How To Start Taking Care of Yourself Today

Here are 3 core mindful self-care practices for Black women who are exhausted by life and want to feel happier, rested and hopeful.

The struggle is real.

The pain. The shame. The guilt.

It’s real.

We’ve all been there — pushing through late nights, carrying the world’s burdens on our shoulders.

Now. It’s time to rest.

Time to *finally* put yourself first.

To stop battling through and look after you.

However, having made this decision, there is a slight problem.

Most Black women are so exhausted from years of looking after everyone else, doing things for their family and friends, and overcommitting at work that they are scared if they stop, they’ll be called weak, lazy and shunned for not living up to the internalised role as the “Strong Black Woman” and letting the side down.

Watch this informative Ted Talk by Denise Francis, where she explicitly explores the “Strong Black Woman” narrative and its impact on our psyche as Black women and learning to be kinder to ourselves.

And, as Denise Francis points out, despite our body’s need for deep rest, despite all the buzz about “self-care”, and despite how (over) qualified you are at work — most women don’t know how to relax, how to rest or even what “self-care means”.

So, that’s why I’m here, drawing on my twenty-plus years of personal self-care journey and professional teaching as a yoga and meditation teacher to support and encourage you on your self-care journey.

Together, we’ll look at the following:

• Why self-care is important to us.
• Why do we struggle to rest and care for ourselves?
• What are the types of self-care?
• Ways you can start to practice self-care from a mindfulness perspective.

So, let’s start this self-care journey together, nice and easy.

Why Is Self-Care Important to Us?

Self-care is a path that many women, especially Black women and women with marginalised identities, struggle with.

Women have been conditioned to believe that “hard work and sacrificing our needs for others” is the path to success.

So, as Black women, we work “twice as hard as a mediocre white man” — only to see our dreams and ambitions snatched away as we get overlooked at work and bounce up against life's unspoken and invisible walls.

Looking back over my life, in my case, I never knew “self-care” was a thing.

As a Black child growing up in South East London, UK, “self-care” wasn’t considered, discussed or prioritised at home or school.

Like many relatives and elders, my parents are part of the Windrush Generation and were too busy working to meet their basic needs.

Dad was worn out from dealing with bigotry and bullying at work (micro-aggressions and systemic racism weren’t acknowledged or recognised back then), and my mother worked tirelessly to stretch the meagre weekly pay to feed my brother and me.

Survival care — ensuring we had food, shelter, and access to healthcare and education — and sending money “back home” for family — were top concerns.

The traditional health practises my mother had adopted from her upbringing in the Caribbean, such as drinking bush tea, using coconut oil for skin care, cooking “smelly-curry foods” (as neighbours called their cooking), eating starchy root vegetables, and giving my brother and me seasonal wash-outs, were disapproved of by the larger dominant white society at the time, so after a while, my mother stopped doing them.

Now Dad, aged 90 and Mum, 89, my parents have had the privilege of seeing their dreams come true and fulfilling their basic needs.

Mum also now recognises the benefits that sticking with her earlier practices may have had on her health had she felt supported and encouraged to value her cultural heritage and received cultural-appropriate advice about the relationship between lifestyle choices and their impact on her physical and mental health.

So now, anytime Mum sees me working “too much,” her go-to response is to shake her head and declare, “Stop. You have to rest and look after yourself.”

And that’s what I want for you — for everyone.

I want everyone to take time for rest and care for themselves and one another, to practise self-compassion, and, equally importantly, for us to have leadership and political systems that value and prioritise wellness and self-care for everyone.

Why Do We Struggle To Rest and Take Care of Ourselves?

Much as we know self-care is important, there’s just one problem: because we live in a society rife with contradictions and binary thinking, Black women and women of colour struggle to rest; we bear the brunt of navigating a structural and internalised complex web of social, cultural, and economic factors that we must overcome to keep, protect, and sustain our mental well-being.

