I’m honored to be teaching a class through the Lifelong Learning Institute at UW-GB again this year. 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.
Your Life is communicating with you your life’s theme! If you aren’t feeling 100% in a positive flow of life, look for your pattern, notice any harm it brings, and then identify the underlying belief that is holding you in that pattern.
Give yourself permission to change, grow, and become the new version of you.
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 with a sense of your own purpose, you and everyone in your orbit benefits!
Therefore, it is not selfish to take care of yourself.
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.
- First thing in the morning try one! (how you begin your day sets the tone)
- Awake to a pause (three breaths).
- Name three things you are grateful for.
- Get grounded.
- Avoid a screen of any kind (phone/tv/computer)
- Conscious Breathing for calming emotions and focusing the mind
- Belly Breathing for good health
- Tense and Release for relaxation and good sleep
- Mindful Eating for calming the mind, heightening the senses, and good health
- Binaural Beats or the sound of singing bowls, crystal bowls, or Brenda’s gongs for getting to sleep
- Get Grounded with water, sand, or grass surfaces. Be sure to breathe and enter your full awareness.
- Connect with nourishing people and engage in lively, interesting conversation or get support when you need it.
- Limit your media consumption to benefit both your emotions and your psyche.
- Nature walks / forest bathing for calming and centering emotions, grounding the body, and improving mood and health.
- Share gratitudes with a friend or keep a gratitude journal.
- Loving – Kindness Meditation for lifting your vibration and connecting to all in goodwill.
- Set an Intention
Setting an Intention
High powered formula: 1. Connect to heart and breath 2. Word your intention using the present tense (not future) so that you are aligning to WHAT IS 3. Word the intention so that you and everyone around you benefits or so that it unfolds with ease, or that you are supported in its unfolding from those forces and entities and people that can best support you.
Example 1: I am now CHOOSING to RELEASE past trauma FOR MY GOOD AND THE GOOD OF ALL.
Example 2: I am ALLOWING myself to FORGIVE myself and others and I ask for SUPPORT from my Spirit Team/God/Universe/The Divine.
Example 3: I GIVE MYSELF PERMISSION to CHANGE and GROW into the most healthy and balanced version of myself. I ask for this to unfold WITH EASE and GRACE.
Printable 2026 Handout with links available here as a Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JW6o26tws3C5V4oftDEuI0EVWEsbT3_j_Gr4pSnwN_4/edit?usp=sharing
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