Thinking about self care from the perspective of actually TAKING CARE of this meat bag we walk around in is something I think is crucial right now. 

Because there’s so many ideas out there that talk about self care as if it’s something only the most privileged people can achieve. Making the very foundations of health seem “basic” and like they don't count towards self care… how bizarre and bananas!

This makes many people feel inadequate, confused and unsatisfied with their life. 

Implying that in order to achieve a successful self care practice one needs long and luxurious breaks from life. 

Or shopping trips, expensive anti wrinkle cream, blowouts and 2 hour yoga classes. 

Saying that a trip to the grocery store without kids isn’t a break and is instead only the “bare basics” suggests that it’s not worth it to TAKE or MAKE that time a time to recharge. A time to think about what foods will nourish our body and family that week, to what ingredients will support our ACTUAL health and to feel a sense of freedom and enjoyment while wandering the isles of our fav local grocery shop. 

Ok, I’m sure you can tell I LOVE the grocery store and actually find it very rejuvenating and a time of creative thinking – which greatly impacts our health and happiness! But I understand not everyone will have that experience with shopping for veggies, and if you’re one of those people I suggest creating a special playlist that feels like nourishment for your soul, or listening to your favourite podcast, or meditation, OR using it as a time to practice smiling and saying HI to people. Which is actually essential for our health and happiness as well! 

But also… 

Saying something like a shower by yourself isn’t self care but is instead the bare minimum is telling that new mom that she NEEDS MORE to feel cared for… but what if she’s a single mom or a person who works long hours and takes care of loved ones after work, and that shower is her act of self care. Only now she feels like she’s not getting enough. 

Like her simple act of taking care of her actual body isn’t good enough. It needs to be more elaborate and fancy!

Also, a shower is a glorious time for self care!

It’s a time to disconnect from the outside world and reconnect with our body and how we feel. And I suggest adding in a gratitude practice to start healing any hurtful thoughts about your body. We can also super charge our shower self care practice by doing breathing exercises, cold exposure, or a visualization meditation! 

Such good self care! Honestly, what the hell could be better?

All of this actually makes me angry because self care really is just about taking care of ourselves, in whatever season we’re in and in any simple way we can!

The truth is, I have a lot of clients that do ALL THE THINGS the self care industry suggests we do, and they aren’t feeling taken care of at all. 

They sit in the spa chair or go away on their own and feel alone, anxious, or rundown and are ultimately unable to enjoy themselves. 

And I have clients that have zero time or extra finances to spend on weekend trips, but instead set themselves up for a ten minute walk before their kids need to get up for school and they need to get ready for work – just so they can move their body, look at the sky and plants and smile at a neighbour and feel like a person before their busy ass day begins. 

They save their favourite podcast for washing dishes and it nourishes their love of learning and inspires them to create or do or try something new that somehow creates more joyful energy in their life.

Or they connect self care energy to their quick shower, relaxing bath, 5 minutes of meditation, 25 minute workout, 15 minutes of creative exploration… or whatever! 

I’m getting carried away here, but here is the deal! 

SELF CARE as simply taking care of ourselves and our bag of bones…

It’s making sure we’re nourishing ourselves with food  that supports our health and energy, instead of eating the leftovers off our kids' plate for our meals, forgetting to eat all together, or choosing ingredients that will increase inflammation in our body…

It’s making sure we’re getting enough sleep so our body gets a chance to rejuvenate and reset hormones so we can wake up and feel rested and energetic and not like a dead person walking – instead of staying up until 1am because that’s the only time we get to ourselves… even though we then feel like a dumpster fire and spend the day looking for energy from things like coffee and simple carbohydrates and sugar with an inevitable crash at 2pm like it’s the end of our zombie brain world… 

It’s making sure we’re moving our body enough so that, well, so that our body doesn't think it’s in a rapid death cycle and depressed and start shutting down all the things until we actually are dying…

It’s making sure we are doing things that allow us to manage our stress so that we’re not living our life in the peaks and valleys of cortisol and adrenaline spikes and crashes, so our body can actually digest and absorb nutrients from the food we eat, and everything can calm down enough that things like our reproductive system and immune function will actually work… 

It’s making sure we have time to connect with friends that get us, with family who love us, with OURSELVES so we continue to grow as a human.

With nature, we stay connected to the planet and what’s real.

With a personal creative practice so we experience flow and freedom.

With the feeling of gratitude so we’re living in joy and abundance…

And maybe most importantly, it’s making sure our thoughts SUPPORT our self care instead of warp it into an act of selfishness or overly complicated and expensive things. 

Because these are the foundations of our health, the foundations of taking care of our body – and they have nothing to do with pedicures and beautiful surf and yoga retreats. 

To be clear, I’m not hating on spa trips or vacations, I am just saying that they aren’t always related to self care. 

But let’s unpack that yoga and surf destination vacation, which I would love to go on, and acknowledge that when people go to them they often come back feeling AMAZING… and do you know WHY? 

Because they ate intentionally nutrient dense ingredients, they slept when they were tired, they danced on the beach with cool people, they swam and moved their body, they felt their feet on the earth, they felt calm and joyful and present as they sat in meditation with the sensation of the breeze off the ocean…

They did all the things required to actually take care of themselves.

And my argument is this:

We can do that shit at home so that we don’t fall into a pit of despair and feel like a dumpster fire and live in a chronic state of overwhelm, burnout, stress, and exhaustion. 

And we can do it in tiny moments that fit into our crazy busy life full of kids and work and hustling and building businesses and changing the world and selling 10 million dollar homes and being broke ass, and saving lives and ALL THE THINGS. 

