A Guide to Essential Self-Care

Navigating the world and its many changes right now can feel overwhelming. Reserves of resilience have become all the more important. Tonight there is a full moon eclipse in Cancer that is followed by a rare and major event on Sunday - the Saturn Pluto conjunction. Even without knowing about these astrological events, we’ve all felt the power of our current time and the importance of what’s to come. We’re being presented with an opportunity to gain clarity and courage about our path and to take action to support it. …No big deal right?

Shaman humor aside, it’s essential to practice self-care and now would be a good time to start. Tonight’s eclipse is in Cancer (my Sun sign), the sign of the Mother, so we can begin self-care by nurturing ourselves. That may sound straight forward but it can often feel out of reach for many reasons. When I first began shamanic work, the idea that self-care was essential and that I not only deserved it but also required it, was a watershed realization. My clients have similar experiences. Through shamanic healing, we can look at what wounding actually drives that belief system and reprogram it. But a great first step is becoming aware of our relationship to self-care and what it means for us. This guide will help you take steps to create a daily practice of self-care and deepen your relationship with it. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

1. Be Kind to Yourself

This isn’t easy sometimes, but it is so essential for self-care. How can we nurture ourselves while simultaneously bullying ourselves? Our built-in beliefs about perfection, ability, strength, and worthiness often play a big part here. So, first things first - be kind. Gently ask yourself what self-care is for you. Feel the answer instead of think it. If you have a hard time with self-care, ask yourself why and see what comes forward. Observe this without judgment and use a sandpainting or journal to help. Self-care can mean many different things. What works for me may not always work for you. The practice here is to become more self-referencing and choose those actions that will truly support you and your system.  At the heart of it, self-care is about making conscious choices that help us respect and care for ourselves and by extension our broader community. After all, how can we be of service otherwise? It starts at home, within ourselves, first.

2. Unplug

We live in a world that is fast-paced and feels uncertain. Clients often share the tension of feeling they need to read every news article, watch every program, check every social media account, and participate in everything they “should” while being glued to their phone. The laundry list of Must Do’s starts to feel like a train off its rails. For anyone who has a sensitive nervous system and is an Empath, it can be especially draining and anxiety-inducing. Here’s an example: my client was in a fearful, depressed state and was having a hard time feeling safe in her life and in the world. As a result, she wasn’t creating what her heart really desired. She did wonderful work in session and as part of the homework looked at the beliefs telling her she had to be plugged in to the point of self-harm and then identify where she could begin to unplug. It wasn’t a comfortable or easy process, but she freed herself from many limiting beliefs and found herself much more able to be present, share her gifts and effect change in the world around her.

3. Go Outside

Science has caught up to what indigenous people and shaman have understood for millennia: that Pachamama is the Mother and she is medicine. We have a responsibility to connect with her and care for her for in return for that medicine. It is reciprocity and right balance. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us that “Flourishing is mutual.” Everything is interconnected, and we see the cost of our disconnect from that truth all around us. So, be a part of the remedy. Go outside. Hike, walk, swim, sit, rest, experience the silence. Clean an area, maintain a trail, volunteer. Do ceremony. Or just be with the trees, mountains, plant and animal relatives. Spend time coming into balance with the Earth, share something of yourself and be open to what she shares with you. And if you need literal data, recent studies have shown that being in natural environments helps reduce anxiety and heavy emotions, lowers heart rate and blood pressure, as well as improves immunity and body positivity.

4. Care for your Body & Mind

Caring for our body and mind can take many forms and it’s very personal. Rituals and sacred space are intrinsic to shamanism, and my clients have all experienced the benefits of a warm salt bath. Yoga and mindfulness practices are ways we can also combine the body and mind, and it can be as easy as opening sacred space and rolling out your mat at home. But you can also attend a class, whether it be yoga, dance, or any movement and meet like-hearted people. If you are plugged in, using an app like Calm for guided meditation, mindfulness reminders and sound sleep can be very helpful. Massage and bodywork is another practice of self-care that nurtures our bodies and helps our physical catch up to and support the energetic changes we’re making. I’ve also found craniosacral therapy and classical homeopathy to be powerful and a wonderful complement to shamanic healing. Acupuncture is a powerful tool too, but it’s always good to know your sensitivity to energy and whether it would be too much at at any given time especially while doing other energy work.