Most of my professional Black women friends — including myself experience micro-aggression at work, which adds to burnout, exhaustion, overthinking, doubting our skills, and performing at a level at work that compromises our professional, emotional, physical, and economic well-being.

Stopping and dissolving these harmful habits and starting a sustainable self-care routine takes time, energy, and patience.

We frequently don’t have the support we need, and changing our behaviours, often results in alienation from family, friends, and coworkers, making it more difficult to follow through on our desire to take better care of ourselves.

What Are the Types of Self-Care?

Self-care has become a buzzword in recent years, with everyone discussing its benefits for mental health.

Although self-care is often promoted as a personal practice, we do to care for ourselves; for example:

1. Eating foods that nourish and support our immune system.
2. Getting enough sleep so our body can rest, restore and repair itself.
3. Moving our bodies regularly to release stress and tension.
4. Taking quiet moments for self-reflection and spiritual reflection enhances our mental health.

Black feminist writer, poet, and activist Audre Lorde (1934–1992) points out that self-care is not just a personal practice.

Audre Lorde emphasises that self-care encompasses more than individual well-being; it also extends to caring for our communities as collective care.

By being well-rested and caring for each other, we have the power of collective resilience, support, energy and clarity of thought to advocate for justice and social change without sacrificing our well-being.

Audre Lorde stresses the importance that prioritising our self-care is necessary not only to reduce the harm caused by living within the dominant social-political mores but is also a radical act of self-love and resistance.

I know that’s a lot to take in and probably a far cry from the ‘take more bubble baths and spa days’ social media posts you were expecting to read about, but it begs the question of what is the best way to care for ourselves — and each other?

How can we, individually and collectively, find the time, energy, and attention to start a self-care practice that supports caring for each other and our communities with all that is going on internally and externally?

What values, habits, social and cultural more have to shift for women to feel enabled and comfortable exercising our basic human right for kindness, rest, care, acceptance and love in a world riddled with competing demands tugging at us in all directions?

How To Care for Your Body

The therapeutic and restorative benefits of practising and teaching yoga and meditation over the past 20 years have been crucial in my healing, self-care, and self-love journey.

And today, I want to share three mindfulness and yoga-inspired exercises my clients say are most effective at bringing them relief and inner peace and that you can use today to help you start your self-care journey.

Here are three basic mindful self-care techniques:

• 5 Breaths Grounding meditation exercise
• Mindful Movement exercise
• Loving-Kindness Affirmations

Once put into practice, these three core practices lay the groundwork for a self-care routine that is easy, loving and sustainable.

Powerful as they are, these simple practices won’t remove the external cultural and social conditioning contributing to our collective grief and tiredness - but will alleviate internal stress and tension and revitalise your mind making it easier to get through the immediate stress you are on with courage and restored hope.

3 Golden Tips To Remember When You Start Self-Care

1. Self-care is a life-long practice

There is no right time to start actively looking after yourself.

Like any other activity, the more you practice self-care, the easier it becomes to make looking after yourself the norm.

2. Practice a little and often

If you can spend two to twenty minutes daily intentionally practising a simple self-care activity, you will notice changes in your mood.

Your self-care activity should be something that calms and refuels you, not something painfully outside your comfort zone that you must force yourself to do.

The key is to get into the routine of practising regularly.

3. Be gentle with yourself

Practising self-care also builds our confidence because we put time, energy, and awareness into the parts of ourselves, mentally and physically, that need nourishment and healing.

However, sometimes, life gets in the way, and practising self-care as much as you like is impossible.

Maybe you have recently suffered a loss in the family and can’t sleep at night, or worked late three nights in a row on a company project and woke up too tired to meditate.

In these cases, be kind and loving towards yourself.

Listen to your body, see what self-care activity meets your needs and treat yourself with deep care. During emotional, tense times, this is the ideal opportunity to practice the loving-kindness affirmation meditation and give yourself some grace.

