It’s no secret that incorporating a regular self care routine into your day can have a profoundly positive effect on your life. But if you’re dealing with demanding work schedules, caring for loved ones, managing anxiety – or all of the above – it’s all too easy to put others first and neglect your own needs. Creating a simple, achievable self care routine can help you on the path to wellness without becoming just another chore that you have to make time for and supplementing with CBD helps.

How to create a self care routine you can stick to

Giving yourself permission to look after yourself can make you feel fraught with guilt: you want to be at your best for others, but it’s difficult to find the time and energy to commit to a self care routine. So how do you escape this vicious cycle?

The key thing is to be patient with yourself and take the path of least resistance. Self care isn’t about sinking money into expensive pampering sessions or trying to commit to a laundry list of time-consuming practices every day.

It’s about checking in with yourself, treating yourself with kindness, and acknowledging that it’s ok to stumble.

And ‘routine’ doesn’t have to mean every single day without fail, either. Treating each day as a new opportunity can help you find consistency, not perfection, when it comes to looking after yourself.

A great way to approach your self-care routine is to take small, conscious steps and try out a few things to see what resonates with you.

7 Easy no-stress self care practices to try

Here are a few ways to show yourself compassion and kindness through self care.

Of course, what motivates, inspires and relaxes you will be different from what works for the next person, so notice the practices that make you feel uplifted, peaceful and accepting of yourself, and ditch those that don’t work for you.

Breathwork

Sitting quietly and focusing on your breath – even just for a couple of minutes – can provide a great reset for your nervous system. Many different breathing exercises can help improve your physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, such as Pranayama – the practice of purposeful yogic breathing.

Meditation

If meditation conjures up images of hour-long sessions in perfectly peaceful environments with no distractions, it can be easy to put it in the ‘too hard’ file!

Rest assured that this is simply not a reality for the vast majority of people. If you have time to enjoy a lengthy meditation session, go for it, but for the rest of us, it can be more manageable to incorporate meditation into the snippets of downtime we already have in our day.

Everyday activities like riding the bus or taking a shower can be opportunities to check in with yourself, notice your surroundings, and accept your thoughts and feelings without judgement. Just like pranayama, just a few minutes of meditation can give you the space you need to calm your body and mind.

Gratitude practice

When you’re going through a tough time, it can be difficult to see the good in the world. It’s easy to fall into bed at the end of the day, burnt out with a head full of swirling thoughts. However, by incorporating one minute before bed to acknowledge something you were grateful for today, you can flip the script and drift off to sleep with more positive thoughts.

Nurturing your physical body

We know this is sometimes easier said than done, but checking in with how you’re fuelling yourself every now and then can help ensure you’ve got the energy to look after your loved ones.

Choosing mainly unprocessed foods and aiming for a few alcohol-free nights each week is ideal – but don’t beat yourself up if that’s simply not feasible right now.

Creating too many rigid rules around food is just going to add another layer of stress, so instead, aim for the best choice you can make in the present moment.

Self-massage

We’re big fans of self-massage which has roots in the ancient practices of Ayurveda. For example, you could try massaging your hands, face or aching muscles with biocbd+ Muscle & Joint Relief Oil.

Accepting where you are right now

Deepak Chopra explains in The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success how we need to receive with open arms whatever happens to us. If we fight, resist or resent what’s going on in our life, we just end up generating unhelpful mental turbulence and anxiety. Accepting where you are without judgement is the key.

By taking this approach, you can honour and accept your strengths as well as your limitations with gentle compassion.

Say yes to naps

Sleep scientists recommend that adults need at least 6 – 8 hours of sleep every night, which helps your body repair damage and strengthens your immune system. Quick daytime naps are also excellent for refreshing our body and improving concentration levels.

Your nightly bedtime routine is important too. This is often one of the most convenient times to schedule in a bit of self-care. Putting your phone in a different room, escaping into a good book and taking a supplement that promotes relaxation such as biocbd+ can all help contribute to a sustainable nightly self-care practice.

How to incorporate biocbd+ into your self-care routine

Although we intuitively know when we need to give our physical, emotional and spiritual health more attention, it can be so hard to carve out time to devote to self care.

The above practices are generally great for time-poor people, but when you only have mere minutes to spare each day, sometimes even these can be a challenge! When you’re flat-out just making it through the day, you need a quick and easy routine that doesn’t involve complicated preparations or take forever to get through.

At biocbd+ we get you – that’s why we created Total Body Care, a simple water-soluble CBD capsule you can take daily.

Self care is personal, and we encourage you to decide for yourself if you feel CBD could be a useful addition to your routine. Taking Total Body Care only uses up a few seconds of your day, making it one of the quickest possible ways to give yourself some TLC. Plus, Total Body Care is available on a subscription service, meaning you’ve got one less thing to remember in your busy schedule.