by Suzy Reading | Apr 4, 2019 | article, blog
Lovely people I am thrilled to let you know that my new book is out today!
We teach our children how to brush their teeth, the importance of healthy eating, and how to safely cross the road, this book aims to broaden their toolkit to include resilience boosting skills and ‘emotional first aid’, empowering them with methods to navigate difficult emotions and challenging life experiences.
As parents it can be so hard to shoehorn in solo nourishing practices, so engage in it with your kids! Family self-care makes it accessible and bonds us deeply together in the process.
I hope you all enjoy building your self-care toolkit together and feel empowered to stand tall like a mountain. Link in bio. Please let me know how you go!
Available via this link
All my love,
Suz xx
by Suzy Reading | Jun 4, 2018 | article, blog
A: Self-care tips to boost confidence in an instant.
While robust self-love and confidence can take time to build, we genuinely can change how we feel in an instant with these 5 tools. None of these things take much time but their impact on your mood, subjective energy levels and self-assurance can be potent. Try them yourself and see the dividends ripple out.
1 Posture – research has shown that how we hold our bodies has a significant impact on our sense of self-esteem, energy and optimism. Google Erik Peper if you’d like to learn more. Become aware of how you are holding your body through your day and consciously soften your eyes, jaw, neck and shoulders. Feel a sense of elevation through the crown of your head and broaden your collarbones, whether you are standing or seated, and you will feel more resourceful in the face of challenges.
2 Breathe – this is so simple, when you breathe better, you feel better. As a psychologist and yoga teacher I am passionate about raising awareness of the therapeutic power of working with the breath. Nothing elaborate is required here, just a smooth, relaxed breath. It can be helpful to feel the four phases of your breathing: the inhalation, the moment after you breathe in, the exhalation and the moment after your breathe out. Allowing these natural pauses to be there can be very soothing for your nervous system. Bringing your hands into a mudra can also be powerful – helping to focus the mind on the sensations of breathing. Try this one: curl your thumbs in towards your palms and wrap your fingers around them, making a gentle fist. Bring the back of your fingers with the wrists facing upwards to touch, just in front of your navel. Hold the mudra for 6 relaxed breaths. Feel how this makes your breath feel more spacious, tapping you in with your inner strength and resilience.
3 Movement – use your body to feel empowered. Amy Cuddy is your go to resource for power postures and you will find plenty of them in yoga. When I need to stand firm and feel resolute I opt for mountain, tree or warrior poses. These shapes connect you with the strength of your legs, core and spine and help you feel the support of the earth beneath you. Break out into one of these poses whenever you need to feel strong. Perfect pre-meeting preparation.
4 Mantra – harness the power of your mind by using mantra or primer statements. How is it that you’d like to feel? Simply add that quality to an ‘I am’ statement. Repeat it to keep your mind from rumination or less constructive thoughts.
5 What’s your WHY – when life gets tough, your purpose will galvanise you. If there is something coming up that causes you anxiety, remind yourself WHY you are doing it and this will help you dig deeper. Reflect on your strengths and values and call to mind those qualities that will help you navigate this challenge. It will all be worth it.
Got a question for me? Fire away! Please drop me a line via asksuzy@lifeandme.com.
by Suzy Reading | Mar 12, 2018 | article, blog
A: Whether you’ve woken up feeling a little bleary eyed or you’re experiencing that familiar ‘post-lunch dip in arousal’, these simple micro moments of self-care will help top up your energy bank. Read on for some good alternatives to that second coffee! Try these tips whenever you need a boost to your get-up-and-go.
Scent – spritz some zesty room spray, use your favourite perfume or savour some hand balm. Give the experience your full attention and feel it lift your mood in an instant.
Posture – research clearly shows that an upright, open-hearted posture boosts our subjective energy levels and outlook. You can do this wherever you are, seated at your desk, driving, waiting in the post office queue or at the kitchen sink. Simply elongate your spine, drop your shoulders away from your ears, soften your eyes and your jaw and feel the breadth of your collarbones. If this feels different to normal, ask yourself how you normally hold your body? A daily yoga practice of as little as five minutes will help you maintain better posture throughout your day.
Breathing – when you breathe better, you feel better. Often our habitual breathing pattern becomes short and tight. Expansive breathing will energise you. Imagine your rib cage is a barrel. As you breathe in, the barrel expands in all directions and as you breathe out, the barrel effortlessly retracts back to its centre. Allow your inbreath to fill up all those internal nooks and crannies, feel a little pause, enjoy a long, smooth and effortless exhalation, followed by another pause. Just 5 conscious breaths like this will help you tap into greater vitality and resourcefulness.
Mantra – rather than repeatedly telling yourself how tired you are, harness how you want to feel by using a mantra. Think along the lines of I am energised. I am vital and abundant. I am resolute. Or if the monkey mind gets in the way, simply repeat ‘I’ on your inbreath and ‘AM’ on the outbreath.
Movement – take a quick walk around the block to blow out the cobwebs or use some yoga poses to top up your energy bank. Any side stretch will do the trick. The simplest version would be a mountain side stretch: standing up with your arms down by your sides, breathe in and reach your right arm skywards. Breathe out and slide your left hand down your left hand side. Breathe in and come back to upright. Breathe out and lower your right hand back down by your side. Repeat on the other side. Notice the difference after you’ve taken this a few times to each side.
