Life can be a treadmill, but unfortunately not always the healthy kind. Working is a necessary part of life. Hopefully, you love what you do, as I do, but it can be all too easy to find yourself on that treadmill of working all day only to wake up (assuming you’ve slept) and do it all again the next day. This is an excellent recipe for depression, burnout, and illness. The best treatment for illness is prevention!! This requires paying some special attention to yourself and taking as good of care to yourself as you have been to everyone else around you. Here are a few self-care ideas that take only moments out of your day and add some enjoyment to your life. Try a few of these suggestions or create your own ways to take care of yourself. Spring is a great time of year to implement some healthy new habits.
• Set your alarm 5 minutes early and before you leave your bed, think of 3 things that you are grateful for in your life. Initially, this may seem forced, but it starts your day on a positive note and eventually your day seems incomplete without it.
• Eat breakfast. Even if just a quick smoothie is all you have time or appetite for. Skip the ice and frozen food as they slow digestion. Warm up your smoothies with a bit of boiling water and add some dry ginger powder so that you are well equipped to utilize all of those wonderful nutrients you are putting into your body.
• Focus your attention on all of those mundane things you do throughout the day like eating a meal, brushing your teeth, or driving to work. Do these tasks mindfully.
• Take 5 deep, full breaths and pay attention to where you feel that breath in your body.
• Play one song that you love and dance or sing your heart out.
• Give someone a helping hand. Giving feels good to both the giver and the receiver.
• Ask for help when you need it.
• Choose your time wisely. Minimize time spent with people or activities that make you feel drained. This is a good opportunity to practice saying “NO”, respectively.
• Prioritize necessary tasks and scratch off those nagging details on your list that never seem to get done.
• Simplify and declutter your home to provide a sense of organization and spaciousness.
• Add one healthful habit per week, maybe it’s drinking an extra glass of water per day or adding an extra vegetable to your meals.
• Try to go to bed at the same time everyday if you’re able and ideally before 10pm. Minimize screen time in the evenings, dim the lights, have a bath, listen to soft music or read a book to prepare yourself for sleep. Encouraging good sleep hygiene sets your body up to remember what it’s supposed to be doing…sleeping, resting, recovering.
• Add some MOVEMENT into everyday. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to workout till your exhausted, but quite the opposite. Movement is key to keeping your whole body, mind, and emotional self-moving forward to prevent stagnation, which is the root of depression and the start of any internal disease pattern. If you’re in pain I would encourage you to close your eyes and scan your body until you’ve found an area that does not feel pain. Focus on that area and move it.
• Prebook appointments with your preventative health care provider ahead of time to keep you well balanced, happy, relaxed, and pain-free It’s easiest to prevent illness rather than trying to play catch up once your body’s already giving you signals.
• Make yourself a priority. You are incapable of doing ANYTHING excellently if you are not taking excellent care of yourself.
Dove Sprout (R.TCM.P) and her husband, Paul Gaucher (R.TCM.P) co-own & operate Creston Acupuncture & Natural Health Centre located in downtown Creston.