How Self-Care Can Emerge With Ease

Are you feeling overwhelmed with trying to make self-care part of your daily routine? Does it feel like another thing to do?

Join Clare for an exploration of how self-care can emerge with ease when you understand how the mind works so you can experience calm, balance, and clarity and create a life that you love from a place of self-awareness and connection to intuition.

Leave your busy intellectual mind behind and listen like you would listen to music, in the background.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the CalmCast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Clare Downam,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt out head teacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,

And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The CalmCast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music,

With an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So,

Um,

This morning,

How self-care can emerge with ease?

Because I talk a lot about this.

It seems,

Doesn't it,

That there's a lot to do to have self-care or do self-care or whatever you want to call,

Whatever you want to talk about in terms of that,

However you want to talk about it.

And that can then become,

I think,

An additional,

And I don't think just me thinks this,

Because I speak to a lot of people about this,

It can then become another thing to do.

Like the,

You know,

The extensive morning routines that I used to do,

The making ourselves schedule everything up to the hilt.

And I don't think it has to be that complicated or that hard.

So today,

How can self-care emerge with ease so that it doesn't look like another complication in our life to look after ourselves?

Because I think that is important.

You know,

I know the experience that we have of life is created inside out,

Not outside in,

But I have a physical body and it needs looking after.

And if I don't look after it properly,

I'm likely to get sick.

I'm not going to have the life that I want.

I'm not going to have the relationships that I want,

Because I think included in self-care is often making sure that our relationships are functioning well,

Because our relationships are important,

Aren't they?

And they're part of what keeps us in balance.

And I had,

I'll explain a little bit about how I see self-care emerging.

And just as I was doing that,

Something really interesting just happened,

Which I'm going to share with you.

And that was that I noticed that I was holding my legs quite in a quite a tense way.

I have a little stool under my desk,

Which you want me now because it's moving.

I have a little stool under my desk because my desk is,

I have a sit-stand desk and I like my posture to be like right angles.

I feel like my,

I feel more supported and I feel structurally better.

And the height,

I need my chair to be the right height for my desk means that my legs,

If I didn't have my feet on the little stool,

My legs would be dangling a bit at a slope.

And I just noticed just then,

As I was about to talk about this,

That I just noticed a tightness in my legs.

And I've just let my legs relax a bit.

And that really is,

That's self-care.

It's just noticing my body feels uncomfortable.

So I'm just going to move it a bit.

Sometimes I just notice that my back's a bit,

You know,

Uncomfortable.

So it makes sense to move the pillow.

I have a pillow at my back because I like to keep the small of my back supported.

Or it might be that I noticed that my head's a bit mashed and sore and my eyes are a bit tight,

Maybe around here,

Around sort of around my brow.

And so it might be time to take a break from the computer because my body's kind of telling me that,

Take a little break from the computer.

And where I saw this yesterday,

Which is why I'm doing this live like this now,

Is that I wanted to remove the hair from my legs,

Which I know it's a thing that women do and not men.

I got somebody commented on LinkedIn yesterday,

Why do women do that?

I do it because I guess because I've learned at some point that it's a thing to do.

But now I'm just at the stage of 52 where I just quite like having no hair on my legs.

I don't really care whether it's female equality or anything.

I really don't care.

But I do like to,

You know,

But I've been putting it off a lot actually,

To the point where my legs have been really super hairy,

Which I don't really like.

So yesterday morning,

I'd been away,

We came back very late on Wednesday in the motorhome,

Had a lot of unpacking to do,

Got to bed quite late,

But then kind of got a sense I had quite a lot to do yesterday morning.

So I was feeling a little bit,

I get this urgent feeling and I love the urgent feeling now because I used to think,

Oh my God,

I've got lots to do,

Panic,

Panic,

Got to do lots,

Got to do it fast.

That's what I felt like the urgent feeling used to feel like.

And now I go,

Oh,

There's that urgent feeling.

It's letting me know I've got a lot on my mind.

Not don't need to do lots,

Just need to know I've got a lot on my mind.

So yesterday morning,

An urgent feeling can feel quite anxious.

So I noticed,

Oh,

There's a,

You know,

There's an anxious feeling there.

I feel a bit,

Oof,

You know,

Maybe I haven't,

Maybe I shouldn't shave my legs.

Like I felt like initially that feeling was saying,

You haven't got time.

I haven't got time to shave your legs.

No time for that.

Don't do that.

Get,

Get a quick shower and get downstairs,

Get on with doing stuff at your computer.

That's what it really felt like.

But luckily I caught it.

I caught the,

I caught the direction my thinking was going in,

Guiding me away from doing this little bit of,

You know,

Thing I wanted to do for myself.

Call it,

It doesn't really matter whether you'd call that self-care.

