Radical Self-Care: Honoring Your Intuition

One of the foundational tools I teach is how to connect to your own inner wisdom, and how to use that inner guidance to go forward into action. Trust me, it’s not always easy for me to embody this! I am really being challenged right now to truly walk my talk + practice what I preach. 

Connecting to your intuition sounds so much easier than it is in reality! It’s especially challenging during times of intense chaos and uncertainty. I am realizing that the lesson in this for me right now is really hearing the messages from my body, and staying devoted to prioritizing my own intuition.

To first hear, and then to honor, and then to act from that place of deep wisdom and knowing. 

I’m sharing this now because maybe you can relate. I know, from many of the conversations I’ve been having with women in my circle lately, that so many of us are feeling challenged to hear and act on our own intuition in the face of the enormous pressures coming from the outside. Most of us deeply want to do the right thing for ourselves, for our families, our communities, and the world, and there are so many voices online trying to tell us their version of what the right thing is. 

Personally, I’m seeing a lot of posts on my social media feeds about all the self-care we should be doing, about how this is a perfect time to take up a meditation practice, build your business, read that mountain of books, or finally organize the hall closet. Underneath many of these messages is an undercurrent of PRODUCTIVITY… the message that we need to make the most of ourselves and this time, create something positive out of it, use the extra time we have to move forward on our goals, and not “waste” this opportunity. That if we are struggling mentally or emotionally, we just aren’t doing enough self-care (aka, not working hard enough at it).

Now, I want to acknowledge that many of these messages come from a place of wanting to help people navigate this shitstorm in healthy and functional ways. And I want to acknowledge that some of you might really resonate with these motivational posts. For some, this encouragement might be the medicine needed most. I’m not saying anyone should stop if that is their service to the world right now.

But what I want to offer you today is PERMISSION. Permission to feel into what messages are serving you right now, and to release what isn’t feeling aligned.

Permission to lean into your own intuition for what you need most right now. Permission to NOT be productive if that is what you are feeling. Permission to be still. Permission to say no to the idea that you have to not only keep it all together but still also be moving the ball forward. (Somehow we don’t need permission to go along with the meme of productivity being king, we only seem to need permission to go against the grain on that.)

What’s coming through my intuition, for me, in this moment, is exactly that. Stop. Be still. Let there be space. Allow an exhale. Release. Don’t tread water, and don’t try to swim to the shore, but just float. And it’s been such a challenge to hear this message clearly, and to allow it to guide my actions. My logical mind is quick to jump in and tell me I’m wasting time, I should exercise more, I should get more work done, I should do better with schooling the children, I should, I should, I should… do more, be more, be better, fitter happier more productive.

It can feel scary and vulnerable and even unsafe to really listen to your intuition and your body’s wisdom, especially when it’s saying something different than our cultural paradigm.

Our overculture tells us we have to work hard and be productive, and that we are failing if we don’t, and that the only way we can be safe is through hard work and productivity. When your intuition is telling you to pause, to slow down, to do less, it can feel really unstable because you’re going against the grain of all that cultural conditioning.

And yet, I feel like one of the collective messages in all this coronavirus mess is that hard work and productivity don’t guarantee safety. As many healthy people fall ill, and some even die from this, we see that hard work does not guarantee physical safety. As many lose their jobs and see their financial security evaporate, we see that hard work doesn’t guarantee economic safety either. The idea of meritocracy our overculture was built upon is a lie.

These messages have been shouted out by minorities and differently-abled for a long time, and they have been more prominent in the wider social dialogue recently with the social justice movements that are happening. Maybe one result of this global crisis is that those messages will finally fully land in our collective consciousness. 

That feminine “BE”-ing is just as valuable as masculine “DO”-ing.

Another message I see from this global crisis is this idea of a collective PAUSE. Our overculture is so focused on doing, productive, moving forward, never stopping. And yes, it drives our economies, but also, all of our hyper doing is also destroying the earth. Destroying the climate and entire ecosystems, and leading to more and more cataclysmic events. 

It’s not lost on me that nature + the earth are in essence “the feminine,” and the energy of linear productivity and doing is essentially “the masculine” (I’m speaking about energetic principles here, not gender). We cannot come back into a healthy and balanced feminine-masculine relationship if we keep pressing forward in our doing to the detriment of the earth. We cannot create this balance if we don’t listen to women/womxn/femme (#metoo is only one manifestation of this coming forward to be healed).

We cannot create this balance between the feminine + masculine if we cannot collectively pause and be in our be-ing together for a moment, in service of something greater than our hyper doing, and greater than our selves.

I want to give us all permission today, myself included, to really feel into what our own intuition is telling us. To sense what outside guidance is actually serving us right now, and to release what isn’t true for us. 

If you are feeling inspired in this moment, that is wonderful (and I believe there are collective messages about service and inspiration and creativity coming through now too). 

But if you – like me – are also feeling this desire for pause, this need for stillness and space, I want to give you permission to listen to and honor that desire with trust and confidence. If you are feeling like it’s all too much and you can barely keep up with your normal routines, I want to give you permission to lean into that. To drop the pressure to be productive and keep moving forward. To release the idea that you might be wasting time. 

I believe that the more of us who are honoring our deepest wisdom and truth with our actions, the more we will collectively come into right relationship with ourselves, each other, our communities, and our planet.

**I also want to acknowledge all those on the front lines of government, health care, and essential services, many of whom are probably needing this pause and space and cannot take it. I want to acknowledge and thank and honor them for their sacrifices.