What inspired you to write this book?
I wanted to gather my knowledge and started writing a book about movement. I took some much needed time alone, which I hardly ever had in my life to work on that. I realized the larger scope and more about the relationship I had with myself. I observed how I pushed myself, and I didn’t talk very nicely to myself. I realized how much I was focused on taking care of other people, and started asking myself, “What do I want and what do I need?” It’s a big issue. Women are basically conditioned to pay attention to other people's needs and not so much on themselves. I wanted something that would honor the wisdom of the body and women’s own wisdom, rather than relying on an expert telling you what to do.
I wanted to focus on how to get that inner wisdom and how to get what you need. There are so many exercise books that don’t meet the needs and support all bodies, and then there’s the negative effect the diet industry has on women not feeling good about their bodies. Helping women to feel good about their bodies is a big thing for me in the book and in my work.
What did you learn while you were writing the book..what surprised you the most?
I learned a lot about the relationship to self, how my self talk supported me or didn’t support me, and just how big an area self-care is. I kept adding parts to the book because self care is also about breathing and moving. I wrote later chapters around food and eating. I wanted to have a different approach and use the concept of our relationship with food. What surprises me is that I don’t see many books like this. I want to get the word out because self-care is so important.
What’s one message that you most want my readers (people interested in healing chronic illness) to know about your book, The Heart of Self-Care, A Woman’s Guide to Joyful Living and Well-Being?
Self-care is not what you do, it’s how you do it. Cultivating is an important word. In my book, I talk about cultivating inner support, and cultivating joy.
We expect ourselves to change and heal fast and it’s a process. Take for example in the plant world. Things take time. Healing chronic illness takes time. I think it’s one of the ways people are hard on themselves in that they think that healing should be faster or it should be a straight line up.
As a functional nutrition counselor I work with women to heal chronic illness. One issue that I feel often gets overlooked in healing from physical illness is the importance of mindset. In your book you talk about the importance of becoming mindful of one’s self-talk.
I know that in my own healing journey, the more I became aware of my self talk, I noticed the critical unsupportive voice that often cropped up when trying to make behavioral or lifestyle modifications.
I’m wondering if you can elaborate on why it’s so important when talking about self-care to cultivate inner support and why its essential to have a supportive and encouraging inner voice for a better quality of life… And can you talk a little about what obstacles women face in this regard. Is there an abbreviated practice from your book that you’d like to share to overcome these obstacles.
I think one of things to put out there is that we talk to ourselves 24-7. We need to acknowledge that we’re always talking to ourselves. Are we talking to ourselves using helpful or unhelpful words? I like using that terminology rather than positive or negative so it doesn’t feel like you’re doing something bad if using negative self-talk. It’s the foundation of looking at the relationship to ourself and that’s why I call it the heart of self-care…our heart as a model of self-care. Our heart takes the freshest oxygen that comes from the lungs and feeds the cells of the heart first. It’s the idea that my heart knows I need to take care and that it’s important because my heart works a lot.
One of the things in the book I discuss is a Touchstone practice. You put your hand on your heart. It’s important to pause, stop and ask yourself, “what do I need that would be helpful right now to stop that critical thinking?” Any kind of pause is very useful especially when we are going and going, doing our patterns and we are not checking in with ourself. A pause gives us an opportunity to shift things. Maybe I don’t have to work as feverishly as I was, or maybe I can take a take a break. In the practice your hand is on the sternum. The word sternum means shield. It’s a built in shield. Many of us try to protect our hearts. Touching bone can be grounding and literally helps you feel your relationship to self. Your arms touch your chest making a circle giving you an opportunity to check in. Just ask, “what do I need now?”
The obstacles women face are that women are so outwardly focused and there are often false beliefs at play. For instance, “I can take care of myself and rest only when all my tasks are done.” Another is that “self-care is a chore.” There’s a false belief about deserving self-care or having self-focus. How can we get rid of our false beliefs? We can “blow them out.”
We can get rid of our false beliefs by planting a new belief like, "I deserve to feel good.” Basically to talk to ourselves the way we would talk to somebody we love. We would never talk to other people that we love the way we might talk to ourselves.
Self talk is the whole part of cultivating inner support. It’s a process to be our own best friend. A lot of how women are brought up to be paying attention to the outer world. What’s my inner world? what do I need? what’s important to me? what do I want? Sometimes women can’t answer these questions. It’s a process.