Self-care: K is for…

 is for kindness

I’ve undertaking this self-care abecedarium as a way to look at the practices that I find helpful and think you might want to explore as well.

But let’s step back just a little, because I’d actually like to talk about what self-care is. 

What is it really?  It’s love.   It’s accepting who you are and then making sure that your you-ness can shine forth as brightly as possible.   So your self-care practice is really looking for all the knots, all the kinks, all the ways you’ve blocked the flow, held yourself back, compromised your energy and spirit and gently massaging those kinks out.  So you can flow.  So you can shine.

There’s such an air of kindness about self-care when we view it this way.  We recognize our soul beauty and we just want to be kind to ourselves, to love ourselves, to simply align ourselves with the fullness of our being.

There’s a sense of self-care as being self-responsibility too.  We are all sovereign beings and no one else is responsible for the creation of our life except us.  We’re responsible for our energy, our thoughts, our beliefs, our actions, our being-ness.   We have no choice but to care for ourselves, although how we show up for that and our opinions about it line the continuum. 

But I’m suggesting what if we chose to show ourselves only love?  To choose to love ourselves every single time.  In every moment?  Wouldn’t that shift everything?  Wouldn’t that make it easy to know your body was fatigued and so getting that extra couple of hours of sleep was the loving response you wanted to create? 

What if we re-defined self-care as irrevocable kindness to ourselves?  What if every single response to yourself was layered in kindness?  How different would your life be?

I like checking out various versions of the lovingkindness metta prayer, and here’s a version I discovered today.   As the prayer is being sung, someone is writing it out in kanji brush painting and when finished signs it with a chop.  Since yesterday I mentioned a chop I had made, I thought this was a lovely synchronicity.

Here’s what I wish for all of us as we wrap ourselves in kindness:

Are you treating yourself with kindness?  How fun would it be to shower yourself with random acts of kindness?  What do you imagine that might look like?   Have any favorite video versions of a lovingkindness metta prayer you’d like to share?  What’s one thing you’d like to shift in how you care for your one precious self?  Do tell – you know I love to hear.