From Burnout to Balance: The Role of Self-Care
Read my recent interview below with Bold Journey Magazine.
Hi Sarah, so happy to have you on the platform and I think our readers are in for a treat because you’ve got such an interesting story and so much insight and wisdom. So, let’s start with a topic that is relevant to everyone, regardless of industry etc. What do you do for self-care and how has it impacted you?
As a Licensed Therapist and Embodiment Coach, self-care has become more than an essential skill for my holistic health – it is an act of radical self-love. But it hasn’t always been this way. For decades, I was stuck in codependent cycles of putting others’ needs before my own, which resulted in me feeling anxious, stressed, heartbroken, and burned out on repeat. I was overgiving, overworking, overempathizing, and overcommitting to the point of losing my own sense of self and sanity.
Fortunately, I discovered the practice of yoga in my mid 20’s, which gave me a weekly time, space, and opportunity to attune inward rather than outward in a safe structured way. What I learned through deepening my yoga practice through a life changing 200 hour yoga teacher training in Hawaii in 2012, is that practice of yoga is so much more than asana (poses). Like the Bodhi tree, yoga provides an 8 limbed guide to achieving a state of divine union with our highest self.
For someone who lived most of her life as a codependent people pleaser, learning how to attune to and embody my own thoughts, feelings, needs, and boundaries was life altering. I remember lying in savasana (a final resting pose in most hatha yoga classes) with tears streaming down my face as I allowed myself to let go of my need for control for the first time in my adult life.
Fast forward twenty years, and I am both teaching and living the 8 limbs of yoga as a tool for radical self love. Again, because yoga offers us an 8 limbed path toward self-transcendence, my self-care integrates 3 core principles, which are rooted in neuroscience, psychology, and yoga – I call this 3-tiered proprietary system my Embodied Paradise Method.
Step 1: I create my own personal paradise daily through experiential evidenced based somatic tools, which ground me into my body and shift me out of a sympathetic stress state into a parasympathetic relaxation state. These somatic self-soothing tools include taking mindful moments, practicing meditation, grounding into my 5 senses, regular movement through exercise and hatha yoga, monthly massages and daily self-massage, 7-8 hours of sleep nightly, daily intentional rest (often in the form of nightly restorative poses and yoga nidra, which is yogic sleep), daily contrast showers, weekly dips in the ocean, regular play time with my son, and safe social connection with friends. Each of these tools help to create safety in the body by stimulating the vagus nerve, which is like a superhighway for mental health because it allows us to counteract our body’s unconscious stress responses.
Step 2: Once the body feels safe, calm, and grounded, I aim to consciously reframe my anxious thoughts through intentional self-reflection and self-compassion to build awareness of and reframe unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors. While it took me years of therapy to identify and work toward healing my patterns of codependency, perfectionism, anticipatory anxiety, and people pleasing, I am now able to catch and reframe distorted thoughts before they send me spiraling. As a result, I am able to set healthy boundaries personally and professionally in order to better balance my work and home responsibilities. It’s still not perfect, but I’ve come a long way toward a healthier work-life balance.
Step 3: Finally, once we create safety in both body and mind, I use elite embodiment practices, which are essentially radical self love practices that bring me back home to the core of who I am on a soul level. Here are some examples of what it means to embody your highest, wisest, and most authentic elite self:
It means learning how to sit in and hold space for all of your emotions.
It means leaning into discomfort, risk, and even failure.
It means loving yourself unconditionally.
It means unapologetically owning all parts of yourself.
It means empathizing with others but not being responsible for their emotions or emotional reactions.
It means honoring your body, mind, and spirit.
It means practicing self-compassion even on hard days.
It means looking in the mirror and seeing the love that you are reflecting back at you.
These radical self love practices allow me to embody the elite (best) version of myself in body, mind, and soul. In fact, I actually used my Embodied Paradise Method to heal from Bells Palsy last September in just 3 weeks. True story! It was a wildly empowering experience to feel my own facial nerves regenerate thanks to these evidenced based emotional regulation practices. And I have witnessed hundreds of therapy and coaching clients heal and optimize their own nervous system patterns through this evidenced based methodology.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Click below to learn more about the three qualities that are essential for mental health and four somatic soothing tools I use to ground into my body when I’m feeling overwhelmed…