Self-Care & Sustainable Sunday

It’s time to talk sustainability. Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainability is about us and our world and how we chose to spend our time, money, and energy.

Planet care can sound imposing. But it’s not. It’s just about changing your relationships. Support businesses that make a difference by cutting out the harm and adding to the good. Eat more locally. Buy plastic-free. Take a hike and become friends with your environment. True planet care creates a sustainable web of choices that start with caring for what’s right there in your body and your community.

We need self-care to keep ourselves healthy and resilient. True self-care isn’t necessarily about a spa day or a special one-off treat. It’s a long-term habit that includes making daily choices to support our authentic health and happiness. Meeting our own self-care needs also allows us to take better care of others and the world.

While it's always possible to grab a green juice between meetings or squeeze in a yoga class a few times a week, these things don’t necessarily support a holistically healthy life. It takes practice to cut through the noise and really listen to our deeper needs. Sometimes it even takes bucking the status quo to make choices that are genuinely rooted in self-care.

Here are a few ways we can play with discovering what we really need in the moment:

Subvert Mindless Scrolling – A bout of mindless scrolling can attack at any time. We’re particularly susceptible to it when we’re tired, bored, lonely, procrastinating, or overstimulated. Sometimes scrolling is exactly what we need to regulate our nervous systems. Often, it is an energy and time drain. If you find yourself in a mindless scrolling trance, try putting down your phone (or turning it off!), changing your posture, and taking a few breaths. Notice how quickly the urge arises to pick up your device. Move your body (jumping jacks will do), drink a glass of water, go outside and connect with nature — all of these things will put you in contact with what you actually need in the moment (which, typically, has nothing to do with the IG story of an influencer living in Byron Bay).

Choose the Right Fuel – It’s easy to go for sugar or caffeine when we need energy. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a treat every once in a while, it’s rare that our body’s deepest need is either one of those. Often we need rest, hydration, connection, or a healthy snack that offers more sustaining energy. When we meet our deeper needs consistently, we begin to appreciate what it feels like to feel good - and our baseline for energy, vitality, and joy becomes much higher.

Slow Down – Often the pace of our inherent, essential selves is different from that of society's. Notice where you're rushing and how much stress it causes. Pause for a breath or two. How do you want to feel at that moment? You have enough time to honor your own pace.

Practice Resting – Rest is essential for recovery and recalibration, yet, culturally, we seem to be allergic to it. When we’ve been moving too fast for too long, our nervous systems get amped up, then, when we finally pause, it can feel truly uncomfortable to sit still, relax, or chill out. Often when we slow down is when we notice that there is stress and anxiety playing like unwelcome background music in our awareness. Happily, rest is available just on the other side of that revved up feeling. Lying or walking barefoot on the earth (a practice called grounding or “earthing”) helps us reset our nervous systems. It also reduces anxiety, depression, and inflammation, all of which makes room for rest.

Time in Nature – Nothing recharges body, mind, and spirit like getting into nature. Leave your device behind (there's a theme here), and take a walk, lie on the earth, dip your feet in a river or the ocean, lean on a tree. The daily practice of connecting with nature is transformative and healing on many levels.

When your self and world come together you can make the biggest difference. Start with buying organic, plant-based products packaged without plastics like those we offer at Pangea. When we think about how meeting our needs impacts the next seven generations, we know we are creating a more sustainable self and a sustainable world.