4 Ideas to Add Into Your A Self-Care Routine

Do you ever wake up feeling more tired than you were before sleeping? Do you feel exhausted to the point of falling asleep right where you stand? You wish you could, but you can’t because your life is too busy.

The human body can endure a lot. It gets used to enduring and so do we, pushing on without taking a break or giving our body the kind of care it deserves as we live our busy lives.

Over time, we develop pain points. If we ignore those pain points and keep pushing on, they become permanent and result in constant pain.

By using daily self-care, we can discover and work on those pain points. This slowly releases the pent-up energy, allowing us to become more relaxed and more present in the moment. The final result is a more enduring body and a much happier outlook on life.

Here are some easy ways to start caring for yourself and still maintain a busy life.

While a quick shower works as a great way to refresh yourself, a thorough bath works on a deeper level. A bath soaks the top skin layer, letting all the dead cells fall off. This serves as a gentle cleansing and also improves your mood.

One study done in 2017 found that two 30-minute warm baths a week improve the mood of patients with clinical depression. The study says that the main effect of warm baths is increased body temperature during the night. This leads to better sleep and a “significant improvement” in depression symptoms.

Add in a bath bomb or a couple drops of essential oil to the water as well to enhance the experience. Turn off your phone, put on some soothing music, sink in, and feel all your worries evaporate into thin air.

Speaking of essential oils, they are a great way to add zest to your life. If you aren’t familiar with the term, essential oils are plant extracts that are typically combined with a carrier, such as coconut oil. They can be applied topically, ingested orally, or diffused into the air for aromatherapy. Essential oils come in all manner of scents and flavors, and their therapeutic effects bring quite a wide range of benefits.

A 2018 study looked at different essential oils and found the citrus ones the safest and most useful. Lemon oil “significantly enhanced” attention, memory, and mood of students. Orange oil massage helped with “moderate to severe” knee pain and the smell of it lowered anxiety. Lime oil can be used to “relieve common cold, flu, asthma” and could help with weight loss.

Be careful with essential oils and keep them separate from other medicine to avoid accidental use. If you rub them on your skin, stay away from direct sun contact for 12 hours to avoid itching.

A massage is one of the simplest self-nurture treatments to work on your pain points. By massaging a spot, we release the pent-up stress, reduce muscle tension, and increase circulation. A massage is free, easy, and very safe to do on your own.

One study found that infants and children who had 15-20 minutes of massage a day slept better. In adults with burn and surgical scars, massage decreased pain, cortisol levels, anxiety, depression and led to “improved appearance” of the scar. Sore muscles and back pain were also helped by a massage.

Another study looked at how massage helps improve the mood. People who had massages lasting 15-20 minutes felt more relaxed and were also more alert. When they were asked to solve some math, they did better than people who didn’t get a massage.

Both foot and back massage produced similar benefits in the study. That’s an important note if you are going to be massaging yourself since it’s much easier to give yourself a foot rub than a back rub.

If you feel the tension in your shoulders, make a C shape with your hand and gently pull the muscles between your neck and shoulder up in a slow, smooth motion. Use some lotion or massage oil for the best effect.

The best time for a massage is, you guessed it—after a nice hot bath.

Sitting too much at the computer? Hunched over a smartphone for hours on end? We’re all guilty of it.

It’s a mistake to tense up your neck, shoulders, and back for no good reason as it leads to pain. But there is a fun, easy and free solution — stretching.

Muscles and bones are tied together through tendons and stiff ligaments to keep everything in place. These ties are unusual in that they can stretch but can also shrink. If you spend too much time in the same position, the tendons and ligaments in your body can actually begin to get smaller.

The biggest danger is to try exercising without stretching because then you risk breaking a tendon. So, try slowly stretching the entire body, day by day, and then do light exercise. If all goes well and you feel no pain, you can ramp up the exercise.

There are already great ways to stretch, one of which is Qigong. This Chinese art of stretching involves slow, steady movements and gentle breathing to exercise the body and relax the mind.

A study that looked at Qigong found that it helped people lose weight, have a thinner waist, and feel better when done for three hours a week for 12 weeks.

We’re not meant to feel exhausted to the point of falling over, but we do because of our busy lives. We are constantly on high alert and can’t get some “me time” away from worries and chores.

Even when we fall asleep, we do it late at night holding fast to a smartphone, causing us to wake up and respond to messages half asleep.

Caring for your body and mind means finding small steps you can take daily and turning them into a routine.

For example, you can read a book in bed instead of playing with your phone to guarantee yourself a great night’s rest.

Once you have a steady routine of caring for yourself, you will find yourself more alert, more relaxed, and less anxious. Now that’s living life like it should be lived!