So, what actually is 'self-care' anyway? (S1E14)

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I often speak of how self-care underpins our ability to make deep and lasting change. Yet, for many of us it can feel hard to identify what self-care actually is.

How do we know what it is? And what it isn't? And how do we identify habits that may masquerade as self-care, without truly serving us?

Self-care is not simply the practice of eating well or exercising (though both are, of course, such wonderful gifts to give ourselves). It extends beyond how we look after our physical body and moves deeply into how we care for our psychological and energetic body.

So, it stretches beyond action, into thoughts and into how we choose to feel.

Often we can inherit or adopt thought patterns that make us feel guilty about looking after ourselves, or we become self-judgemental when we know we're not doing it 'enough'.

I cover all of these areas on today's episode in an exploration of self-care, with a view to opening up our perception of what self-care feels like for each of us.

I include an invitation to honour your own need for self-care. Not as a nice-to-have, but as a fundamentally critical component of how we live our life.

Over the past few years I've worked with many clients for whom self-care initially feels 'hard' or where they have attached 'shoulds' to their practices, so it feels like a burden rather than a joy. Or where, for many very valid reasons, they inhabit their heads to such an extent that they feel disconnected from their bodies - and find it difficult to register what self-care feels like. Or where there are old stories preventing them from valuing themselves and being able to give themselves the attention they truly deserve.

If any of that resonates, I hope this episode goes some way to helping to dissolve some of those barriers to caring deeply for yourself.

And if you want to explore how self-awareness and self-compassion (the two wings of self-care) help us create meaningful and effective changes at work, home or in our personal life, then you know where I am.

As ever, if you enjoy this episode, please leave a comment or send me your thoughts - it's

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