Some people wouldn't,

But that's the thing I wanted to do for myself.

And my thinking was guiding me away from it at a rate of knots.

And how I knew that of course,

Was that I had this horrible,

Anxious,

Churny feeling in my body.

So I,

I did,

I didn't shave my legs,

I actually epilated them.

Which is just so much more painful.

Although it's cool because after a while,

Leg hairs don't really grow back.

Anyway,

Far too much about leg hairs in this session today.

But I did,

I just let it,

I just let myself do it.

I just did what I wanted to do,

Which was remove the hair,

Legs and do a bit of exfoliation and moisturize my body from head to toe.

Like just some nice,

Something nice for myself.

And it didn't need to be scheduled.

It didn't need to be up to the hill.

I just needed to realize in the moment that,

That horrible feeling,

That rushed,

Anxious,

Urgent feeling,

Wasn't telling me that I needed to work.

It was telling me that I had some thinking about work.

I had some thinking that I needed to be off doing things in my business rather than looking after myself and doing what I wanted to do for me.

And I haven't walked a lot recently.

I mean,

I've walked loads the last week or so,

Because Bruce and I have been away in Wales and we've done lots of walking.

But that's something I've kind of let go of recently because a voice in my head has been saying,

Do,

Do,

Do,

You need to be doing things.

And so that's something else I will be bringing some awareness to.

After this,

I'm going to look at my diary and see when I can get a walk in.

So how is this helpful in terms of you navigating life and having some time to look after yourself without structuring it up to the hilt and it feeling like it's all got to be like time blocked and scheduled out?

Well,

It is listening to your body.

I've recently started to just create,

Well,

I've created one meditation,

Which I didn't used to do.

So that's going to be on Insight Timer very soon.

And it's just a seven minute pause really to check in with your body,

Because like I said before,

Like I'm just noticing this tension in my legs and I need to move my legs around.

I might notice I'm a bit sore.

I might just realize I've just been stagnantly sitting at my desk for too long and it might be time to get up and move around.

Although my bladder usually detects it takes fairly often.

So that's not too much of a problem.

If we check in.

So this little guided meditation I've created is really an opportunity to check in with your body and just listen to what it needs,

Because it will let you know if you listen enough.

And that's what we don't do because we're so busy listening to what's in our heads that we don't listen to our body.

And to me,

That is how self-care can emerge much more easily than it all being scheduled up to the hilt.

Now,

I'm not saying I'm not saying don't schedule things for yourself to take care of yourself at all,

But maybe that's not enough.

Like I saw a lady commented on a post yesterday and she said,

Well,

I make sure I do 30 minutes every day of something for me.

And I just kind of thought,

Oh,

Is that enough?

You know,

If do we feel like if we've done it in this routine-ized way,

You know,

We've done our 30 minutes of whatever in the morning,

We don't need to do anything else.

And does that kind of stop,

Also probably stop us listening to our bodies?

When all day our body might be screaming and saying you need,

You need a break.

So taking a few minutes out,

Message me if you want to know more about my little guided meditation to do that.

Taking a few minutes out to just stop and just,

Just notice your body,

Notice how it's doing.

Something will make sense to do if you do that kind of check-in.

So I hope you found that helpful.

I think,

I think it's just,

It's just presence really and connection to the body.

The body is wise,

So wise.

The body that,

You know,

That awful feeling I felt when I was thinking I shouldn't be shaving my legs,

Was,

Was the voice of unreason really,

The voice of insanity,

Because right then it was absolutely fine to do it.

The feeling was letting me know,

The feeling in my body was letting me know that I had too much on my mind about what I needed to do that day.

Actually,

I got all the things I needed to do done anyway.

So,

You know,

It turns out I did have time.

That's the thing,

Isn't it?

The illusion of not having enough time.

We usually like super underestimate what we can do in an allotted amount of time anyway.

So that's cool.

Right.

I am going to go and I'm going to go make myself a cup of tea actually,

In a form of self-care.

I like a nice brew once I've had a load of water.

I like to have a warm drink.

So lots of love.

I hope you found that helpful.

Do let me know if you have and look after yourself today.

I mean,

Maybe just play with it for a day,

Just checking it in every so often,

Seeing what you need.

I even ask your body,

What do you need right now?

And see what it says.

Take care and lots of love.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now,

But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been the Calmcast with Claire Downer,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.

Reviews

One of the benefits of having a chronic illness (MS) is that you learn to listen & pay attention to & know your body. I feel like the awareness it has given me is like the silver lining. I love this idea of liking the urgent feeling as it’s a sign to stop and listen a bit harder (that’s how I interpreted what you said). I think that learning to like that few will be really helpful! Thanks

I do try to listen to my body more during the day. Thanks for confirming that is a good thing to do and the action taken afterwards is self-care.