Spring into Spring
Body Audit NZ is excited to share our first monthly blog. We have chosen to blog to stay connected and provide you with focus, direction and support between your body scans. We hope this support will help you to reach your goals and see the results you want at your next scan.
After a cold winter, you’re through to the other side; spring has arrived! The sun’s coming out, the weather’s warming up and the nights are drawing out. It’s an exciting and invigorating time of the year with the new blooms of beautiful blossoms and daffodils and lambs being born! Spring is a season associated with rejuvenation, renewal, rebirth and regrowth - a perfect time to mirror what’s going on in nature in your own life and body.
The New Year has historically been the time for setting new goals and resolutions. However, now seems like the perfect time to get started, don’t you think?
In what ways would you like to feel renewed and revitalised this spring? Would you like to feel less stressed, sleep better, or fit that pair of jeans again? Practicing self-care is one way to ensure you are on the road to achieving your goals.
Self-care is greatly overlooked as a “nice to have”. It’s not something we consciously build time for in our busy schedules, but we absolutely need to. Practising regular self-care will change the way you show up to the world every day for the better. Just like lambs in spring time, when they are happy, fed, cared for by their mothers and have access to good nutrition, they spring and bounce around the paddocks. When you take care of yourself, you feel good, genuinely good, and are less likely to let external factors lead you to polishing off that packet of chocolate biscuits. When your self-care is on point, you open the possibility to unlock your highest potential.
Scheduling and building time into your busy schedule for self-care is most likely the biggest barrier you face to making this happen. Something else always seems to take president, like the washing, the vacuuming, fixing the shelves in the garage or mowing the lawns. All important things, of course, but it’s highly questionable that they are more important than influencing the way you show up now, tomorrow, this week, and highly likely they would get done more efficiently if you were effectively practising self-care. The key is to stand up to the misconception that you could be doing something more productive than self-care.
Self-care is something that nourishes your body in a way where you feel revitalised thinking about it, during it and afterwards. We all have different versions of self-care, and nobody can tell you what it means for you. You have to work it out for yourself. What comes to mind when you hear the words self-care?
Take your first step now and create a personalised self-care menu for the first month of spring! Take out a pen and paper and list your top five self-care practices. Put your menu somewhere you will see it daily, such as on your bathroom mirror. Each time you see your menu, you will be reminded to care for yourself. Order yourself at least one self-care activity from your menu daily/ weekly this month as it suits your schedule and see how it feels!
Self-care doesn’t have to be expensive. To get you started and get you thinking self-care, check out the following ideas and see if there are any that would suit you?
• Move your body to support your physical health
• Rise a little earlier for some quiet time before your busy day begins
• Sit down and read a good book for a while
• Try a new recipe
• Watch an old movie, “an oldie but a goodie”
• Ask your significant other to take the kids out for an hour or so
• Book yourself a massage
• Create a gratitude journal
• Enjoy some colouring in an adult colouring book
• Go for a walk in nature
• Head to bed early
• Switch off the box and listen to some tunes
• Take a relaxing bubble bath with a lit candle
• Schedule some quality time with your children
• Try yoga
• Try saying “no” when it doesn’t serve you to say “yes”
What are you having on your self-care menu this September?
Happy Spring everybody!
The team at Body Audit NZ