A Lifelong Journey of Self-Care: Tools, Teachings, and Resources

I’m honored to be teaching a class through the Lifelong Learning Institute at UW-GB, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. This article is available to all and also a companion text for that class and those students.

Self-care and expanding my own toolbox has been a passion of mine for decades. I began sharing my own learning with the world in 2021 when I wrote a blog series called “Me-Time: Self Care in the time of COVID” on my free blog Life Cheat Sheets. Then in 2023 I published a book called Me Time: Self-Care in a Challenging World. Presently I offer sound baths with gongs mostly in person but also free online on my YouTube Channel (@brendabrayko) where I also have a growing playlist of Self-care Tips posted weekly. Or you can see and hear short one-minute calming “Minute of Zen” videos taken around the world during my travels on my personal Instagram (@applebb09). And if you ask for it, I also have guided meditations in a series called Becoming My True Song; the text is digitally available for free or recorded for purchase.

In my book Me Time: Self-Care in a Challenging World, I share a final chart that compiles all of the tools provided within its pages. (below)

Ask Yourself

In addition to tools you already have, what 3 tools do you see yourself actively adding to your own self-care toolkit?

What tools would you like to understand more or experience for yourself? What resources already mentioned in the opening paragraph could help?

What can help you right now to create or maintain your own positive self-care routines?

Food for Thought

Living and knowing your path and purpose, your self-worth and self-love are supported by PRACTICES that cause you to pause, contemplate, or enter a state of meditation.

Emotions hold vibrational frequency: lower vibrations like anxiety, guilt and shame feel heavy and contracted, while high vibrations like joy, gratitude and love feel expanded and light. Self-care for mind, body, and spirit are what lift you out of contraction and dis-ease into expansion and health.

Your body is communicating with you! Listen to it and to yourself! It will lead the way to the best available version of yourself right now.

You take control and exercise agency when you expand your self-care toolbox through calming and focusing the mind, feeding your intellect, nourishing your body, feeding your spirit, opening your heart, and seeking nourishment in nature.

The Brain Center puts it similarly with their 6 pillars of health: quality fuel and nutrition, physical exercise, cognitive stimulation, restorative sleep, appropriate stress, and avoidance of illness, injury and toxins.

When you are in life’s flow, feeling joy and love for yourself and others, everyone in your orbit benefits!

Try These for Practice

The following sample practices are explained in my book Me Time as well as in the articles in Life Cheat Sheets which are hyper-linked.

1. Conscious Breathing for calming emotions and focusing the mind
2. Belly Breathing for good health
3. Tense and Release for relaxation and good sleep
4. Mindful Eating for calming the mind, heightening the senses, and good health
5. Binaural Beats or the sound of singing bowls, crystal bowls, or Brenda’s gongs for getting to sleep
6. Connect with nourishing people and engage in lively, interesting conversation or get support when you need it.
7. Limit your media consumption to benefit both your emotions and your psyche.
8. Nature walks / forest bathing for calming and centering emotions, grounding the body, and improving mood and health.
9. Share gratitudes with a friend or keep a gratitude journal.
10. Loving – Kindness Meditation for lifting your vibration and connecting to all in goodwill.

Printable Document available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RlH2-719JVDTPqgI53DriHVE_TqFdjixgYtKkux8azM/edit?usp=sharing