An Art, Not Just a Science
So much is presented these days about the need for self-care – and no wonder! When we experience great stressors and extended responsibilities in our lives, paying central care to ourselves can centrally fly out the window.
Self-care, though, is not just a science filled with concrete tasks and directives, but an art – flexible, able to adapt to lots of changing challenges in our lives, and still be our operative “center”. A lot of the self-help and holistic tools I present in my practice involve not only the nuts and bolts of self-care, but understanding it as a developing, ever-changing art, yet one that contains constant, simple ongoing operative elements.
Here Are the Five Basic Elements of the Art of Self-Care
1. Enough inner and outer space to breathe, literally and metaphorically.
2. The ability to create anew – and unconditionally listen, through understanding and acknowledging what’s real (the final stage of grief).
3. Recognizing that everything changes and is new.
4. Seeking and wanting to discover where opportunities really exist to well partner up with one’s environment, including relationships to others, home, work, community, goals – as well as discerning where there is no opportunity to truly partner up.
5. Doing daily what nurtures, sustains, clears, and supports one’s constant journey upward where greater opportunities exist for self-healing and development.
Here Are the Fundamental Tools
Common tools to promote self-care that are best practiced as developing arts are meditation, journaling, and freely choosing from one’s core understanding of personal integrity and needs, as they can all synchronize with one’s heart’s desire to continue to freely create. All these factors combine to heighten awareness. and freedom to choose, as well as enhance personal power.
Here is an exercise for you to try:
Now Go Deeper In to Activate These Tools
Spend a few moments in a reflective, meditative state considering your sense of how well you care for yourself, ongoing. When you feel complete in this focus for now, write your impressions.
Then assess on a scale of 0-10, 10 being greatest and 0 being not at all, your sense of how well you practice the art of self-care. Again, record your impressions and sense of what you now see you need to achieve more balance, peace, personal power and clarity to meet current life challenges and feel more centered.
How You Can Achieve Your Current Goal for Self-Care
Identify this as your current goal for self-care, and write it as a title. Now go back to the five elements I’ve listed above for the art of self-care and focus on each in turn in that reflective, meditative state.
After you’ve completed focusing on each of the five elements, record your sense of how you can creatively and intuitively use each to achieve your goal for self-care, and record your insights. Now you’re ready to begin to practice, implement and experiment not only the art of self-care, but the art of problem-solving, healing, empowerment, development, and resolution!
Love to hear your results and comments at the end of this article – this is how we all extend how we can benefit! Namaste, Marjorie