Sleep – Schedule in an early night! Most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep every night. Our culture of ‘you snooze, you lose’ is seriously unhelpful. Prioritise getting the sleep you know you need to function and when that’s just not possible make sure you are engaging in regular self-care to compensate. Check out the blog for other recent posts on how to relax, soothe and promote better sleep.
Got a question for me? Fire away! Please drop me a line via asksuzy@lifeandme.com.
by Suzy Reading | Mar 4, 2018 | article, blog
We all know we need to engage in self-care to keep our energetic bank balance happy, but what do you do when you’re feeling overwhelmed or fatigued? The key is a broad and well-articulated self-care toolkit from which to draw, so that we have options that lift our energy without requiring any! This will serve you best when that toolkit is written down because when we are low on energy we are also least resourceful and creative to come up with a course of action. Write out some self-care activities, look at your list when you’re feeling frazzled and be reminded of something effective and accessible to you in the moment. This is how we keep self-care on the radar even when we are feeling at a low ebb.
When we’re tired mentally, emotionally or physically, we need a soothing toolkit of practices to turn to – a feeling of receiving rather than having to strive to add another thing to our ‘to do’ list. Healing modalities like massage or acupuncture can be a beautiful way to revive without any effort on your behalf. It is worth writing down on your self-care toolkit some forms of bodywork and make an appointment like an MOT – even if it is only every six months. I appreciate that this does incur some cost but at what cost do we not tend to our health?
There are also lots of other ways that we can receive energy without the expense of paying for a treatment. A meditative shower, soak in the bath, massaging in some body oil, a good stretch out on your yoga mat or just a simple lying down twist on the floor before you hop into bed for the night. Listen to a TED talk, a podcast or an audio book on a subject you find uplifting. Mindfully choose your visual diet and amount of screen time because we can be depleted by what we watch. Instead of watching the evening news or the movie that you find viscerally stimulating, choose something that soothes your nervous system instead, maybe a documentary or something that makes you laugh.
Being in Nature is another potent way to re-energise and connect with what is most important to you – and this doesn’t cost a penny. My favourite way to reboot when I’m feeling overwhelmed is to ‘earth my brow’ – it is a hard wired way to soften and soothe. Either sit at a table and rest your head on your hands or take to the floor for a child’s pose – I hope you find this instantly calming too. Use the mantra ‘I soften into this moment’ whenever you want to access this state of equanimity.
When we are feeling low, the priority in our self-care needs to be soothing activities that promote the functioning of our parasympathetic nervous system – the rest and digest part of the nervous system. Sleep, rest, relaxation, time in Nature, gentle and supported movement like swimming or restorative yoga poses, meditation and feeling the sensation of your breathing will all help restore balance and top up your energy bank.
by Suzy Reading | Feb 5, 2018 | article, blog
A: We need to engage in self-care every day because just like a car needs petrol to go, we need daily nourishment to keep our energy bank balance healthy. Do we incur stress on a daily basis? We all know the answer to that one… our daily work commitments, the pressures of commuting, the demands of parenting, the dishwasher that beeps until you turn it off, the energetic suck of social media, screen time – stress is a normal part of everyday life. We need daily self-care to mediate the effects of these ever present burdens on our health and wellbeing. And it’s not just the negative events in our day that can have us feeling stressed out – it’s much desired things like scoring a promotion, buying a house, a renovation project, booking a holiday or simply planning a celebration that can tax our energy bank too!
The mantra is: ‘self-care is health care’. Do we brush our teeth daily? Yes! So we also need to tend to our mental, emotional and energetic health daily. We need nourishment, head, heart and body, to keep us topped up and resilient in the face of life and all its stimulation, and we need it EVERY day.
How do you know that you REALLY need to get self-care on the radar? Look for signs of burnout. We all have our own individual triggers, and it can manifest in our body, in our thinking, in our actions and choices. Get to know your early warning signs and take action before overwhelm sets in.
What are the signs to look out for?
- Extreme tiredness, trouble sleeping despite feeling fatigued, difficulty in switching off and a sense of being overstimulated.
- A general suppression of the immune system evidenced by frequent bouts of minor ailments or infections like cold sores, headaches or common colds, or lingering illnesses.
- Muscular aches, pains and physical tension.
- Mental signs include: low mood, supressed appetite, poor concentration, or diminished enjoyment from life, work, or relationships. A sense of feeling stuck and overwhelmed. Anxiety, anger, reactivity and irritability. A tendency to generalise about problems, to catastrophise or lose perspective and to take things personally.
Self-care will help you heal your system from burnout. If you’re in a state of overwhelm you need to tailor your self-care routine, prioritising soothing activities and life choices that gently restore balance to your life. I will guide you through that process in a future blog post so please keep checking in. Even if you are not feeling energetically low, engaging in a regular self-care practice will protect you from the ravages of stress, reducing the risk of burnout. Either way, we all need to nourish ourselves because no-one is immune.
Got a question for me? Just email it to me at asksuzy@lifeandme.com …
