Simple, practical tips for self-care and mindfulness

You would think that taking care of ourselves is something everyone knows how to do. But most of us aren’t taught how to check in on our bodies and minds. We aren’t taught tools for managing stress or being aware of our posture. We just jump from reaction to reaction, job to job, day to day, without doing anything except basic self-care like eating and showering. There’s so much more than we need.

Anne Kelly’s tracks are short and to the point. She gives simple and practical tips for everything from cultivating a present moment awareness, breathing exercises, being aware of stressors, to practicing self-compassion (which is harder than it sounds).

She reminds us that it doesn’t have to be a fancy meditation setup to get us on the right track. It can be as simple as writing our to-do list every day or looking through pictures from the year before to remember good moments as well as recount our achievements. Even little moments to tune in and check on the body. Are our shoulders hunched? Are we clenching our jaw?

She even has a good tip for relieving boredom while doing tedious things such as preparing vegetables: let your 6 senses explore the experience. How do the vegetables feel, smell, how do they sound while cutting them? It’s little things like this that can bring us back to the magic of things that have been ruined for us by the construct of human life. We think, boo, I don’t want to spend all this time preparing my meal, I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m bored. But if we take that time to appreciate the wonder of what we’re doing, it opens up a whole new experience. We consider all of the small coincidences that happened to bring this very vegetable to us from the little seed it grew from.

Listen to Tips for Being Mindful and Minding Yourself and more self-improvement audio programs on Audiojoy — download free on iOS or Android.

 

Content Review by Lesley Marks