My Philosophy of Self Care
...and why it is more than a buzz word
How do you come home to yourself, again and again, through years of learning, growth, epiphany, and challenge? You turn your energy inward through some very simply physical act, and you pause to acknowledge and witness the beauty and strength of your life. That, to me, is the core of self care. Self care is sacred.
In caring for yourself, you merge with the sacred archetypes of the mother and the father, tending to you. During acts of self care, you are all that is sacred, pouring back into yourself.
When you practice self care, the outer world falls away for one moment, and you are deep in the embrace of a reality where love is all there is. Whether you practice self care by pouring a bath or taking a hike–or making a meal and cleaning your home, your self care will help center you within your identity, and ground you back into your body... back into your innermost intentions.
Self Care Is Also A Form Of Grounding
It’s totally possible to go years without fully grounding. However the more we ground our energy, the more easily we are able to sprout all of those beautiful seeds of intention that gestate within us.
Humans are incredible creators capable of manifesting all manner of things. Self care provides us with the tune-up and realignment necessary to connect fully with our power and live vibrantly. Self care actions over time will ground your energy field more effectively than one-off grounding meditations, earthing rods, grounding blankets, or crystals.
Reiki Is Easy Self Care
I see Reiki as one of the most powerful tools for spiritual self-care. We all know it’s relaxing, but it also causes physiological shifts that allow us to collect parts of our memory, identity, and power that have been left on the side of the road through our life journey.
Reiki can also help us clear the energy of what we’ve been carrying, healing places we’ve neglected within, and returning us to our center. I don’t think the Reiki is DOING this, so much as the influx of healing energy kickstarts our engines so that our body wisdom and our autonomic system can do the healing work it loves to do.
This is actually THE CORE of what our Reiki Shares are all about. During a Reiki share, we re-train our bodies each month to receive the energy necessary for healing and growth. We break patterns of starving or depriving our bodies of critical nourishment. We teach ourselves through being present in the Reiki Share, how to calm our minds and focus on the values that are important for each of us.
This is also a form of inner Priestessing. I use priestess as a verb in this case, an act of offering devotional energy and love into the divine, in this case the divine within. When I think of “priestessing” myself, I am the sacred witness and the ritualist in a quiet, intentional act of tending to my inner world with divine consciousness.
Whether it’s through Reiki, “priestessing”, meditation, or through other acts, Self Care creates the foundation for how we show up in the world.
I want to return to this article when I have more time to edit and flesh it out. I have so much more to say...
I see so many people raised in this culture where we rush to acquire material goods and social accolades, often sacrificing our emotional and mental well being in the process. Clients often come to me having had some success in life, but they now feel burned out, or emotionally empty as their successes were not fully aligned with their inner desires. Self care is actually one of the ways we counter-balance the energy of that burnout, and the energy of having abandoned our heart's deeper dreams for security or temporary peace.
We need to recreate a culture in which self care is a nature part of the unhurried, graceful flow of each of our lives. Imagine if we could celebrate moments of self-care within each other, encouraging each other to honor our inner rhythms without sacrificing well being?!
Self care is a big part of what I preach, and what I myself am learning, because I also see it as essential to our healing process. We place a lot of emphasis in medical health around doing things (like having surgery, taking vitamins, making dietary changes, etc), but those actions can't fully take hold unless we also allow time for processing and integration. The "not-doing," in essence. That window of time is when our bodies are busy handling the healing for us. New muscle is being formed, new neural pathways for thought are firing, and new possibilities for our future are being born while we are busy "not-doing."
Sometimes we just don't know how to self care. I'll write more about that too, at some point. But for now, the fastest and easiest way I can think of the implement a mindset and practice, is to take a Reiki class, and then practice being present with the teachings. It's a lot of fun, and it's incredibly transformational.
Please reach out if you have questions, because I love to talk about Reiki. In fact, I rarely shut up about it.
Except of course when I'm watching my favorite tv show. Or when I'm shouting from the stands at my kid's basketball games. In those moments I'll probably tell you to save it, lol, because Reiki is for healing, and life is for living, and we need ALL of it, the "doing" and the "not-doing" together.
Sending you lots of love! ❤️ Share your questions and thoughts with me HERE.
Dailey
Rev. Dailey Little, RMT
Healing Heart Reiki
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