Last month I wrote about Heart Harmony along with Being versus Doing. Self care is related. When you focus too much on doing, it’s easy to downplay self care and forget about yourself. You might tell yourself that self care isn’t important. You may think that you don’t have time. However, taking care of yourself makes you more productive in the rest of your life.
Because it is easy for me to forget about self care, I have started scheduling it in my calendar in ways that make it easier. One of the reasons I chose to work at Stones Throw on Tuesdays is to be able to go to our Feldenkrais class from 9:30-10:30. I know that if I don’t have to be at the store afterwards, I will probably not get myself out the door. I’m not good about doing regular stretches for my back and shoulders, so attending the class means that I am tuning into my body at least once a week.
Similarly, I have scheduled myself for an on-going monthly massage after one of my store shifts. If I don’t have it permanently scheudled on the calendar I will never get around to getting one. We have an incredible therapeutic massage therapist at Songbird, Trevor Coghlan. His massages are loosening up my muscles in a way that no other massage therapist has ever been able to. Trevor will be at the Cotati and Rohnert Farmer’s Markets this summer if you want to check him out.
I run across many people who don’t take the time for self care, and that’s why we’ve schedule Self Care Sunday this month! Self Care Sunday is one option to take care of yourself, the most important person in your life! There are many more ways. It’s up to you to find what calls to you. I like specific scheduled events. Others are able to take care of themselves better without scheduling it.
When I started writing about self care, I suddenly realized that I consider there to be two types of self care – direct self care and indirect self care. Direct self care is the kind I have been writing about so far. This is time that is clearly downtime, scheduled or not. Indirect self care occurs when I am focusing more on Being. Sometimes I am doing direct self care at this time, but more often, I’m doing other things that would not normally be classified as self care.
These are the tasks that my mind does not consider high priority, but excite me to do. That makes them high priority! This happened last week when I was scheduled to send out the newsletter. Many other tasks came to me that felt like they needed to be completed as part of my indirect self care. One of them was starting on a new and simpler version of our Rental Options. This need has been hanging over for a long time, but it wasn’t high priority like the newsletter. Getting it completed is a big relief and an example of the second type of self care. Perhaps there was a reason to create it last week. Last night I heard someone who found our old version too confusing so I sent her my draft to see what she thought.
Sometimes I tell myself I am spending too much time on social media in the morning instead of working, but often during that time I run across posts that lead to rentals at Songbird. We have just booked a three day workshop in July from a random post I happened to see from someone looking for a place to rent.
After this month, we do not have any Songbird Presents events scheduled beyond the Hands of Gold Healing Clinic. We might take the summer off or we might not. We will see what comes to us instead of forcing something to happen. Allowing Songbird Presents to possibly go on summer vacation was another lesson in self care and Being. I am no longer forcing myself to find speakers or stressing about not having any. I am letting the right events find me either directly or indirectly during my downtime. As I mentioned last month, we are in an exciting period of refocusing. I am letting everything flow, including my self-imposed deadlines and my self care.