Holistic Self-Care Tips
For women, self-care is beyond important to keep us healthy, positive, and happy. Being your own therapist emotionally, physically and spiritually gives a sense of freedom and empowerment as well. So why do we tend to leave ourselves unattended?.
While we as women are preoccupied giving to others, we often forget that we deserve unconditional care and affection.
Here we offer some simple self-care tips to include in your daily rituals including two of my own traditional Vietnamese treatments I grew up with, which could be interchangeable from the comforts of your home or on the road travelling.
In most Vietnamese households, the mother or grandmother usually performs the treatments. Vietnamese culture believes in eliminating the “wind”, as catching the flu refers to ‘catching the wind’ in Vietnam.
Scrapping - Cạo Gió
Gua Sha in Chinese, scraping is yet another remarkable healing technique that originates from China, in Vietnamese it is called cạo gió, ‘to scrape wind’. Gua Sha Scraping regulates the flow of both the blood circulatory and lymphatic systems that prevent the accumulation of toxins and extra fluids. It releases sinuses and cold fevers without the need for factory-manufactured medicine. Furthermore, from a beauty standpoint, face scraping with a jade tool regulates body fluid, uplifts the skin, and contours the jawline and cheekbones reducing puffiness.
Glass Cupping - Uốn Nắn
Cupping is a crucial holistic healthcare technique that has been passed down for thousands of years and used prominently in the Vietnamese community by traditional acupuncturists on areas of blocked energy to rejuvenate internal organs and meridians. Other benefits include:
Treats Common Cold: Cupping aids in getting rid of toxins that are hampering your immune system, which prevents it from fighting off bacteria and viruses such as the common cold.
Offers Better Mobility: Scraping is more effective than heat packs in treating muscle stiffness. The technique enables patients to extend, flex and bend their lower back more easily.
Treats Stomach Stress: When women are under stress, the first thing that their bodies will negatively react to it is their digestive system causing them to feel bloated, constipated and develop fat around their waist. Cupping helps ease the tension in their digestive tract to help them relax better. It can relieve them of several stomach issues such as gastritis, constipation, chronic stomach pain, and diarrhoea.
Tongue Scraping
A pivotal addition to your oral health routine is a technique known as tongue scraping. It’s a fast and efficient way to get rid of extra particles that contribute to bad breath from the surface of our tongues. This is achieved by using a slightly rounded tiny tool that’s made of metal or plastic. Although it isn’t enough to supplement the timeless method of tooth brushing, the benefits that come with tongue scraping are worth including into our daily morning and evening routine.
Several amazing reasons why tongue scraping is crucial include:
It improves our sense of taste: Research reveals that using a tongue scraper twice a day can improve our sense of taste.
Improves our tongue’s appearance: Daily tongue scraping removes the excess build-up of food debris.
Removes bacteria: Tongue scraping twice a day also removes bacteria that cause tooth decay and bad breath.
Drinking Lemon Water
Drinking warm water with lemon juice in the morning maintains the pH balance of the body and as a detoxifying agent. Staying hydrated during travel is imperative; adding lemon to water not only flavours water, it also provides electrolytes to the body that reduces jet lag.
Lemons are vital for consumption as they are high in vitamins, fibre, and several other plant compounds. The nutrients within lemons are responsible for a variety of other health benefits like digestive health, weight control, and heart health.
Other studies revealed that lemon water prevents kidney stones, fights off anaemia, reduces the risk of several cancers, improves digestive health, and more.
Meditation
By now, everyone is aware of the powers of meditation when it comes to alleviating the amount of stress that we accumulate daily. However, meditation also comes in handy while we’re traveling as well, especially when we are faced with many high anxiety expectations of travel, flying, delays, bad weather and lost baggage are among many others.
Besides reducing stress and developing concentration, meditation also helps people develop a positive mood and outlook on life, healthy sleep patterns, better pain tolerance, and self-discipline. Some meditation techniques even help us develop a better understanding of ourselves so that we can grow into the best version of ourselves.
