Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/135515
A Personalize your Self-Care Plan As a bodyworker, you are undoubtedly well versed in helping others deal with their soft-tissue pain and stress, as well as customizing self-care recommendations to suit each client's needs. You may even help clients set short- and long-term goals for their overall treatment. Your work helps your clients enhance their overall health and well-being, but you may have given little thought to determining a vision for your own personal health. Once discovered and put in place, your personalized health vision serves as an overall guide for your self-care and renewal plan. Further, it works as an internal compass for helping you know you're on the right track and helping you assess and make adjustments according to what's happening in your life, moment to moment, month to month, and year to year. At the most fundamental level, your vision creates a vivid picture of what you want for your health and the reasons you value that goal. Without that perspective, it is easy to put yourself, and your self-care, at the bottom of your priority list. With it, you have the motivation you need to consistently follow a self-care plan. Discover Your Vision To discover your vision, take some quiet time away from all activity. Bring pen and paper, your computer, or another way to take notes. Then, ready your mind to begin the following exercise from a place of clarity. • Close your eyes and take three deep breaths, inhaling to the count of three and exhaling to the count of six. • Open your eyes and ask yourself these questions, then record your answers: What do I want for my health and well-being? How do I want to look and feel? If I don't take care of myself, how will my health be in three years? Five years? 10 years? • Repeat the process until you have exhausted all your answers. Once you have a list full of answers, put it away for 24–48 hours, and then revisit the list to look for themes. You may notice several: perhaps you want to look and feel healthy, age gracefully, move more, rest more, eat a healthy diet, work less, or spend more time with family and friends. The themes are a good indicator of not only your vision, but also what you value about yourself, your life, and your self-care. Combining the themes into a vision may look like this: "I'd like to age gracefully with physical mobility, mental clarity, and inner peace." Once you have this vision solidified, use it as the lens to evaluate your decisions when creating and practicing your self-care plan. Practically, this means when you are faced with decisions surrounding self-care, you simply ask yourself the question, "Does this move me toward or away from my vision?" If you use the example above, starting an exercise program would move you toward your vision. Conversely, eating fast food multiple times a week would move you away from your vision. Clarifying your personal vision not only helps you create your plan, but also helps make the plan sustainable because it is tailored to you and your life. 68 massage & bodywork july/august 2013