Here Are Three Basic Mindfulness Self-Care Techniques

Here are the three basic mindful self-care techniques to help you relax, feel calmer and refresh your mind — anywhere and any time of the day.

Ground your Energy — 5 Breaths Guided Meditation

To start focusing on our self-care journey, we must pause and acknowledge what is happening within our external environment, cultural and social values and, most importantly, our bodies and hearts.

It is difficult to think clearly when you are dealing with a stressful, emotional issue or are exhausted and irritated at work.

Most women are frequently tugged in multiple directions, socially conditioned to be the “nurturer and caregiver” in relationships; we are primed to smile on command, be happy when sad and always consider others’ needs before our own.

We ignore cues from our body, lack a sense of being “grounded”, and are “disconnected” from ourselves and those around us because we are so preoccupied with thinking, doing, and pleasing others. This leads to stiffness and tension in our body, mental exhaustion and lack of zest for life.

Learning to meditate is a lifelong survival skill.

It helps us reclaim our power and care wholeheartedly for ourselves as we learn to listen to our body’s wisdom and bring our thoughts back to the present moment.

This process of bringing your thoughts and awareness back to the present moment is known as “grounding”.

When we are grounded, we are deeply present with the body, the breath, and the world around and within us. This means it is easier for us to tune in to how we feel, honour our body’s need for rest and weather any backlash from saying YES to ourselves as we say no to others.

The good news is that when we feel pulled in too many directions, a simple breathing meditation practice can discreetly and quickly help ground our energy and remind us of our intention to care more for ourselves.

Here is a quick exercise in mindful breathing you can use to ground and centre yourself as you begin your self-care journey. It’s perfect to do when you feel over-extended and pressed for time.

Mindful Movement

Yoga poses and mindful movement exercises help us deepen awareness of the body, where it is in space, and how the body is connected to the earth and the elements around us.

This simple chair yoga self-care routine is ideal anytime, anywhere, to release tension in your neck and shoulders and revitalise your body.

When you are tired and lack energy, your body sags, and you hunch your shoulders, especially if you spend long periods sitting down working.

NOTE: remember to listen to your body when you practice these simple yoga poses and stop if you feel discomfort.

How to do this

1. Sit up on a chair. Lengthen through your spine. Tuck your chin in, soften your jaw, lower your shoulders and sense your feet touching the ground.

2. Stretch your arms straight up over your head.

3. Gently lean your body to the left, and keep your bottom on the chair.

4. Return to the centre, and stretch to the right, sensing your bottom connected with the chair.

5. Repeat this exercise three to five times on both sides.

Get ready to hang like a rag-doll

Hanging like a rag-doll helps release tension and eases tight back and neck muscles.

How to do this:

1. Sit on a chair, breathe in, and slowly bend your upper body toward the ground like a rag doll as you breathe out.
2. Keep your buttocks on the chair. Let your arms hang loosely beside your legs or resting on your shins.
3. Relax. Take 3- 5 deep breaths before slowly returning to an upright seated position.

The Butt-Walk Your Worries Away Technique

When your lower back feels tight, do this quick chair yoga exercise to ease sore back muscles.

Here’s How to Do It…

1. Sitting near the front of your chair, plant your feet on the floor, uncross your ankles, toes pointing forward. Lengthen up through your spine.
2. Bring your awareness to your buttocks and shift your weight from one buttock to the other as you “butt-walk” towards the back of the chair. Your knees will automatically move forwards and backwards as you butt-walk.
3. When you reach the back of your chair, make sure you are still sitting upright and butt-walk your way to the front of the chair.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 five more times.
5. Sit relaxed and notice how your energy and body feel now.

Loving-kindness meditation and affirmations

The messages we receive from childhood and wider society are often so subtle and ingrained within the cultural norms that we aren’t fully aware of their harm and impact on our lives.

Often, these narratives stop us from following through on our dreams and aspirations, and we lose faith in our ability to effect and sustain change.

