Internal Self-Care Versus External Self-Care

I love self-care. I encourage my clients to also love self-care.

I want to make a clear distinction between internal self-care and external self-care. External self-care can bring you to a place of relaxation, and that is wonderful but internal self-care opens up your heart and deepens your connection to your higher-self. Internal self-care shifts your thinking and expands the feeling of possibility.

• External Self-Care Examples:  Massage, Manicure, Pedicure
• Internal Self-care Examples: Meditation, Journaling, Walk-in Nature

When clients start working with me, I encourage them to create a radical self-care plan that will help them feel expansive and open their heart.

You may ask, why is this distinction between internal and external self-care important?

Great question. The clients I work with have followed an external authority the majority of their lives. They excelled in school, university, and the organizations that employ them, but they are burned out and feel unfulfilled. They ask me, how can I create more meaning and purpose in the work I do in the world?

Under that question are these questions: How can I connect deeper with myself and my wisdom? How can I reclaim my personal agency?

When you spend most of your life following outside rules and guidance you eventually crave for something more. I believe this craving is primal, especially for women. I want my clients to feel empowered and in deep relationship with themselves and their higher knowing.

How do you get there?

INTERNAL SELF-CARE

You start to build a daily practice of re-connecting to yourself. This could be any of the following:

• Meditation
• Journaling
• Walk in nature
• Walk near a body of water
• Laying on the grass
• Taking a bath
• Lay in a hammock

Anything that allows you to be quiet and go within, anything that allows you to connect to your soul, your spirit your inner wisdom is internal self-care

External Self-Care is divine, but when you are on your path to purpose work, the best tool you can use is internal Self-Care. Sit in inquiry and let the answers arise within. You always have access to your wisdom, you just simply need to pay attention.

I’ll end with a quote I love by Mary Oliver:

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”