Caring for yourself.
This is not simple. Not as simple as having a massage now and then. Not as simple as having time to read a book. Not as simple as having a holiday. There seem to be so many facets involved.

There is caring for the body: thinking about the food we eat, sleep, water intake, exercise, fresh air. And each of these can take up quite some time figuring it out, especially if one reads lots of articles and books, or go to different specialists. And then there is pain and injury – how to care for the body then. Is there one main way of caring for the body that you follow?

There is caring for you emotionally: This doesn’t mean stuffing it down so it pretends that it isn’t there! Allowing yourself to feel emotions can be scary. And if the mind jumps in and tried to figure out which emotion it is, well……….. it is illusive! Name it if you like, though this may mean that it’s out there, rather than being felt in the body. It may mean that you have a concept of how an emotion feels and therefore by naming it, you make it into how you think it is, rather than how it really is.

There is caring for yourself mentally: enjoying practices which have the potential to calm your mind – meditation, yoga, colouring-in, walking in nature. Yes, some of these also care for your body. It really is hard to separate these out. We are one being, not separate bits. Or there is caring for your mind by stimulating it – conversations, challenging your ideas, debating, learning something new.

And there is caring for yourself at a deeper level, some people might say, spiritually. This can involve investigating the patterns or ways of being in life. And inquiring into the layers of conditioning and beliefs that you cart around with you. And then going deeper to the underlying patterns of the ego.

And all this caring for yourself all depends on whether you believe that you are worthy of such care. There can be drivers influencing what you do to care for yourself – money, time, values, other people’s approval, insecurity, doubts, survival
So much to balance. So much to think about. So much to decide on. Complicated.
What about you though?