The unbridled pace that we impose on ourselves and the numerous shoulds and internal and external demands that restrict us make us We often forget our self-care on a daily basis.

Self-care is listening to yourself from the certainty that Your nature is to be well and that being well is what you deserve. This type of well-being involves respecting your own needs to allow your body to regain its ability to self-regulate.

It is about following our impulses more to do what the body asks of us, what we like, rather than what is imposed or what we are supposed to like, although today’s society is organized in a way that makes us addicted to the opposite.

Return to connect with the need to take care of ourselves It is essential to guarantee our good mental and physical health. How to achieve this reconnection with personal care? We give you the keys to awaken your full potential.

1.Listen to us again

The most important thing is to strengthen the invisible thread that keeps us in communication with ourselves, with our bodily sensations and most genuine needs. Sometimes the distance we experience from the body is such that We are unable to identify the fatigue that overwhelms us, the hunger and even the small pains…

The head takes up so much space that the sensations are buried, as if anesthetized.

And even more so at this time when the fear of getting sick favors this distance perhaps as a defense mechanism. but only By reconnecting with sensations we can identify what can give us satisfaction at each moment, what we need to feel good.

2. Stop, rest and play

It is the body that lives in the present, and not the mind. Therefore, to keep this communication with our interior alive, We need to return to the here and now, and slow down the pace.

If you observe the natural rhythm of any other living being – your cat, your dog, etc. –, You will see that everyone takes time to stop and rest, even to play. In fact, they spend more time sleeping and playing than doing any other activity. How many times a day do you give yourself permission not to do things? And to play?

3. Give yourself love

Allow us this time to stop and listen to each other It depends on the amount of love we can give to ourselves. Without that love, self-abuse in the form of self-demand, unkind internal dialogue, or feelings of guilt can be constant.

It’s about understanding that we deserve to be well, and that what we do not give ourselves, neither can others give us. In fact, if you give it to yourself, you will stop demanding it from them.

Loving oneself would be a first condition to be able to love those around us.

However, many people consider self-esteem and self-care as a form of narcism.

But, just like on airplanes in case of emergency, if the oxygen masks fall, we are invited to put on our own first and only then dedicate ourselves to helping others. We must remember that if we lack oxygen, we can do nothing for others.

4. Don’t blame yourself or demand too much of yourself

However, it is easy to get lost outside. The women, because They tend to care more about others than themselves. and men, because they are more concerned with external success than with their needs. The many centuries of Judeo-Christian culture have led women to blame themselves when they prioritize themselves. Above all, they have taught us to sacrifice ourselves.

Our culture places more value on duty than on pleasure and love.

Selfishness has a bad press, to the point that taking care of ourselves ends up meaning more doses of self-demand to achieve new achievements: for example, in order to achieve a more attractive body we force ourselves to exercise or follow a diet to lose weight. We take care of ourselves by making strict efforts. Again we do it from the external «should».

5. Think about the needs that we must cover

As living beings, we depend on an environment and it must satisfy our needs, needs that we can identify through physical sensations. When the stomach growls it is because we are hungry.

When we yawn, we need to sleep. These needs range from the most basic, such as physiological needs (sleeping, eating, drinking, having sexual relations, etc.), to the highest and spiritual needs such as self-realization, including the needs for security, affection and recognition.

Today, paradoxically, Physiological needs are the ones that we are covering the worst: We sleep less than ever in history, sleep disorders are common and we eat quickly and poorly. Sex doesn’t go very well either. It is the last thing after all the obligations. We do not have self-care in the most basic integrated into day-to-day life, which in turn prevents us from satisfying our highest needs, since the basic ones constitute the ground on which the rest rest.

6. Remember that we are nature

This lack of contact with our physiological needs is explained, to a large extent, by the fact that we live far from nature, in spaces such as cities that prevent us from perceiving the changes in light that the hours of the day and the seasons of the year entail and that separate us from a rhythm and cycles in accordance with nature.

This way of living disconnected from nature installs us in that world of ideas and «how it should be.»

It disconnects us from our body and leads us to stop respecting its rhythms. For the first time in the history of humanity, in 2020, the mass created by man exceeded that of nature. That is to say, it seems that it will be increasingly difficult to recover this contact with our body, with our origin, and therefore attend to our most basic needs.

7. Move more to reconnect

Living in cities also prevents us from meeting another important primary need: movement. The city implies greater use of the car and living in small, closed spaces. However, We are made to move continuously.

Performing physical activity regenerates us internally and energizes us.

Pediatrician Emmi Pikler points out, for example, the importance of free movement in children’s development.

In adults, Exercising makes it easier to release fears and tensions. Moving also allows us to develop organismic wisdom, that is, connecting with the physical sensations that tell us what feels good to us and what doesn’t. Movement generates internal strength to change things and transform what we don’t like. For all these reasons, moving is self-care.

8. Take care of your relationship with others

Another element of self-care is contact with others. Relationships help us feel good about ourselves. We need hugs, intimacy and belonging, because it gives us security. We are social animals that regulate ourselves through others.

Our autonomic nervous system is designed to empathize and feel compassion, to read in the faces of those around us those signs that indicate danger or the opposite. When these signals awaken security in us, pleasure and happiness appear, while insecurity puts us on alert and makes us feel unhappy, because it is in a safe environment in which we can feel free to play, to be spontaneous, to be calm and enjoy.

9. Feel in harmony

The psychologist Abraham Maslow defines the summit experiences as those in which the person feels in complete harmony with themselves and with what surrounds them and therefore experiences a deep state of well-being. In this state, the person is one with the world.

We could consider that it is the moment in which that person feels all their needs are satisfied, including those for self-realization. One is more in touch than at any other time with the face of «God» on earth. But what do we need to foster those experiences, that way of feeling?

You can make a list of all the resources that facilitate the feeling of fulfillment from all those experiences of happiness that you can remember. All these resources, which are already in you, constitute one of your main inner potentials to develop self-care.

10. Exercise to know how to take care of ourselves

We propose an experiment to connect with this feeling of fullness in your life everyday life and know what could make it easier.

Close your eyes and relive an experience of well-being. Remember a time in your life when you felt particularly good, a moment in which you felt very happy. If you can, remember the best moment of your life or one of the best. Observe your body

• What were the bodily sensations you had thanks to that experience?
• What was your breathing like? In what part of your body did you feel pleasure or well-being: in your legs, in your chest…?
• What conditions led to those sensations? Freedom? The lightness? The recognition? The movement? Laugh, sing, share, play…?

Allow yourself to feel it and pay special attention to what changes in your body when you enter this state.