Thankfully, there is a meditation practice to support us as we heal from these negative narratives and helps us regain our confidence, befriend our fears and be kinder to ourselves.

Loving-kindness meditation, also known as Metta meditation, is a classical practice that helps us to foster feelings of self-compassion, kindness, care and, most importantly, self-acceptance.

When experiencing any difficulty, it might not be our first thought to adopt an attitude of loving-kindness to ourselves.

When we are upset with ourselves, feeling excluded, lost or angry with another, or with the world at large, kindness and self-compassion is the last thing we want to consider.

Yet, while loving-kindness might not be our first inclination, consciously turning towards its energy with openness and care is a deeply nurturing and restorative practice.

The Buddhist practice of loving-kindness is one of compassion, helping us approach our suffering, hurts and pain from a place of warmth, care, and unconditional acceptance.

A traditional loving-kindness practice begins with an expression of self-compassion. Cultivating that tenderness towards ourselves helps us offer this loving energy to others that come into our awareness.

The following practice highlights various loving-kindness affirmations you might explore depending on what you are experiencing at present.

NOTE: If affirmations are new to you, here’s a thoughtful article, “I Don’t Like Affirmations — But These 7 Actually Work”, explaining how and why using affirmations helps to shift your self-perception.

Here is a simple Loving-kindness meditation you can practice anytime you feel disconnected, frustrated and annoyed with others — and yourself.

It is a heart-opening practice that strengthens our connection to ourselves and all living beings.

Loving-kindness meditation affirmation practice

• The practice begins by inviting us to cultivate a sense of love and care for ourselves before inviting us to extend the same well wishes to others.
• Begin by finding a comfortable seated position that feels comfortable for you. Lengthen the spine, soften your gaze or gently close your eyes as you settle into the practice using the five grounding breaths meditation we practised earlier.
• Begin to focus on your breathing, noticing your everyday breath — inhale….exhale… don’t change how you breathe; observe your breath.
• Now softly bring your attention to your heart, silently send loving kindness to yourself. Repeat to yourself the following phrases:

“May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease”.

If you notice your attention wandering, that’s ok; come back to the repetition of the loving-kindness affirmations.

“May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy, and may I live with ease”.

• Spend as much time as you want to repeat these affirmations. Close your practice with a generous self-love hug.

BONUS: Loving-Kindness Meditation Practice

Whenever I feel down, music stirs my soul and reminds me of the “bigger picture” and visions I have for helping to shift the paradigm of the struggle many Black women find themselves stuck in.

One of my favourite uplifting, loving- kindness meditations is this song sung by monks from the Plum Village monastery.

Have a listen and let me know how the tune makes you feel:

Closing thoughts

Thanks for taking the time to read my introductory guide to starting your self-care journey for Black women, where we looked at the following themes:

• Why self-care is important to us.
• Why do we struggle to rest and care for ourselves
• What are the types of self-care
• and explored three core mindfulness and yoga-inspired self-care practices: the 5 Breaths Grounding meditation exercise, Mindful Movement exercise, and Loving-Kindness Affirmations, which you can use right now to feel happier, grounded and more self-loving.

As Audre Lorde reminds us, we practice self-care not only for our well-being but as an act of collective care so we can all rise, be with the pain and suffering and still have the courage, energy and joy to nurture the qualities we need to sustain change for a kinder, more inclusive and equitable world.

Integrated Practice:

Choose a time during the day to practice one complete cycle of the three core mindfulness self-care practices. And then, choose your favourite practice and do it for the next seven days. Noticing the impact it has on the rest of your day.

Reflection Questions:

I’d love to know

• What has come up for you in response to the article’s teachings?
• How can you apply the three mindful self-care practices to your daily life?
• What impact does this have on the rest of your day?

Kindly share your thoughts and reflections in the comment section below. Thank you.

Want more support to strengthen your self-love journey? Click here for your free PDF guide to 21 Affirmations for Self-love and Healing. Thank you.

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