Self Care Guide

Today’s blog, is the second in the Path of Healing Series where I’m covering the 10 essential steps on the personal growth path based on my 20 years of clinical experience working with thousands of clients. Last week I guided you to set a clear, heartfelt intention for what you want to create and what you want to let go of. In today’s episode, I’ll cover an important part of the healing journey, support and self-care. You’ll learn how to set yourself up to receive support from yourself and others who will serve you now and in the future. You’ll experience a guided meditation to connect you with the ways you choose to help keep your life force energy full to bring ease, harmony and support to your healing journey.

Key Topics Include:
- - How to support yourself to balance the stress that your system can experience during a healing journey.
  - The importance of balancing external and internal support and how to create both in your life.
  - How self-care practices are essential to keep your life force energy tank full.
  - How self-care is a support during a healing journey.
  - Exercise to create your own self-care list to support you in life.
  - How having a self-care practice is a self-love practice.
  - Guided meditation to create, connect and embody a sense of support to walk the healing path with greater ease, compassion, trust and focus.

The path of healing is as unique as the person who is experiencing it, yet in my clinical experience I have identified several important milestones or steps that most people experience when they are walking the personal growth path. You can review these in episode 57 for a summary of the 10 steps and catch up with last week’s episode the Power of Intention for details on step 1. Once you have a clear intention for what you want to create, let go of and how you can track progress it is time to set yourself up with the support you need to make the journey as comfortable as possible.

Making changes, especially the ones to deeply rooted patterns that weave through our subconscious minds, can be stressful to the system. Whether this is confronting fears, being forced outside your comfort zone, or feeling lost as you transition from the old way of being to a new one, this can cause stress to all aspects of your body matrix: physical, energetic, emotional, ancestral and spiritual. Much of this stress can be subconscious and will creep up on you and create what is known as a healing crisis during your transformation. The healing crisis is due to the release of the old ways of being, like a soul detox, that can bring with it unpleasant symptoms like cold, flu, nervousness, worry, despair, fear, anger, fatigue, and addictive behaviours. It’s important to note that a healing crisis is not required for healing to happen and can be avoided in most cases when support and self-care are added into the mix.

Support can be added in external or internal ways, and having a good mix of both is the best recipe for success. I often find clients are too focused on external support without having a good balance of internal self-care support. I have also found if this is the case, the divine will encourage you to build your own self-care support tools by creating an experience where no one is available when you feel you need to connect most. We get the lessons we most need to achieve our goals, and finding greater resilience and compassion for ourselves is one that will be delivered at some point along the healing path. So rather than waiting for the lesson to challenge you, why not create a good support structure now? This will help you have a softer landing when shifting the deeper patterns of your psyche rather than taking a splat on the pavement and having to scrape yourself up to reform a new way of being.

External support comes in the form of a trusted friend, family member, community or trained therapist. Friends, family and community are all wonderful ways to feel supported in daily life, but leaning on these when you are in the depths of the dark night of the soul can be inconsistent or even detrimental if not handled with love and compassion. Often people will make your problems about themselves, trying to access compassion for what you are going through which only creates more of the problem state energies. Sometimes all it takes is a kind ear to listen and witness what you are going through for things to lessen in intensity. A trained counsellor can help you sort through the aspects of your emotions and walk the journey with you, as needed, to lead you through the blind spots we all have for our deeper patterns. Bodywork, energy work, or somatic therapy are also great external supporters and I find scheduling these at regular intervals like monthly, for example, rather than reaching out when in a low spot is a better strategy for keeping yourself strong, resilient and focused on the positive.

Once you have an external support structure that is varied, supportive and fits into your budget put some focus on your own self-care practices to create a positive buffer and set of tools you can use when you need them most.

Self-care practices are so important to help keep your life force energy tank full so that when you get to the more difficult steps in the personal growth process you have the energy reserves needed to get through it with greater grace, ease and positivity. Creating a list of things to do, places to go or practices that help relax, focus on the present moment, quiet the mind and move the body are all great ways to put self-care to use. Making a list of these is useful that you can refer to when you are in deeper processing moments is a wonderful support tool. My recommendation is to make a list of at least a dozen things so that you have a variety to choose from.

