Written by Sheena Dabholkar
As a mindfulness and self care facilitator for the last year, I have been really interested in the intersection of the two. I became an advocate for self care because it’s what brought me back to myself after a lifelong struggle with mental illness, and it made me question:
If self care is the autonomy we have over our healing, how can we practise it more mindfully? How can we become accountable for caring for ourselves holistically with feeling overburdened and overwhelmed?
At the beginning of the lockdown in March, I developed a daily self care journalling habit:
What am I doing for my mind today?
What am I doing for my body today?
What am I doing for my spirit today?
The first time I created these prompts, and went to answer them myself, I drew a blank. Um….
One of the major patterns I came to recognise over the years is that a lack of self care manifests visibly for me as a sign of my mental health waning. When I’m feeling anxious for days on end, or I’m slipping into a depression, I can literally observe it in my body and environment. My house and bed are strewn with books, tech, laundry and random objects, my diet consists of delivery and my trash reflects it, and I stop moving very much, as evidenced by my health tracker and irregular bowels.
My body feels stiff and I feel exhausted and lethargic. I’m demotivated to take care of myself often because I’m not taking care of myself. It’s very much a vicious cycle – the worse everything gets, the more I avoid everything, the more overwhelmed I feel, the less inclined I am to do anything about it.
So while my mission has been to become more deliberate about self care, I’ve realised inventing things to do isn’t enough. Before we can answer the questions what am I doing for X today, maybe it’s more important to sit with ourselves and answer the questions:
What does my body need today?
What does my mind need today?
What does my spirit need today?
An intuitive approach to self care is a mindful approach. Asking what do I need today, instead of what should I do allows me to tap into how I feel and set simple self care reminders that are rooted in self compassion.
Checking in with ourselves helps us become more creative and expand our ideas of what self care can encompass. Some days my body needs rest and other days my spirit needs purpose.
It’s liberating to remember that both our needs and responsibilities are rarely static things, changing often several times in a day. For self care to be truly beneficial, it must be relevant, and responsive, not a one-size-fits-all approach.
About the Author:
Sheena Dabholkar is the founder and facilitator of Mindful and Body, a holistic wellbeing practise focused on making the tools of self care, self expression and mindfulness more accessible. Follow them on instagram at @mindfulandbody.
Artwork for the Journal Prompts courtesy- Sonaksha Iyenger
