Self care – the capacity to reflect inwardly

One way of thinking about self care is the capacity to reflect inwardly and understand what your mind and body need at any given moment. 

We live in a culture that demands activity and achievement. We are taught to compete, perform, and achieve. We often have great responsibilities like mortgages, dependents, employees, colleagues, frail relatives. We have long been told we can have it all if we work for it.

This has led to parents working long hours, children experiencing long periods in day care and all the complexities of this modern world. Often we are not trained to attend to our bodies: our tiredness, our stress, our mental and physical wellbeing.  

We don’t have time to relax, play, explore or exercise gently. Self care is taking responsibility for your body’s needs. It needs tenderness, safety, nurturance, strength, movement, food, rest, development.  

Self care takes time, effort and intent. It is often paid lip service with an hour in the gym or a smoothie on the way to work.  

More importantly self care requires that we slow down and attend to the adreno-cortical system and other arousal and stress response processes.  

Slow them, replace them with calm, reflective focus. This takes time and planning. It also means that we need to work counter intuitively towards the business of our lives and our work.