The late Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, revered around the world for his pioneering teachings on mindfulness, explains that the concept of:
“any action in our daily life -including walking, eating, brushing our teeth, or doing the dishes - can become joyful, relaxed and meaningful. It’s a revolutionary approach that brings peace, clarity and insight”.
Breathing
Some people feel nervous, fearful or anxious when visiting other parts of the world, it happens to the best of us. One of the best ways to ease those tensions is by practicing breathing exercises. Some of these you can practice during your travels are:
Square Breathing
This is a handy breathing technique that reduces stress and improves our mood when anxiety levels are through the roof. The technique is called square breathing because there are four parts to this. Inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, then exhale four counts and then hold for four counts. Scroll down to read our guest contributor; Sophia’s notes on breathing, and an alternative four count breathing technique.
Ujjayi Breathing
This is an excellent breathing method when you wish to release tension in places you feel tight and strained. Ujjayi breathing engages our diaphragm every time we inhale and exhale, which helps increase our breath and the amount of oxygen that enters our bodies. Close your lips, inhale from the nose, and then exhale from the back of your throat.
Om Breathing
The common yoga technique of om breathing is when breathing is done by saying the word “Om.” This word is made of three different sounds “A-U-M” that focuses on various parts of our body. The ‘a’ sound calms our bodies from the waist to the feet. The ‘u’ sounds relax the body from the neck to the waist. And the ‘m’ sound is calming.
Sophia Mirto - Yoga Teacher and wellness facilitator for our upcoming July Retreat - shares her favourite tool for supporting your mental health during quarantine.
No matter where we are in the world, supporting our mental health is more important than ever.
Elevated heart rate, short tight breaths, tight muscles, uncomfortable feelings in your chest or gut - these are physical indicators that you’re stressed out. Monkey mind, unproductive thoughts, rising anxiety or feelings of sadness and depression - these are also indications of stress.
The physical and mental manifestation of stress is your body’s way of communicating perceived danger in your environment. These feelings and thoughts are not fun, but they exist for an important reason. When we notice the manifestation of stress in our bodies and minds, we have an opportunity to support ourselves and take back the wheel.
The biggest hurdle to “doing self-care” is often the cost of entry - aka how difficult is it to actually do the thing that meets your needs (yoga, nature, privacy, nap, etc). It’s easy to get distracted and derailed on the way to self-care.
I suggest using one simple tool when you notice the manifestation of stress in your body or mind.
The respiratory system (breathing), cardiovascular system (blood), endocrine system (hormones), gastrointestinal system (stomach, bowls), and nervous system (fight or flight, feelings of fear or panic) all work together when you experience outside stress. When you experience outside stress, these systems of your body start a cascade that internalises the stress.
Why? Your body is trying to keep you alive! These systems are prepping your body for fight-flight-freeze, to help you escape the tiger, forest fire, etc. Fight-flight-freeze is a good tool for immediate, active danger. But so much of our daily stressors are passive and ongoing.
Our bodies were not created for a 21st century which is filled with constant stimulation, big-cities and 24-hour-news environment. These systems that evolved millions of years ago don’t have the perfect tools for the kind of relentless external stimulation that we experience in our modern lives.
We need to control our bodies response to external stimuli to prevent this cascade from “making a mountain out of a molehill” and making our experience more stressful. The fastest way to interrupt the cascade is to take a deep breath. Breathing deeply and consciously supplies your body with extra oxygen. Because all the systems of our body are connected, more oxygen = slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, slowing of the production of hormones like cortisol (commonly known as the “stress chemical”), and relaxed muscles, etc.
Consciously slowing our breath also helps our mind focus on a tangible, controllable part of our inner experience, feelings of security and self-determination. Let’s take a breath together right now!
All the way down to your belly, 4 counts inhale:
Inhale: 1 — 2 — 3 — 4
Exhale: 1 — 2 — 3 — 4
Inhale: 1 — 2 — 3 — 4
Exhale: 1 — 2 — 3 — 4
Over the next few days and weeks, take that 4 count breath. Easier said than done right? But the more you practice, the more you’ll remember this tool when you need it.
For more information on the effects of stress on your body, Sophia recommends this article from the American Psychological Association. Also you can follow Sophia on her IG account @technicoloryoga.