5. Nourish your System

Nourishment has many meanings for people and all of these self-care practices are indeed nourishing. But here I’m talking about more literal nourishment that includes eating whole and unprocessed foods that truly feed our bodies and entire systems. If you’re feeling ungrounded, roast some root vegetables or drink some black coffee or tea. Winter is the season for roots so explore late season carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabaga, beets, and celeriac. Sweet potatoes are always good too. Share a meal with friends and create a nourishing gathering. Herbs are another type of nourishment. As shaman we work with plant allies regularly, but we all also cook with herbs and plants, so take some time to get to know their properties. Explore healing through including herbs in your meals and teas. I recently took an herbal infusion challenge with Rosalee de la Forêt and Rebecca Altman, and it really helped deepen my relationship with herbs. I even created my own small apothecary and now make various herbal infusions at night, drinking them throughout the next day. Check out my Shamanic Resources blog post for book suggestions and more information.

6. Take Action on Stressors

Stressors come in all forms. Part of a self-care practice is to look at what is causing us stress and take action to address those items. These things can include bills that need to be paid, conversations to be had, emails to be sent, or the pile of paperwork that keeps you up at night. If you recognize that you’re keeping yourself in a stressed state through inaction, take action. Let go of the things you can and take action on whatever is causing you distress or preventing you from nurturing yourself without judgment. Sometimes we find it impossible to unplug or nurture if we can’t be at peace with the undone. But sometimes we punish ourselves by never practicing self-care because we have too much to do and we tell ourselves we just can’t take the time. This type of self-sabotage keeps us in a stuck, stressed out, depleted state. So, lovingly tell yourself to knock it off and give yourself permission. Pick 1-3 things and be done.

7. Explore Creativity

One of my favorite Albert Einstein quotes is “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” The first time I heard that it was a lighting bolt because it helped me see part of my old programming clearly and gave me permission to step further into mine. Creativity is also at the level of the mythic, the Soul. When we do shamanic healing, we are healing our Mythic Map and changing what we create and what is available to us. My clients sometimes create collages for their mythic homework assignment to help them access their hearts desires, or Soul level. We are often blocked on the level of the literal and symbolic, so we need to work on the energetic and mythic to shift things. Nurturing our creativity is therefore an important act of self-care. Ways to explore this part of the practice include writing a short story or poetry, creating a collage or other artwork, photography, planting a garden, making jewelry, playing or learning music, singing and redesigning a space in your home that brings in beauty, changes the energy and supports your daily tasks and life goals. For me, cooking and baking are also creative acts, so explore what creativity is for you and say yes to it. It will open the door to your gifts and path in a way you may not yet imagine. This is one of the many reasons I offer coaching for creative entrepreneurs who want to claim their creativity and share it with the world.

8. Opt-Out

If you’re feeling overloaded, give yourself permission to opt-out without guilt or fear. Clients often come to me because they want to create healthy boundaries with their family and friends. To do that, they work on becoming fully conscious of the pattern and start to understand why they have such unhealthy boundaries. As they heal on the energetic and mythic, they take action on the literal and symbolic too. Clients have shared with me that the first time they said no to someone or something from a clear, grounded and unapologetic place, it felt like a seismic event. The awareness that they can even say no to begin with is sometimes an incredibly painful and freeing moment. There are often deep wounds and trauma that set this all up, but in general we are all conditioned to say yes to things that don’t necessarily serve us. The justification can run the gamut of perceived obligation, fear of consequences, need for approval and belonging, worthiness and sometimes even love. Of course when we operate from that unconscious state, the outcomes rarely end up being what we truly want and need, so we’re left unhappy and stuck in a repetitive cycle. So, even if it feels uncomfortable, self-care sometimes means recognizing when something isn’t good for you and opting out.

9. Connect with Community

It may seem funny to talk about opting out and then connection. But both can be, and usually are, parts of a healthy self-care practice. The key is that the decisions are made consciously and are intended to nurture you. Many clients come to me and share that they feel isolated and alone. Or feel they have spent their lives looking for their tribe and a sense of belonging but always come up short. They want to understand why this is the case. In session, I guide them through the healing work to help change these beliefs and patterns so they can start to create the life they really want and experience different outcomes. My clients all begin to practice a combination of both opting out and also connection. It’s just from a very different place. So when it feels right to you, connect with your community or your tribe. It won’t be the same for everyone, but today with everyone paradoxically feeling increasingly disconnected while increasingly tech connected, community can play a very important role in self-care.

10. Get Support

We all need connection and support. The idea that we should have it all figured out on our own, feel badly about what we’re moving through in our lives or believe we don’t have anything left to learn is so counterproductive to our evolution and mental health. Whether it’s working with a shaman, seeing a therapist, working with a coach or joining an in-person group of some kind, having mentorship and feeling supported is so important. As anyone knows from working with me, when our imprints are up, we live and create from an unhealed place. We may not recognize it or know how to change it, and it may even convince us to isolate ourselves when we need to do the opposite. Creating your dream team, your network of support, will help you see things without that filter and guide you to the healing and vibrancy you need.