What is your biggest challenge when it comes to practicing self-care? For me, it’s always been embracing self-care practices for the mind. Caring for your body is much easier than caring for your mind and spirit. We often avoid facing our feelings, fears, and emotions. Why? Well, because facing them can feel very uncomfortable, even intimidating. Other times, we simply don’t want to deal with some of the things we feel. I know that I don’t always love being alone with my thoughts and feelings and in the past, I’d get lost in distractions and noise, just to avoid facing them. And, to be honest, it’s not all that difficult to do. Our days are filled with noise, deadlines, chores, always being in a hurry. We also often overcommit, sometimes we refuse to let things go. Keeping all those thoughts and emotions bottled up is a defense mechanism, but sooner or later, they always end up pouring out. As I mentioned in this post, this is something that I want to let go of this year. One of my goals is to come back to the place of peace and mental clarity. To do that, I’m revisiting some of the self-care […]

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Winter Self-Care Ideas Officially, it might have just begun, but I’m already so over Winter. You know, juuuust a little bit. I was driving home from work the other day and couldn’t help but think to myself “holy shit this looks so beautiful!” The freezing rain from the night before transformed all the trees into these enormous, fairytale-like crystals that sparkled in the Sun. Then I got home, got out my car and thought “holy shit it’s freezing I can’t take this!!” It’s not that I don’t like Winter. I’m probably not alone in saying that I don’t always love cold weather though. Most days are all good, but there are times when being buried underneath all kinds of layers of clothing drives me a little crazy. It’s freezing cold outside, then you walk into a supermarket or a drugstore and it’s like 100 degrees. You walk around and start getting hot, only to walk out in the cold again a few minutes later. If you have dry skin, that’s another thing you need to pay extra attention to. Otherwise, the dry, cold air makes you feel like your skin is yet another layer of clothing. One that kind of […]

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As your life becomes more stressful and busy, decompressing, de-stressing and relaxing can also become a bit more challenging. When dealing with that kind of stress, taking a nap isn’t always enough. To me, at least, relaxing that actually brings in ease and calmness was something I had to learn. My self-care rituals for stressful days don’t always involve simple things like taking a bath or curling up with a book. When I experience high levels of stress, my mind is often all over the place and no amount of trashy TV or dark chocolate can slow it down or tune it out. The first step to learning how to bring in that ease and sense of calmness during those tough days is teaching yourself to embrace a passive attitude of sorts. You need to learn how to “turn off” and focus on your body; your breathing, those tense muscles, the thoughts and all the different scenarios racing through your mind. 7 SELF-CARE RITUALS FOR STRESSFUL DAYS RE-EVALUATING YOUR PRIORITIES Even though it might not seem like it, this is a huge part of self-care and, pretty much, the whole idea behind it. Are you paying attention to the right […]

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Two things my 15-year-old self never thought I’d grow to love- bright pinks and rose scents. Despite my sweet mom’s attempts at trying to encourage me to be, or at least dress like, a “girly girl” I’ve always had this deep dislike for dresses, all things pink and anything that smelled even remotely close to roses. The latter always reminded me of one of my older, distant relatives who loved using way too much of that strong, powdered perfume that smelled like… you guessed it, roses. She was also quite opinionated and never shy about criticizing everything and everyone she could which, despite the “always listen, be kind to and respect the elderly” value engrained deep within me by my family, led me to simply didn’t like her. But hey, Valentine’s Day is all about love, right? Why waste our time talking about that one aunt who, for some strange reason, seemed to hate even those very well-behaved children? To be honest, I’ve never been a huge fan of this particular “holiday.” I mean, yeah, it’s fun and exciting when you and your SO are in those early stages of dating, just getting to know each other. Ten years down […]

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So… what do you get that one person in your life who seems to already have everything they need? Well, I say that you can never go wrong with a gift that can boost or encourage more health and happiness in the other person’s life.  Sadly, these aren’t things that you can simply put in a box. Creating a little wellness/self-care box for someone you love, however, can serve as a little self-preservation reminder. It’s all about encouraging someone you love to practice some self-care, to love and look after themselves. When creating self-care boxes, I always like to focus on things that the other person enjoys doing most, or things that they don’t get to do for themselves too often. Sometimes it’s gifting a fun experience, a class or a membership for something they’ve been wanting to try for a very long time. Other times it’s about picking out a few things and tools that will inspire the other person to take some time out and focus on their wellbeing.  SLEEP + REST Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could simply gift someone some rest or sleep? I’d probably be the first to sign up for that. Well, unfortunately, […]

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