Feeling Good: My Essential Self-Care Rituals

Centering self-care, healing & leisure

Our modern world is a chaotic, relentless and a messy place. In recent years, it seems the madness has only accelerated — from the pandemic, to natural disasters, to countries falling apart, it’s all incredibly overwhelming.

Especially for those of us with sensitive souls who feel deeply and tend to have an empathetic nature. Because we’re humans living in the galactic + interdimensional ghetto, we also deal with our own personal, messy lives which only adds to the overall mayhem. Heavy much?

Despite this all sounding very doom and gloom — or maybe just realistic AF? — the truth is that nobody promised us living would be free of suffering. While experiencing emotional pain may not be our fault, the responsibility falls on us to make sense of it all and to ideally use these experiences to transform into a better person.

If you’re on a journey of inner growth, healing and self-actualization like I am, I recommend these 7 rituals which have become non-negotiable to prioritize my wellbeing.

1 | HEALING MODALITIES

If you’ve ever considered going to therapy, you probably should. I started seeing a therapist for the first time earlier this year and my only regret is that I didn’t go earlier — like years ago. Learn from my mistake and start your therapy journey — which helps build so much self-awareness — before shit hits the fan. Adopt a more preventive approach to your mental health!

Alongside consistent therapy sessions, I also love doing emotional work. Well, to be frank, I don’t necessarily love the intense process of *fully* feeling difficult emotions so much as the breakthroughs that happen as a result of feeling all my feels in the safe space — and with the guidance of — my magical bruja creates (who specializes in possibility coaching).

Another healing modality that works for me is reiki which is energetic work. While living in Playa del Carmen I found a variation that I loved which was combining magnet therapy with reiki.

2 | MASSAGES

We know from the popular book The Body Keeps the Score that stress, trauma and emotional pain is stored in the body so what better way to avoid emotions getting stuck in our physical body and causing long-term ailments than by getting massages? Lately, I’ve been getting a massage every other week but ideally, I’d get one weekly. #treatyourself

3 | MONTHLY MOON CEREMONIES

I host monthly moon circles as part of the programming for the Life of Leisure Society community and they are beautiful opportunities to be your raw, real and vulnerable self in a soothing, safe space. Working with moon energy is a great way to develop — or strengthen — your journaling practice as you can engage in moon rituals every two weeks, or every month on the full moon.

4 | SILENCING NOTIFICATIONS

Honestly, silencing most of my phone notifications has significantly increased my quality of life and my attention span. As a result, I am able to do focused work without interruptions. I go as far as keeping my phone on silent and no vibration 95% of the time. The only notifications that I allow are text-message-based ones like Whatsapp, Messenger and so on. I will make exceptions and temporarily enable dating apps here and there because a girl wants to go on a date sometimes!

5 | HONORING STANDARDS + BOUNDARIES

A standard is something you set for yourself and you enforce. A boundary is a personal limit signaling what you will accept or engage in. Both of these things serve to attract better-quality people and to protect you. Ideally, we should all set clear standards and boundaries then communicate them in a loving way to those close to us so they can honor them. But remember, standards and boundaries are as much for others as they are for ourselves.

6 | EMBRACING EMOTIONAL SPIRALS

Sometimes I wonder if crying as often as I do is “normal”… But my therapist reassured me that crying is a very healthy mechanism for expressing and releasing our emotions. And the more you feel, the more emotions you’re gonna have to process. So I cry often — and with abandon! I don’t always love the process of spiraling but afterward, I feel lighter and clearer so I’ve learned to embrace my myriad existential crisis as part of my self-actualizing journey.

7 | FEEL GOOD FOLDER

We all have days when we feel blue, or maybe if we deal with depression, we get super low and sad. And that’s okay! The beautiful and sometimes frustrating part of the human condition is that we have so many feelings. I’ve learned from my therapist that rather than get annoyed about all the feelings that can arise in a day, to view them as the weather — feelings come and go. And they tend to pass faster if we actually feel them fully. So if you’re sad, honor that sadness but when you’re ready to move on to a lighter state, consider making a “feel-good folder” on your computer. I keep screenshots of nice + encouraging things friends and strangers have said to me (via social media or email) in a folder on Google Drive. I revisit often but especially when I feel sad.

BONUS: WORRYING APPOINTMENTS

I have been meaning to try this out. Essentially, you block a time on your calendar maybe once a week or less if you don’t deal with excessive worrying. The point of the appointment is to write out everything on your mind that is worrying or stressing you out. The exercise doesn’t promise to solve your problems but it does lessen the mental load of carrying these heavy thoughts around by externalizing them onto paper or a digital document.

Hopefully, you are inspired to adopt some of these feel-good rituals into your lifestyle!