When you are a superwoman juggling gazillions of responsibilities, self-care may be the last thing on your list of priorities.
We’ve all been there: burned out, always on the go, and feeling like there are just not enough hours in the day to take care of ourselves. But even with all your superwoman abilities, you can’t save the world without saving your own day.
Whether you’re a busy mom, a corporate climber, or just in need of some love, these self-care ideas for women will help you regain your peace of mind and regenerate happiness from within.
What Is Self-Care?
Taking care of one’s physical, emotional, and mental health is known as “self-care.” It entails taking action, building habits, and cultivating rituals that promote your overall well-being and high quality of life.
Simply put, it’s all about taking the time to recharge, refocus, and realign your energies to be the greatest version of yourself.
According to Katherine Woodward Thomas, relationship expert and trainer of Mindvalley’s Calling in The One Quest, the next level of self-care is the way you treat and relate to yourself. This includes:
- Your habitual ways of speaking to yourself,
- The way you respond or do not respond to your own difficult feelings and needs,
- Commitments you make or don’t make to fulfill your deepest dreams and desires,
- The way you honor or fail to honor promises you made to yourself, and
- The way you show up for yourself.
How is it different from self-love?
Self-care is the actions you take to stay healthy and well, while self-love is a state of appreciation and respect for yourself. So the two are inseparable from one another, as self-care is essential for cultivating unconditional self-love.
Read more: Why All the Fuss About Self-Care?
4 Mind-Nurturing Self-Care Ideas for Women
Regular self-care practices can improve your mental and emotional well-being, helping you effectively cope with stress and challenges. Here are some self-care ideas that can specifically benefit your busy mind:
1. Self-soothe
Katherine explains that self-soothing tools teach you how to turn within and get yourself back into a more balanced emotional state to be able to respond instead of reacting. Most importantly, they help you navigate disappointment and hurt.
It’s called emotional self-regulation—one of the most essential skills that can create an emotionally safe, loving, respectful, and healthy foundation for your relationships.
The process of self-soothing involves:
- Cultivating the ability to slow down your reactivity,
- Noticing what is causing an emotional experience,
- Noticing your automatic assumptions and meanings you’re making out of this experience and making more empowered meaning, and
- Repeating self-soothing words to yourself until you feel calm and safe.
It also involves engaging in activities that bring you comfort and joy.
2. Put yourself in a haven
Created by doctor Ronald Ruden, Havening techniques are designed to put you in a safe place—a haven. It utilizes specific touch patterns that are hard-wired into every infant.
According to Paul McKenna, behavioral scientist and trainer of Mindvalley’s Everyday Bliss Quest, using these patterns can significantly reduce feelings of unhappiness and stress and establish calm relaxation.
What people don’t realize is that most of the stress that they have in their lives is absolutely unnecessary.
— Paul McKenna, trainer of Mindvalley’s Everyday Bliss Quest
Read more: Havening Techniques for Stress, Explained by Paul McKenna
3. Practice EFT tapping
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), also known as tapping, is a self-care technique developed by Gary Craig. It involves tapping on specific points on the body while focusing on a specific issue or emotion.
This technique is based on the idea that negative emotions and thoughts can be released by tapping on the body’s energy meridian points. EFT can be a powerful tool for reducing stress, anxiety, and negative emotions.
According to Jennifer Partridge, EFT expert and trainer of Mindvalley’s Tapping Into Emotional Mastery Quest, tapping aligns you with the magnificence of your mind, body, and spiritual intelligence. As a result, you become an empowered human being, in touch with your highest potential, and living in a state of love.
Read more: 5 Steps to Heal Your Pain and Traumas With EFT Tapping
4. Journal
Journaling is a great way to process your thoughts and emotions and gain insights into your inner world. You can write about your daily experiences, your hopes and dreams, or simply your thoughts and feelings to express yourself freely without judgment or censorship. It will give you a sense of liberation, freeing mental space for insights and creativity.
It’s also a great way to set intentions and track personal growth. Writing down your goal statements and aspirations can help make them feel more tangible and achievable.
On top of that, if you want meaningful self-care gift ideas for women, getting yourself or your female friend a nice journal is one of them.
Read more: How to Start Journaling in 3 Easy Steps
4 Soul-Nurturing Self-Care Ideas for Women
You can nourish your soul and cultivate your connection with the Spirit by incorporating these self-care ideas into your life:
1. Practice mindfulness meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a simple practice that can help you become more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the present moment.
Gelong Thubten, a renowned Buddhist teacher and trainer of Mindvalley’s Becoming More Loving Quest, suggests that mindfulness meditation can help you develop a deeper connection with yourself and the world around you.
How to do it:
- Find a quiet place to sit, close your eyes, and focus on your breath.
- Try to let go of any thoughts or distractions and simply be present with your breath.
- When your mind starts to wander, simply return to your breath, without self-judgment.
