The Art of True Self-Care

True Self-Care is connecting with yourself and finding pleasure in it.

Self-care is a very personal experience. What the media presents doesn’t work for everybody.

Self-care is deeper than just taking care of the skin, doing exercise, or reading a book. It’s much deeper than that. Those are small elements that can help with self-care if you truly experience pleasure in them.

Let’s go back to the basics. The word pleasure is usually related to “sex”, but it’s not. Pleasure is an exquisite word that is used to experience your senses to experience life beautifully.

True self-care is connecting with your unique self and making use of the senses in what you love.

For example: I find it feminine to play tennis. To me, it’s a sensual sport to practice for girls and ladies of all ages. I find it a pleasure getting dressed before going to the tennis court. I find it relaxing to hit the ball with the rack and hear the hollow sound it produces. I know that tennis works for me on deep levels that touch my senses and make me feel powerful in my skin.

I connect myself and my personality through tennis and so the connection I make with it brings me a unique set of feelings about myself and my womanhood. Tennis is not a sport that is played only by women, but it calms me down and after I have played, my feminine side feels stronger because feminity means being calm. When that happens, I feel sensual when combining my hobby and the senses. I am aware of what it is and the effect that holds for me when I choose to take care of myself by playing tennis.

There was a time in my life when I was doing “self-care” and the activities I was performing were not pleasurable to me and they brought me anxiety because deep down I knew that didn’t align with who I was or that I didn’t care about at that moment. I didn’t see the effects of “self-care” on me even if they were self-care habits to other people. I thought it was a waste of time.

I realized there was more to self-care.

True self-care comes when you are connecting with yourself. For some people it could be praying, for others, it may be journaling, horse riding, or meditating.

Hobbies are self-care. Combine the senses with your hobby and you are going to become full of vitality on the outside, and strong with a beautiful character on the inside. Your mind is also involved because you are combining the senses.

When you’re a mother, you feel there is no time for you anymore. You may have stopped feeling sensual, but that is the result of not taking care of yourself. While there are times in life when you have to go through some hard times, and you may not have the time, you do have the time, it’s just at the moment you can’t see it because you are caught up with your demanding life circumstances.

You will only connect with yourself when feeling the sensory details and enjoying them, that is when self-care happens because it works out all your being and your cells rejuvenate.

Going back to the mother example, you take care of your kids, your husband, your work, your home, your parents, etc.

But are you taking care of yourself?

If you used to like sitting on the couch and watching tango dancing videos, and the dancing couples you see on the TV make you want to pursue some lessons, or maybe you forget everything while watching the sensational movements that make you smile and daydream, you are taking care of yourself there. And if you connect the senses, you are achieving another level of self-care.

When you connect with yourself, you build a relationship with yourself. That is the ultimate and only self-care.

As I mentioned before, some people connect with themselves through prayer. They build a strong relationship with God and themselves, and they show up in life with a powerful attitude, feeling joyful, and grateful to be able to taste the food at the dinner table.

How do you connect with yourself and your senses? Do you have a strong, enough relationship with yourself that if no one else wanted to be with you, you would be perfectly happy with you loving yourself?

To make your restoration possible, you will need to be able to relax — physically and mentally. Tension is one of the main barriers to not discovering or taking care of ourselves. When you feel relaxed, you will be able to go inward more deeply.

It’s all a matter of habit. Tell yourself that you will put aside ten minutes each day to relax to get the message through your subconscious.

Steps to Self-Care

Make it a goal: Take time to observe yourself, and take some time to sit still to write down a list. You are going to rediscover yourself now.

• Make it a goal to discover what it’s that something that brings that connection with yourself. Is it prayer, meditation, a hobby, a TV show, a dish that you adore, making coffee, the ritual of making tea, taking a long shower, and enjoying being aware of the water touching your skin? Find out what was it for you in the past, or find out what is something that will bring you a genuine and strong connection with yourself in your present life.
• Next, make it a goal to discover what are the senses that you feel attracted to explore the most and the ones that make your connection with yourself more enjoyable and genuine. Please Take a peek below to revisit the delightful power of the senses and write it down on your list of which senses you are most likely to experience the best. Once you figure out which sense you are compelled to incorporate and explore in your daily routines, hobbies, or when you connect with yourself, you will find it transformative.

The Senses

• Smell —

Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived. The odors of fruits we have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away. — Helen Keller

• Touch —

Touch is the oldest sense, and the most urgent. Any first-time touch or change in touch sends the brain into a flurry of activity- Helen Keller

Imagine the cush of velvet or the way sandpaper grates. Compare a cashmere sweater with a boiled-wool jacket. Sense a gentle stroke or a violent slap. Developing awareness and incorporating a sense of touch adds another rich layer to [your life] — Laura Deutch

• Sight —

Think of sight as a visual description. Sight is one of the most elegant senses to explore.

A rubber plantation in India, white sap dripping down smooth tree trunks, rows of silent sentries in the shadowed woods. A childhood bedroom with quilted red corduroy bedspreads, and wallpaper patterned with pink and red carnations. A father’s white Ford Fairlane with rocket-like tail fins, seats covered in red Naugahyde. — Laura Deutch

• Sound —

Sound is a delightful sense to pay attention to, especially when you’re in your favorite places or listening to your beloved music where the sound brings the best of you.

In the villages of Bali, I listened to the gamelan, the cymbals, and the bells. On a prairie in Nebraska, I heard a train chug by, its plaintive whistle whoo-hoo wailing. Near the track, cows mooed and moaned. In a nursery, a baby cooed. The sounds of nature soothe me — from waves crashing on the rocky coast to wind soughing through the trees. The sounds of the city assault me — I clap my hands to my ears as a fire engine passes, its high-pitched siren screaming. On the sixth floor of a New York City apartment building, I cringe under the covers when the predawn garbage trucks rattle cans and grind their grist. — Laura Deutch

• Taste —

Taste is one of the most sensual and pleasurable of the senses.

Eating consciously centers us in the moment and enhances our daily lives with the sensual pleasures of taste sensations and textures. The five basic tastes — sweet, bitter, sour, salty, umami. Sweetness, which most people find pleasurable, is produced by the presence of sugars. Bitterness, sometimes perceived as sharp is found in drinks like coffee. Sourness is the taste that detects acidity, as vinegar. Saltiness is produced primarily by the presence of sodium ions. Umami refers to a savory, pungent, meaty taste like cheese, soy sauce, and many Asian foods. — Laura Deutch

Now that you have revisited the senses, take ten minutes to relax, and when the time comes, you will discover what senses you’re more likely to enjoy in your days and that will be your primary sense of pleasure.

when you connect with yourself and the senses, you will appreciate your body, and your body is a temple. So when you respect and value your body, you are not easily blown away by everyday situations. Your overall life prospers. True self-care is to connect with yourself and learn the art of pleasure through the senses from a loving standpoint — physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. That is when true self-care and restoration happen.

The combination of connecting with yourself and the senses will promote your ideal person naturally because experiencing your senses has the power to bring self-esteem since you will feel sensual in your skin no matter the age or shape because you appreciate your humanity and connecting with yourself will bring knowledge of how valuable you’re as the way you are right now — simply because you are a human.

Remember self-care is connecting with your unique self and making use of the senses in what you love. When you connect with yourself, you build a relationship with yourself — that is the ultimate and only self-care. True self-care is to connect with yourself and learn the art of pleasure through the senses from a loving standpoint — physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. That is when true self-care and restoration happen.