We can slip 2 minutes of breath meditation in when we park the car in the driveway, we can go for a 5 minute walk in the morning instead of scrolling social doom, we can take a few hours on our day off to plan, prepare and make food that will help us FEEL good, we can do an energy audit and figure out what and who is dragging us down and crushing our soul and we can take tiny steps out of that direction. 

This gets lost because people on social media and big brands and society tells us it’s not enough. That it won’t really be enough to calm our mind and IBS and anxiety and unhappiness. 

So then we start thinking about what we “need.”

And we get overwhelmed with it all and that makes us immediately shut it down and think it’s all impossible and self care is only for people with buckets of money and time, who don’t have kids or need to work. 

But this is absolutely not true. 

Self care is tiny slices of time that we attach self care energy to. 

And that energy can be attached to ANYTHING that works FOR YOU and that ACTUALLY supports your health. Emotionally, mentally, physically, creatively, joyfully, and all the things that help us actually feel WHOLE. 

Walking or snuggling the dog, doing the dishes, having a shower, reading a book, your commute, your trip to the grocery store, your breakfast, your sleep routine… whatever. 

There’s also often a small part of mostly women, and especially moms, who have a shadow belief that taking time for themselves for this kind of work is actually selfish and unnecessary…

But come at me with that and I will give you a laundry list of what happens when we don’t take ANY time for this kind of self care. 

Everything from anxiety and depression to chronic or autoimmune diseases or complete burnout… and my sweet love, that is no way to live or to parent or take care of people. 

As the saying goes — you cannot pour from an empty cup.

So the question is what small, seemingly insignificant and potentially unpopular action can you take REGULARLY that will fill your cup? 

And if you’re wondering if it will really work to do tiny actions, I can tell you with certainty that it does. 

When my husband’s health was falling apart we had a 2 and a 5 year old and he was working long hours and coming home in a state of complete exhaustion. Bone crushing exhaustion. 

The only thing he could do was lay on the couch and give his kids a snuggle if they came round. 

He had no voice for months due to extreme silent reflux and maybe just massive inflammation of his throat/thyroid area, his body was in chronic pain in most of his joints due to inflammation, and his list of strange and unmanaged symptoms had him in a state of constant low to high grade stress and anxiety. 

It was an intense time for him. 

I however, was spending all day every day with our little gems, and was tired and quietly angry and exhausted and burnt the hell out from doing all the things – and I was trying to keep it inside. 

Because Scotty was dealing with his body melting down, so how could I say anything? 

I somehow knew I had to start doing my own things to take care of myself, otherwise not only would our family be a hot mess with a sick dad and a mom full of rage and burnout, but we would probably split up and be single parenting as well. 

Truth.

So I would get up a tiny bit before my kids, even though they were early risers, I would read, or journal or go for a short run or walk in the woods.

I had a pretty solid gratitude practice leftover from a very low point after my first child was born that I used, not to deny the hard parts of life, but to see what was working and what brought me joy and what felt like light to me. 

That was an incredible practice in connecting to what felt expansive in my life. I was collecting data.

And then with the diagnosis of his autoimmune disease we started down the path of Functional Medicine, and using food as medicine and it was a lot and overwhelming and also healing and energising and amazing for all of us. 

For my husband because he went from not having a voice for 3 months to being able to yell at the kids again and run around and play, and me because I had that support again, and also because my relationship with food and eating was healing, and I had this spark of passion and purpose and intrigue that I hadn’t felt in, well, maybe ever. 

It was like catching a tailwind.

This kind of self care impacts every aspect of your life. It’s not fancy or loud or maybe exciting – and nobody can sell it to you or make any money off of it (aside from the grocery store), but it will absolutely change your life. 

You can go from feeling generally like a dumpster fire to feeling like you can breathe and manage your life and its ongoing challenges, and also, more. 

More energetic, light, joyful, creative, positive, optimistic, hopeful, clear, focused, productive, proactive… just, you know, better. 

Self care has nothing to do with spa trips or spending money and everything to do with actually taking care of yourself for reduced overwhelm, stress and burnout and increased health, energy, joy and fulfilment. 

So learn the foundations of health, then pick an area to start that won’t increase your stress and overwhelm too much, and ACTUALLY START trying things out.  

This is a personalised approach to self care, so it’s all about YOU figuring out your recipe, and the best part is this self care is for everyone. 

This approach is for all of us, and there’s a place for everyone to start and feel good about it and actually start to actually FEEL BETTER.

So grab a pen right now and write down these words: 

Nutrition, Sleep, Stress management, movement, relationships with others and self, creativity, nature, and daily gratitude.

And now do an audit of where you’re at in these areas. 

Are you holding space for connection with yourself and with people who understand and energize you? Are you setting aside time to feel grateful for tiny moments of goodness in your life? Are you moving your body enough and in the way it needs? Eating like you’re fuelling a super car and sleeping like your life depends on it? 

You get it. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, and if you think I’m robbing the self care industry by saying that we can in fact get self care energy out of our basic shower and a salad full of diverse plants, proteins and fats.

So join me over at @gwenjohnsonofficial on Instagram and DM me your thoughts! 

Or if you feel like you need support let me know and we can set you up with a free consult and go over what’s happening for you. 

And of course remember; you’re already enough, loved, beautiful and worthy, and you are absolutely worthy of the time required to take care of yourself. 

It will change your life, and the lives of the people you love and care about in the best way possible. 

Can you imagine how?