally engage with one, and only one, self-care focus area for a period of time (21-66 days) until it becomes a habit. For instance, my daily yoga practice had become infrequent over the course of this year. When I went on vacation in the Green Mountains of Vermont in late August, I brought with me the intention to do yoga, outside, every day. To fall in love with yoga again and re-start a self-care practice that has always served me well, on every level of my Being. (See pic accompanying this post for proof positive!)

I am feeling so good being back in my yoga practice again! What ONE self-care practice might serve YOU right now? There are so many options to choose from, such as…

• Breaking your overnight fast with a health-building breakfast
• Resistance training
• Walking
• Cardio training
• Meditation
• Creative outlet (art, music, writing, etc)
• Yoga or Pilates
• Dancing
• Daily juicing
• Gardening

…each of which take less than 30 minutes, and can be a great way to start and/or end your day.

Maybe that seems too big for you right now. Maybe you’re feeling buffeted by our Wild World and are feeling down. That paradoxical space where you really need self-care more than ever, but you’re feeling too down-and-out to move into any kind of commitment. In that case, you might just do these simple things today, right now, each one of which takes a minute or less:

5 Small-Yet-Mighty Self-Care Moves for Right Now

1. Drink 8-16 ounces of water. Maybe add mint, lemon and/or cucumber to make it Spa Water.
   Hydration is key to health, well-being, body fat loss and fewer headaches, to name a few!
2. Take 3 deep, cleansing breaths. Ideally, count 4 on the in-breath, hold for 4, count 5 for the out-breath, and hold for 4. Feel your ribs expand and contract. Repeat.
   Three breaths induce the Relaxation Response, putting a gap in our chronic stress while alleviating mental clutter and emotional reactivity.
3. Take a minute to do some gentle stretching exercises. Stretch your arms high above your head and hold. Touch your toes and hold. Gently twist back and forth at the waist, swinging your arms.
   Keeping our muscles supple helps us feel better during the day and sleep better at night.
4. Write down 3 things you’re grateful for. 
   Whether you focus on small or big things, gratitude is a powerful practice for our well-being.
5. Eat a raw vegetable.
   Most of us could use more veggies, from a health perspective, and it’s so easy and satisfying to crunch down a raw carrot, celery stick, bell pepper, radishes or cucumber slices. Dipping in hummus is optional!

Boom. In five minutes, you did five great things to care for your whole being. You could even decide that you’re going to start every day in a similar way, and continue to expand on your repertoire of one-minute-or-less self-care practices.

This example of a small-but-mighty self-care infusion also outlines that YES-we-DO have time for self-care. We don’t need to go big or go home. Small things, repeated daily, become big things over time.

If you want to dig more deeply into self-care, there’s a whole chapter on self-care in my new book Wild World, Joyful Heart: Unlock Your Power to Create Health and Joy. Then there’s ten other chapters full of suggestions on how you can choose and implement self-care that will best serve you. You can learn how to scoop a copy of said book HERE.

You are a beautiful human on this planet. Your self-care is important. When we care for ourselves—and feel physically, mentally and emotionally good and/or spiritually connected—we are more likely to find room in our hearts to be kind, compassionate and tolerant toward others. And we need a whole lot more of that right now—personally, nationally and globally.

Create Vibrant Health: BodyMindSpirit®

With love and self-care wishes for YOU,

Laurie