Courting My Own Health

I've been so busy recently that I've been finding it hard to set aside the time I need to take care of myself. For the most part, I feel like I've been grasping in stolen snatches for the habits that I feel help sustain me. I also haven't been reading my usual blogs or listening to my usual podcasts.

So I take it as a bit of a cosmic clue-by-four that in a moment of procrastination from the work at hand, I snuck a peak at my blog feed and at the top of it was a post from Thorn's titled, No Sick Mystics. Crap, I thought. That might be me!

There is a lot to unpack in Thorn's musings on being a healthy mystic. She covers everything from physical health, to running energy, to coming back from mystical states. However in its essence, she reminds us to know and honour ourselves.

On a physical level:

"What I’m lobbying for is deep listening to all of our parts. What kind of movement does my body want in order to feel happy? What sort of food does it crave when I’m not pumping myself full of toxins, or forgetting to eat until I feel crazed? Can I slow down enough inside to truly listen, every day, to body, mind, emotion, and spirit within, and to the earth, the cosmos, and the spirit realms around me?"

The way I see it, when we're working from this place of self-knowledge and respect, we're courting our own health. If we're not working from this space and we're simply reacting, much of what we're doing in the name of self-care may simply treating the symptoms.

For example, I know that when my upper back and shoulders bother me it is usually because I'm spending too much time writing in front of the computer and not enough time physically moving my upper body. In the past couple of weeks my friends have been graciously providing with me with massages. That helps and I feel better (for a bit), but if I really want my body to stop hurting, I need to take a time out from writing and go for a swim, take a dance class or lift some weights.

When we court a new lover, we often don't find it difficult take time out for a date, a romantic afternoon, or some steamy sex. Why not court our health and our selves in the same way?