- Start with a few minutes a day and gradually increase the time as you become more comfortable.
Listen to this quick but powerful mindfulness meditation on Omvana by Mindvalley:
2. Be grateful
According to Vishen, founder of Mindvalley, gratitude is the most well-being-enhancing tool available for human beings.
When you feel grateful, your energy levels go up, you have higher emotional intelligence and more forgiving attitudes, and you feel more socially connected and less anxious. And these are just a few of the numerous benefits of gratitude.
As you practice gratitude, make sure you aren’t using it as a coping mechanism. This is when it can become toxic, preventing you from embracing your emotions and seeing things as they are.
Read more: How to Practice Gratitude: A Guide on Cultivating the Attitude
3. Cheer yourself
Self-compassion is an essential soul-nourishing self-care ritual for women. Without compassion for yourself, you can’t show it to others.
Start by becoming mindful of your thoughts and replacing negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
Marisa Peer, the formidable hypnotherapist and trainer of Mindvalley’s Rapid Transformational Hypnotherapy for Abundance Quest, emphasizes that the inner dialogue you have with yourself can have a significant impact on your self-esteem, confidence, and overall mental health. So practicing self-compassion and being your own biggest cheerleader is a display of your self-care and self-love.
She says, “Speak kindly to yourself and view yourself with compassion and empathy, just as you would with a close friend.”
4. Cultivate emotional awareness
Emotional awareness is about learning how to feel your emotions properly, including painful ones, and accepting yourself in any emotional state.
Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani, co-founder of Mindvalley and author of Becoming Flawesome: The Key to Living an Imperfectly Authentic Life, recommends asking yourself, “How am I feeling right now?” during the day and trying to spot it. It can be very subtle or strong; whatever it is, don’t leave it unnoticed.
The more you practice it, the better equipped you will be for any emotional turbulence in life.
4 Body-Nurturing Self-Care Ideas for Women
Taking care of your body entails well-balanced nutrition, regular workouts, and enough sleep. In addition to these basics, here are some rituals to enhance your self-care routine:
1. Do yoga
Yoga is more than just a set of physical postures. Despite popular perception, it’s not a workout but a work-in.
According to Cecilia Sardeo, celebrated yoga teacher and head instructor of The Mindvalley Yoga Quest, yoga is a unification of the body, mind, and spirit. It creates awareness and a mind-body-spirit connection, bringing harmony to every aspect of your life.
If you haven’t tried yoga before, you can get started with a simple morning yoga routine for beginners.
Read more: Want a Powerful Energy Boost? Try This Simple Morning Yoga Routine
2. Get a massage
Studies show that a simple touch can trigger oxytocin production, commonly known as “the love hormone.” It is also incredibly soothing, as it promotes a sense of safety and trust. This is why getting a massage regularly is a natural way to release tension in your body and calm your nervous system.
3. Breath in infrared sauna
Infrared saunas offer a variety of health benefits for women. Studies show that a 20-minute session can:
- Remove harmful toxins and impurities through sweating,
- Reduce pain and muscle tension,
- Reduce stress and improve overall mental well-being,
- Improve your skin,
- Boost your immune system, and
- Help increase metabolism and promote weight loss.
According to Niraj Naik, SOMA Breath® creator and trainer of Mindvalley’s Breathwork for Life Quest, an internal heat sauna can maximize these benefits when paired with breathwork.
If you are new to this routine, it’s recommended to start with shorter sessions of 5-10 minutes and gradually increase the duration over several weeks. It’s also important to stay hydrated before, during, and after sauna sessions.
4. Dance
Dancing is an exhilarating experience, and you can practice it as a self-care ritual. The best part is that fully surrendering to this activity and allowing your body to move the way it wants will awaken your intuition.
Sonia Choquette, spiritual teacher and trainer of Mindvalley’s Sixth Sense Superpower Quest, teaches dancing as a tool for unlocking intuition. She explains that when you move your body freely, you get out of your head and surrender to your inner truth. With this self-care ritual, you’ll gain greater clarity and a deeper connection with all your senses, including the sixth.
Nourish Your Body, Mind, and Soul with Mindvalley
As women, we often place ourselves at the bottom of the list, but it’s time to change that. You may significantly transform yourself and lead a life filled with happiness, calm, and purpose by giving multidimensional self-care a high priority. Most significantly, it will be all generated from within.
If you aspire to take your self-care to the next level, by joining Mindvalley, you can learn how to:
- Make tapping your personal tool for mastering your emotions and healing your emotional wounds with Jennifer Partridge and her Tapping into Emotional Mastery Quest,
- Cultivate unapologetic self-love and self-acceptance with Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani and her Live By Your Own Rules Quest,
- Become more forgiving and grateful in life with Vishen and his The 6 Phase Meditation Quest, and
- So much more.
You can sample classes of the quests with Mindvalley’s trainers by unlocking your free access.
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