When we women at last realize that we are deserving of our love, cherishing, protection, and support, we become unstoppable. A woman who knows her real value is a benevolent, harmonizing, shaping force in the environment, a powerful creator and protector.
One way that we women can help ourselves and each other thrive is to deeply embrace the concept and practice of self-care.
Self-care is a principle that strengthens us, leads us to our personal destiny, and out of the many traps laid for us by elements of our world that don’t have women’s best interests at heart.
When we deeply embrace self-care, giving ourselves permission to treat ourselves as we have always longed for someone to treat us – as unconditionally lovable, forgivable, deserving wonders of creation, full of mystery, magic, and nature’s ineffable perfection – we can get a lot of creative satisfaction and joy out of the practice itself.
This summer, we invite you to join us in celebrating the season in a spirit of creatively rethinking your self-care!
What are some summer self-care ideas to feel your best?
Self-care can be more than a habit, more than hygiene and maintenance. It can be a way of speaking to your deepest self and listening to what she has to say, in return. Self-care is a dialogue, a way of giving love to yourself and seeing how that love changes you. An ever-evolving adjustment and dance, a movement forward.
The way to do this is to lean into your creative, poetic, magical side. Understand that self-care is connected to the sun, the stars, and the universe itself. It is connected to photosynthesis, koalas, and giant amethyst caves.
In other words, to care for the self is to care for the beauty and uniqueness that we see all over our world – when we care for our own beauty and uniqueness with an artist’s touch, we can blossom under the loving attention we give ourselves.
Here are some ways to lean into the poetics of summertime as you give love and care to the irreplaceable creature you are.
Soak up the Sunshine
Sunshine supercharges us, energizing and cleansing our electromagnetic fields, filling us with warmth and power. Can we imagine the big sun in the sky connecting to the smaller energetic sun we hold in our cores? Can we let the sunshine relax us, sing us its starry music, and raise our frequency? Summer is the time to honor and soak in the sun (safely), and to let each cell in our body be uplifted and reminded of what we’re really made of.
Get in the Water
The water element is the perfect counterbalance to soaking in the sun. This summer, let yourself relax into the healing properties of water to dissolve and wash away every burden that’s hanging heavy on our bodies, darkening our souls, or polluting our minds.
Rivers, lakes, waterfalls, and of course, the ocean, are nature’s free healers. Everyone knows we are 75% water – there’s a reason that we like to be immersed, at home in our element, literally.
Self Care is a Performance Booster
Top athletes, performing artists, and extraordinary achievers everywhere are very disciplined, primarily about making sure they get the requisite self care that is necessary to be in optimal condition. We can learn from them the simple truth that the better we treat ourselves, the better we are able to perform at our best.
Touch base with the Earth
Summer is the season that belongs to bare feet. Whether in the garden or at the beach, let yourself feel the support that this earth has for you, skin to skin. Take the earth’s grounding, containing, neutralizing energies in through your feet, and let your personal body field become balanced.
If you like, you can imagine an anchor dropping from your heart and sinking down deep into the earth, until it reaches the very center of the planet. Feeling it there, allows heaviness to be a pleasure. Feel how the earth holds onto you, keeps you.
Replenish
Due to the heat and all the fun in the sun, self-care this summer should involve conscious replenishment. After releasing what no longer serves us into dissolving waters, after allowing the fiery purifying heat of the sun to repair us deep into our cells, after letting the earth ground us, we can let our bodies find replenishment in the form of nourishing juices, electrolytes, and moisture. We can drink pure water and feed our skin with healing oils.
How can you make the most of this season?
If we let nature rule us instead of fighting it, we can receive its gifts more easily. What if we let summer be what it is, surrendering to its wisdom and preparing realistically for its effects on us?
What is summer to you? A time of warmth, increased light infusion, and long and lazy days, and nights that encourage us to linger outside and see if we can recognize any constellations. Or is it maybe a time of painful memories, stimulation of our dreams, and longings that are almost hard to bear?
Whatever summer is to you personally, consider that that is meaningful, not a coincidence, but a perfection of some kind.
To reflect, you may want to explore the following sentence start:
To me, personally, summer means…
In movies, books, art, and songs, summer means…
To nature, animals, and plants, summer means…
Summer is the best time of year for…
Summer is the worst time of year for…
The best thing about summer is…
The hardest thing about summer is…
How can I help myself through the hard parts?
How can I deepen my experiences of the best aspects of summer?
Overall, how can I make the most of this summer season?
How movement can help with mental health and self-care during the summertime?
Movement is nature’s most potent medicine, as it has a way of working troubles out of the body. In the summer, movement and exercise come more naturally to us, as we tend to have more energy, time, and inspiration to get outside.
When we exercise we not only release pent-up energy that would otherwise be spent running the mental hamster wheel, we actually have the chance to process. During movement we complete and sort the events that trouble us, passing them more quickly into memory. We store our experiences away in the archival part of the mind, where we keep events that don’t need any more thinking about.
No matter what challenges are asking for our attention this summer, movement is a way to encounter them that is well supported by nature and the body. Movement is nature’s way of processing our experiences.
Be kind to yourself and choose a movement that the body likes. It’s common and normal to feel resistance to shifting gears or exercising, and we can help ourselves with that by choosing activities, places, and people that the body feels a big Yes to. Whether we want to belly dance, kite surf, or yin yoga this summer, movement can be a companion for the season.
How can summer interfere with mental health?
It’s not at all uncommon to have many triggers associated with summertime. If this is you, you aren’t alone. Many of us have this experience, too. Holidays, barbecues, family, vacations, and even just free time or longer days can bring troubles and pain to the surface for some of us.
While it’s no fun to have to process the next layer of our wounds and false beliefs yet again, it’s also an opportunity. If and when summer interferes with our mental health, the answer is to find a way to lovingly engage with ourselves, to look towards rather than away from what is surfacing for our healing awareness.
With all healing, there is a gift once we get to the end of healing and processing a particular piece. There is always a reclamation and celebration at the end, as we embrace a long split-off part of ourselves back into our loving arms. What started out as an annoyance, even something pushing us into dread or fear, turns into a present, a part of us that we really do need, coming back home. So hang in there through the wound-healing and self-reclamation process, it’s worth it!
Villa Kali Ma supports self-care for women
At Villa Kali Ma, we celebrate self-care for women, acknowledging it as a powerful cure for what ails us and every other woman we know. Wherever there is pain, the answer is always self-love. Self-care is our self-love in action.
