All Care Plus New

(A.S.H.A) Advocating Self Health Awareness

Why Advocate for Self-Care?

  • Self-Care defined: Essentially, self-care is actively monitoring physical, mental, emotional and social areas of self-health to achieve a high quality of life. The result reveals itself by offering a more relaxed, more focused, more enjoyable, and more sociable personal lifestyle which in turn benefits work and responsibilities.

Self-Care Concepts

  • “An empty lantern provides no light. Self-care is the fuel that allows your light to shine brightly.” Buddhist follower
  • Did you think you were doing a good job, taking care of yourself?

My Story

  • I did too. Having a busy schedule can make taking care of your -self in the way you wish, hard and difficult to manage. From personal experience I can relate but know that if you don’t the consequences can be life threatening. After a short period, you will become battered from exhaustion and daily activities will become a mental drain to the point where it’s hard to care about anything or anyone.
  • Trust me, I know.
  • A few years ago, I worked day and night trying to satisfy my quest to be financially stable. I routinely worked a regular seventy-five-hour week. I enjoyed working with my clients and colleagues, and felt I was doing well.
  • But I had no life.
  • I found it more and more difficult to take care of myself. My activities surrounded around meeting goals, meeting expectations of others, being fully available for others while feeling less aware of how these choices affected my wellbeing. My ability to high tolerate self-pain just to manage all the deals I had in play – but at the expense of being able to satisfy my needs as a human being.
  • It was time to change. I put my clients on hold and spent the next two years learning about what I needed to do to live a normal life. I spent those years with friends associated with Buddha and my loving father who was familiar with the challenges I faced.
  • I learned how to take care of the things I needed. My self-care took first priority and I saved time to meditate, time to reflect, time to eat the right foods and time to sleep a full night. I became complete again and felt more capable to handle complications.
  • It’s sounds like a happy ending, right?
  • Wrong. After about a year, I found myself wrapped up in so many self-help activities I was again lost in doing so much for others I has dismantled the nicely formed schedule I enjoyed and was self-destructing once again.
  • How could this reoccur?
  • It’s no wonder that bad habits are hard to drop, even when they are wrapped up in a different image. Again I took a break but this time no so long and with greater intensity. Since then which is now about six years, I have settled down with my new wife and our growing family. Life has its rewards but it took refocusing on self-care needs to realize ways to share without losing focusing on my own needs to enjoy a high quality of life.

Self-Care Isn’t a One-Time Deal

  • The strep throat was a harsh reminder that self-care isn’t something you do once and tick off the list.
  • It’s the constant repetition of many tiny habits, which together soothe you and make sure you’re at your optimum—emotionally, physically, and mentally.
  • The best way to do this is to implement tiny self-care habits every day. To regularly include in your life a little bit of love and attention for your own body, mind, and soul.
  • The following ideas are tiny self-care activities you can fit into a short amount of time, usually with little cost.
  • Pick one from each category, and include them in your life this week.

Self-Care Concepts for the Mind

  • Start a compliments file. Document the great things people say about you to read later.
  • Unplug for an hour. Switch everything to airplane mode and free yourself from social media and email.
  • Change up the way you make decisions. Decide something with your heart if you usually use your head. Or if you tend to go with your heart, decide with your head.
  • Take another route to work. Mixing up your routine in small ways creates new neural pathways in the brain to keep it healthy.
  • Pay complete attention to something you usually do on autopilot, perhaps brushing your teeth, driving, eating, or performing your morning routine.
  • Punctuate your day with a mini-meditation with one minute of awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations; one minute of focused attention on breathing; and one minute of awareness of the body as a whole.
  • Be selfish. Do one thing today just because it makes you happy.

Self-Care Concepts for the Body

  • Make one small change to your diet for the week. Drink an extra glass of water each day, or have an extra portion of veggies each meal.
  • Give your body ten minutes of mindful attention. Use the body scan technique to check in with each part of your body.
  • Oxygenate by taking three deep breaths. Breathe into your abdomen, and let the air puff out your stomach and chest.
  • Be still. Sit somewhere green, and be quiet for a few minutes.
  • Inhale an upbeat smell. Try peppermint to suppress food cravings and boost mood and motivation.
  • Take a quick nap. Ten to twenty minutes can reduce your sleep debt and leave you ready for action.

Self-Care Concepts for the Soul

  • Check in with your emotions. Sit quietly and just name without judgment what you’re feeling.
  • Write out your thoughts. Go for fifteen minutes on anything bothering you. Then let it go as you burn or bin the paper.
  • Have a self-date. Spend an hour alone doing something that nourishes you (reading, your hobby, visiting a museum or gallery, etc.)
  • Take a home spa. Have a long bath or shower, sit around in your bathrobe, and read magazines.
  • Ask for help—big or small, but reach out.
  • Plan a two-day holiday for next weekend. Turn off your phone, tell people you’ll be away, and then do something new in your own town.

A Little Goes A Long Way

  • With a little bit of attention to your own self-care, the light inside will become more clear.
  • You’ll feel more connected to yourself and the world around you.
  • You’ll delight in small pleasures, and nothing will seem quite as difficult as it did before.
  • Incorporating a few of these self-care ideas in your day will help keep you in tune.
  • Which one is most inspirational?
What is Self-Care (article)

Activities associated with self-care:

  • Mindfulness Stress reduction: Talk and Do: a non-pharmacological approach for chronic illnesses; Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) therapy is a meditation therapy, though originally designed for stress management, it is being used for treating a variety of illnesses such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, cancer, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, skin and immune disorders.
  • Link Zen: Clearing the Mind
 

What are Chronic Illnesses

  • The Leading Causes of Death and Disability in the US
  • Most Common: Heart Disease, Stroke, Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity, Arthritis. (see 2a)
  • Common killers Discussion; how do they take over my body?

Making lifestyle changes

Nutrition & Obesity

Managing Diabetes

Managing Asthma

Improving Oral health

Understanding Mental health

Diet: Cereals, legumes, and chronic disease risk reduction: evidence from epidemiologic studies.

Health Literacy

Preventative Concepts

Future Self-Care