We take up residence in two places: our bodies and our four-walled abodes. In honour of both sacred spaces, we put together a three-part series to inspire self-care. This month we wanted to focus on the calm campaign. Read on...
In caring for ourselves, we create a stronger foundation in which we can truly flourish. One where daily life, the news, the limits and frustrations we face become easier to deal with.
Here are 5 of our top tips to embrace our new norm and use it to cultivate an inner landscape of calm contentment.
Create a bespoke morning routine: If you’re naturally a firecracker in the morning, bursting into life as soon as the alarm goes off, by all means, keep your regular routine. But given the current climate, this may need adapting. Perhaps you can use the time where you would be sitting in traffic to read a chapter of a book you never usually have time for and ensure you eat a proper breakfast? Essentially, you’ve been granted time to create your own bespoke routine and prime yourself with kind acts of service for the day ahead. What will yours look like?
Movement: Movement shakes the container that encases our emotions, enabling feelings that don’t serve us to dissipate and fall away. Liberating, uplifting and empowering. Movement in any form is one of the simplest of acts with the most radical of results.
Stillness: Stillness, the yin to the yang of movement. Just as needed and a vital act of self-care. Being still and anchoring yourself in the present moment calms the parasympathetic nervous system. It also unearths renewed clarity as you allow feelings buried deep in mind and body to surface.
Skincare: During lockdown, I’ve devoted more time to skincare. The aim; to come out the other side with a plump, radiant glow! Having vowed to go makeup-free for the duration, it was only a few days in when I realized I’d started to truly notice my skin, as if for the first time, its behaviour, its symptoms. Treating it like the living organism it is. I’m investigating new skincare products, looking into future Spa treatments and carefully creating new routines. I’m enjoying understanding my skin better, nurturing it and like a pot-plant, watching it positively respond.
Foster joy: It would be wrong to assume that everyone in lockdown has unlimited free-time. Many of you still uphold day jobs, glued to a smaller screen than usual at a makeshift desk, the thundering sound of children using the hallway as a race-track. But like you make time for the washing, work and your deliverables, we urge you to make time for moments of joy. Maybe this comes in the evening, as you close down the lights and bring the family together, relaxing over a new Netflix series. A respite from the world outside. Choose your moment of joy, whatever it looks like for you.
If a flower can still grow in the most turbulent of climates, so can you.