9 Self-Care Tips Guaranteed to Get You Back in Your Body

[Image description: A long-haired individual sits in meditation. They’ve tied their hair up indicating that it was tickling their nose and distracting from meditative focus.]

The election is coming up, your family is asking if you’ve made plans to come home for the holidays, you’re still not sure if it’s socially acceptable visit your favorite restaurant and suddenly your head is swirling! Life can all get the best of us sometimes and leave us with our heads in the clouds. Come back down to Earth with these tips that will help your return to your body.

1. Take a 1 minute meditation break

Meditation is the best! Not only is it the path to enlightenment, but it’s also the much needed break you’ve been waiting for all day. When you meditate you bring your mind back into the present moment. Usually we’re out in the future, stressed about what’s going to happen, or caught up in the past, worried about how things happened.

Meditation is the practice of presence, where are you continually return your attention to some thing that exist in the present, like your breath, a candle, or the words of a mantra as they come through your brain.

I want to invite you into one of the simplest and most profound forms of meditation that I teach. It comes from the Shambala Buddhist meditation tradition, and it’s called Shamatha which means peaceful abiding.

It’s incredibly simple.

1. Take a seat

2. Set a one minute timer

3. For one minute, focus on feeling your breath as it comes in and as it goes out

4. When you get lost in the past or future, melt right back into your breath

That’s it! You can do it right now and I promise it’ll make a difference in your day. You might notice feeling lighter, more at ease, more in control, or calmer with what’s going on for you.

2. Take a 10 minute dance break

You know I like to dance. Shoot, what I really want to say is: take a 10min work break from your long dance of dancing! But somehow our world is upside down. Right?! I bet you’re either working hard and looking for a distraction, or you’re already taking a little break. If you’re seeing this and you feel inspired, go for it! Throw on Justin Timberlake, Jason Derulo, or Madonna and dance your booty off.

Turns out the studies show sitting for 8 hours in a row without breaks for movement is worse for your body over time than smoking. Just a little motivation for you in case you weren’t sure if it was a good idea or in case you feel a little self-conscious. Don’t worry, I’m dancing with you. Song recommendation: So Much More Than This by Grace VanderWaal.

3. Do anything other than sitting

We each have about 640-850 muscles, 206 bones, and 360 joints. Humans were obviously created to move. And yet our modern work lives encourage us to sit at desks, looking at a small object for long hours. How weird is that! It's the reason I have a daily movement practice where I challenge myself to try new things. There are so many benefits to moving throughout the day that I would have to sit typing for long enough to discredit my own post.

4. Blink slowly until you feel a deep breath come

This is another nervous system hack for you that I learned from the incredible movement teacher Cass Phelps. When we're going into a 1-3 hour movement dive, Cass will have us start with nervous system releases like yawning, opening the throat, or blinking slowly. These never fail to bring me into a deeper relationship with my body's flow of breath and movement, which bring me more energy, so I've been incorporating them into my work day and I highly recommend it.

5. Take the three deepest breaths you've ever taken

Sometimes when I hear the invitation to take a deep breath I think, "Yea, yea I've done this like a thousand times. Let's get on with it already!" But when I actually slow down and take three deep breaths my whole world changes. I suddenly realize all the ways I was rushing or pushing through when I could have been opening up and receiving. I'm a rusher, so this is a big practice for me right now. What do you notice happens when you take three genuinely deep breaths?

6. Wiggle your fingers and toes

This is actually an immediate antidote to the freeze fear response. We all go through many micro fear responses throughout the day. Moving in a wiggling or shaking way literally interrupts the pattern of freezing, and brings us out of the fear experience, back into our natural state of flowing.

I use this every day in my experience as an entrepreneur to punctuate moments of financial fear, technology failures, mistakes I make, and opportunities I miss. From the fear lens, these span from frustrating to devastating. From the wiggle lens, these are all part of life as a small business owner. Wiggle on my friend! Be a proud wiggl-ist...wiggl-er?...wiggl-tonian.

7. Do this 3 minute yoga practice

Are you feeling stiff in your body from all the amazing brain-work you’re doing? Time for 3 yoga sun salutations. If you’re thinking “yoga what-now?!”, swipe to watch the video of me teaching it. When you practice a full-body and breath practice like yoga your whole world will slow down to a speed that your mind feels really grounded in and comfortable with.

Not only will you get all the physical benefits of circulation through your joints and the stretching of your muscles, but you’ll get the meditative benefits of moving with your breath, and focusing on the present moment. Give it a try! No need for fancy yoga clothes, just do it in what you’re wearing like you see me do in the video.

8. Stand barefoot on the earth

Take those cages off your feet and go find the nearest patch of sweet mama earth. Grounding, or earthing is an experiential and therapeutic activity that I recommend everyone do at least once a day. Especially during a pandemic. It's super simple, just find a spot to put your feet and take a few deep breaths. Imagine your feet could breathe in the earth, and the earth could breathe in your feet at the same time.

The earth is the most incredible support we will ever know - more than any other human. The earth is literally always there, for every second of our lives 100% supporting us and asking for nothing in return. Thank you sweet earth! If you run a business and you think you're too busy to spend a few moments with the earth, it's time to reconsider your priorities.

9. Wander outside until you find a plant that smells amazing

Nature calls! No seriously, there’s a plant somewhere in your neighborhood that wants nothing but someone to smell the crap out of it. Are you up for an adventure? Take a break and go find that plant.

Hopefully this has given you a few ideas next time you need to take a moment to ground yourself. Next up: ways to care for yourself right from your desk.