Take a moment now to begin this list, in your mind’s eye or by writing them down in your journal. List things that make you happy, laugh, feel light-hearted, calm you, help you find your centre, express creativity, bring relaxation, and increase endorphin production through movement for example are all wonderful ways to support yourself when you’re in need of a boost. The key to the self-care practices is that they should involve only you. Having others help is what the external support list is for. When you have a solid list of self-care practices, feel free to continue to add to the list and also note which ones work best in certain situations. For example, when feeling angry movement might help let off some steam whereas a meditation practice might only add to the frustration. Or if feel despair focusing on your strengths for the day may be more useful than having a good cry.

Practice the things on your self-care list each day rather than just reserving it for when you are having a low moment. This will help you keep your life force energy tank full so that when you hit a bump in the road you will have the reserves needed to not feel so drained.

The interesting thing with self-care is that people often let these things fall to the bottom of the to-do list thinking time for themselves is selfish or simply not possible because of busy schedules. This is the first step of creating a supportive self-care practice – to make the time to prioritise yourself. This might take time to free up space in your life, but I assure you the positive payoff is guaranteed when you make the effort.

If you are struggling to come up with things that make you feel happy, connected and vibrant think about the things you did as a child that made you happy. The innocence of childhood does not judge whether or not they should be happy, it simply expresses itself naturally. As we get older and our schedule and commitments get complicated the childlike wonder of being happy can fall away. Reignite this within yourself through art, dance, music or anything creative is a good way to connect with your internal self-care support.

This self-care list also becomes valuable in the last step of the healing path when the transition is complete and you are filling the space of what you’ve let go of with what will replace it. Having a list of things that feel your soul and practising these is also needed for this step on the healing path. So as you create this list, know that you are paying a gift forward to your future self too. This is a lovely self-love practice in itself.

I’ll now take you through a guided meditation to check in on your intentions to support a solid foundation for your healing path by bringing conscious awareness and energy to what you want to create and what you want to let go of, your desired and present states.

- Take a deep breath as you bring your awareness to your physical body.
- Allow your energy body to come into alignment by bringing your awareness to centring along the midline of your body and allowing all of the chakras along that line to be clear, full and supportive now.
  I’ll now take you through a guided meditation to create, connect and embody a sense of support, internal and external that will bring you the support you need to walk your healing path with greater ease, compassion, trust and focus.
  Take a moment to find a comfortable distraction-free place and allow yourself to come into the full presence of being. Letting go of thoughts of the past and future for the next few minutes.
- Drop into your heart and put a call out to your creative parts, those parts within you that are in service of creating a positive experience for you.
- Sense how these parts make themselves known to you. Do they float in from above? Do they arise from within?
- What do these creative parts look like? Get a sense of their form as you make a connection with them.
- Explain to them that you are building a self-care list to use on a daily basis and also for when your healing path hits challenges or low points.
- Note their excitement and support for you in doing this.
- Invite them to give you some ideas for self-care that you can create, maintain and build upon from a purely internal perspective.
- Get quiet and listen closely.Listen with all your senses of feeling, internal vision, and sound.
- Your creative parts may show you their tools rather than explain them to you.
- Allow them to shower you with ideas and note these in your mind’s eye or feel free to write them in a journal.
- As each idea comes to you, allow these to create a supportive ring of energy around you.
- Visualise each self-care practice as an energy that when joined together allows you to experience a ring of love, compassion, joy, calm and well-being that surrounds you like a hug.
- Take a few breaths here as you remain open to receive this support.
- Open your heart and allow your creative energies to support and love you with their wisdom.
- Feel the vibrance of these practices they are gifting you.
- Know that any and all of these are available to you always.All you have to do is ask.
- When this feels complete, thank your creative parts for their input as you hold a state of gratitude throughout your body matrix as they depart your field of view.
- Come back to the breath and this present moment fully now.Make gentle movements and take a few moments to reflect on the wisdom, sensations and support you have just received.This is your internal support system that always has your back. Connect in regularly to habituate this support across all levels of being.