Self Care Essentials for Healers, Helpers, Coaches, and Yoga Therapists
If you're in the healing, helping and wellness fields, chances are you have a deep desire to facilitate change and encourage others in their healing journey. You may have come to your career in yoga, massage, meditation, acupuncture, therapy, coaching, mental health, or integrative medicine because of personal crises. Your passion and enthusiasm for healing may have even eclipsed your own personal needs at times. Maybe your own self-care has slipped to the extent that burnout is a common occurrence (or at least a recent memory).
My own healing journey began at age 17 with meditation, Ayurveda, healing essential oils and Buddhist studies. Over the next several years, I added yoga, pranayama and Western nutrition to the mix of self-care supports to maintain a mindful lifestyle.
Self-care is essential for avoiding burnout and overwhelm and for maintaining healthy work-life flow. In my work with women healers and helpers, I support the discovery process for finding one's optimum self-care supports for overall balance and ease —in life and business.
Over the years —and through much trial and error —I've developed a set of essential self-care tips for female entrepreneurs in the healing and helping fields who are often wearing many other hats: mother, caretaker, volunteer, social activist, artist-by-night.
Now, I support other women healers and helpers to embark on healing journeys themselves. If you are a healer, helper, or transformational service provider whose work centers on supporting clients in their own journey of transformation, then self-care is a powerful strategy for long-term business success.
1 // Take care of you first
Pretend I'm wearing my best flight attendant uniform right now and reminding you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others in crisis—bring that into your business as well. YOU are the heart of your business. Take time for precious self-care, commit to your practices, and emphasize appropriate nourishment and sacred rejuvenation. In the Buddhist wisdom traditions, the Oxygen Mask Law is summarized in the teaching of bodhicitta: the wish to be free of suffering so that you may support others in freeing their own bonds as well. As a healer, helper, or spiritual entrepreneur, your business exists because of your deep wish to support others, to empower others, to help others awaken. Give that gift to yourself first.
You are the heart of your business.
In practice:
// Eat something nourishing
// Snuggle up with a good book
// Experience the wonder of nature
// Practice a strengths-based ritual for well-being and flow
// Lie on the floor and breathe deeply
// Recite mantra, affirmations, poetry or calming prayers
// Take a day off (if you are able to do so)
Mantra: "My business thrives when I nourish myself and tend to my own self-care needs."
2 // Treat money as energy
Money is energy: and as an entrepreneur, or service provider, you’re turning your energy, skills and experiences into money. It becomes easier to manage money when you reconceive money as the manifestation of your vital energy in the financial world.
When you accept that the act of attending to your money-energy is itself an act of self-care, it is much easier to make friends with your finances.
Just as you might direct the energy of the breath into tight areas of your body in a yoga posture, or channel your strength for the last miles of the marathon, you can learn to direct the money-energy of your business. The best part is that you are able to make this shift without the associated drama and trauma of well-worn habits and outdated relationships to money.
In practice:
// Make friends with your finances by designating a “money date” in your calendar for bookkeeping, bank account balancing, and accounting tasks. Each week or each month, as it suits your needs.
// Make it NEW, FUN, AND EXCITING. When you get your emotions on board, you’re more likely to follow through with small changes (and challenges). Have your Money Date at an adorable cafe, or a gorgeous park, or the botanical gardens, or your favorite tea house. Rent a swanky hotel room for the day and fit in a spa morning the following day —or put on your favorite P.J.s and binge watch The Peripheral at the end of the night. It’s your date! Make it new, fun, and exciting.
// Take a look around at the places money energy is “leaking out” —in business and in life —and stop the leaks! There are many ways to honor your current financial reality without depriving yourself —and shifting the money story from one of lack to one of abundance is a supreme act of self-care.
Mantra: "Abundance expands when I direct the (money)energy in my business appropriately."
3 // Treat time as a resource
Your time is sacred, precious and finite so use it effectively by staying focused on the services, offerings, tasks, hobbies, and causes that reflect your values.
Treating time as a resource also means prioritizing your actual hourly rate in your business—and acknowledging when it makes sense to delegate or hire out certain tasks.
In practice:
// Strong boundaries strengthen focus. When you determine your time and money boundaries, you are clear on the tasks that aligns with your business objectives
// Prioritize tasks that grow your business —these are the tasks that pave the way for business growth such as services, sales, marketing, or program / product development.
// Take 10 Rule: Shortcircuit overwhelm, procrastination, indecision, and/or burnout with the Take 10 Rule:
Visualize the best outcome in 10 minutes / 10 hours / 10 days / 10 months:
Then ask: What one action can I take right now?
Mantra:
"I respect myself enough to treat my time as a valuable resource."
4 // Build the right business for YOU
Building the right business for you begins by looking at your strengths, passions, and skills. If you love to learn, study and teach, then you'll be happier in a model that allows you to share your intellectual endeavors in that arena. If you ache to connect people in larger, group experiences, a business model where you plan or attend conferences, launch your speaking career, or lead retreats will ultimately provide you more satisfaction. If you are passionate about your hometown community, a strong local presence (opening a yoga studio, wellness center, or building a local private client base) may be a good fit.
In practice:
// Identify your talents, passions, skills and strengths and commit to bringing them fully into your business.
//
Mantra: "By aligning who I am with what I do, my business becomes an act of sacred self-realization."
5 // Create Daily Rituals that Support Long-Term Success
Our daily habits matter because every day counts in business. What you do with your most productive hours within the day may make the difference between building a profitable business or burning out. And what you do (or do not do) today may affect whether your business has working capital in six months —or whether you are closing the doors.
Internalize this truth: what you do this year will affect where your business will be in 3 years.
But which actions DO we take? What exactly IS the next best step? When is enough, enough? Most importantly, how do you keep taking baby steps forward on a Big Vision plan when our motivation flags? Or when life gets crazy? Or when the little one comes down with a fever? How do you keep going when you have just endured a life-shifting revelation?
Here’s my solution:
Focused, aligned action yields business growth
I call this a business dinacharya. Dinacharya is the Sanskrit term for a series of small daily practices that allow for greater ease in body, mind. Drawn from Ayurveda, dinacharya is a method of framing your time in the space of a day to align individual and universal energies.
The principle of dinacharya is that small actions, taken daily, have a cumulative and exponential effect.
From a highly pragmatic view, dinacharya is the foundation of your health—and, in my view, the health of your business. Healthy daily habits invite harmony, wellbeing, and longevity —in business and in life. While dinacharya for our physical health includes practices like movement, mindset, connection, spiritual practices and communication, a business dinacharya includes customer service, client work, group classes, checking email, social media, and financial elements. Your business dinacharya also needs to include preventive, supportive and goal-directed measures to ensure you are staying on course with your business vision. (You DO have a business vision, right?)
As a conscious entrepreneur, you crave a certain lifestyle —and you want to build a business that supports that lifestyle. You want meaningful work, creative rest, time for your practices, and sacred space for the values you treasure. There's only one way to make this happen —you have to build a business that reflects your values at all levels.
In practice: Have a clear picture of what actions are necessary to move your business forward and what actions are necessary for keeping the proverbial doors open. Usually those are two different categories.
Mantra: "Focus is practical magic —and my small focused actions have a cumulative and exponential effect"
