Embracing the Dynamic Journey of Self-Care and Personal Transformation

I remember the days when the concept of self-care was as foreign to me as quantum physics, but life as a mother and professional swiftly taught me its vital importance. Now, I'm inviting you into my world to share the evolution of my self-care routine, from indulgent massages to the soulful serenity of early-morning rituals. On this intimate journey, I'll take you through the transformative experiences that have shaped my philosophy of living a balanced life—a philosophy born from childhood lessons and refined by the demands of adulthood.

Venture with me through various self-care modalities that fuel wellness and personal growth. We'll traverse the calming landscape of meditation, guided by the harmonious sounds of Insight Timer, and the grounding power of breathwork that reconnects us to the present. Together, we'll unravel the mysteries of energy work, with special attention to the silent yet profound language of the soul experienced through Reiki. As we navigate the ebbs and flows of energy within our lives, I'll remind you that self-care isn't a static destination but a dynamic journey, one that calls for patience, self-compassion, and a willingness to adapt to the ever-changing rhythms of our being.

Chapters

• 0:22 Evolution of Self-Care Routine
• 12:05 Exploring Self-Care Modalities for Wellness

Transcript

Sherisse Alexander: 0:22

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Wherever you might be in your day. My name is Sherisse Alexander, your host of Your Collective, where we examine ways in which we can find balance in mind, body and spirit so that we can find some ease to navigate life. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking a little bit about self-care. What is it, why should we do it, and how do you create a routine for yourself that can begin to bring balance into your life? Thank you again for joining me and let's dive in. So what exactly is self-care? I think it's very personal to each individual, but I think that ultimately, the goal with any self-care routine is to be able to bring yourself back to center, calm yourself down, be really centered and grounded with a sense of peace.

Sherisse Alexander: 1:36

For me, my self-care journey actually began really early in my life, but it's also evolved significantly over the years. So my mom I'm going to tip my hat to her because she is the person who actually educated me, in her own fashion, on what self-care looks like, and I don't really remember how the idea came about, but my mom has always been someone that has taken good care of herself, really good care of herself. She's always put together, she always looks good, she always smells good, she is a fanatical workout queen, always watching what she eats. And I looked at that and my mom did it with like from my perspective, at a young age, without apology to anybody. And I looked at that and in my very young mind, I put one and one together and I got two and I said, oh, so my mom is going to take care of herself like no matter what and she does not apologize to anybody for taking care of herself. So I took that idea at a young age and I owned it. Uh, as I moved through my own years as being a young mother and then a very busy career woman and so on and so forth. So I have always been somebody who has valued taking time for myself. So that's why, when you know, during the busy years of being a mother, it wasn't difficult for me, I didn't feel bad if I felt like I needed to go get a massage or have a pedi or a mani or a facial, or, you know, take a girl's trip or go on a yoga retreat. Those were all things that I did for myself and I did not apologize to anybody for doing those things.

Sherisse Alexander: 3:37

And I know, as a parent, sometimes we struggle with this idea of guilt around how we got to be around and and of course you know we want to be around. But I just mean that we're not allowed to take any time for ourselves. And we were and I say we because part of this self-care routine was travel and taking a break from life. That did not include our children and you know, it's always in the story or the narrative that we share with people that really can set the stage for how they receive it. Some people would call this manipulation. I call it finding the resonant of truth within it that will sit well with the other person. So it's not lying and it's not manipulation.

Sherisse Alexander: 4:26

So when Mike and I would go on our vacations without the kids and they would say, like, why aren't you taking us? And I would say, well, you guys are going to have holiday of your own. You're going to go to your grandparents' house or whoever's house they were going to, and you can eat whatever you want. You're still going to get to do all your activities. You're going to go to your grandparents' house or whoever's house they were going to, and you can eat whatever you want. You know, you're still going to get to do all your activities. You're probably going to stay up late and you're going to do this, you're going to do that and you get a break from my energy and I get a break from yours. And the other part of that is daddy and I or dad and I need to have this time together to take care of ourselves as individuals, as well as our relationship, so that we can continue to be really good parents for you. And that seemed to sit well with them. There was never any arguments or anything like that. To the best of my knowledge, they didn't. They weren't upset and so off I would go, or we would go on our holiday and have a good time and come back and feel very refreshed.

Sherisse Alexander: 5:34

So I said earlier that you know that self-care piece has really evolved. So you know, initially I thought that self-care was about all the things I talked about. You know, initially I thought that self-care was about all the things I talked about. You know massages and manis and pedis and you know vacations and all of those kinds of things. But over the years, really in these later years probably within the last really, when I started my journey into faith I changed so dramatically in what that actually looked like. So today, what I wanted to share with you is like how that evolved and what did that evolve into?

Sherisse Alexander: 6:18

And I think the beginning of that actually might've been a book that I read by Robin Sharma, and it was the 5am club. And for those of you who struggle with how to begin to create this routine for yourself, it was a phenomenal book. You know, I've always been a morning person, so for me, getting up early in the morning has never been something difficult, but this particular book put it in a way that was digestible and relatable for anybody, regardless of where you are, and you know. The key takeaways or the biggest thing, I think, is the way that the ideas around the 5am club work is that you know, really the best parts of the day are the early parts of the day, and we should begin the day with giving to ourselves first, filling our cup first, so that we can go out into our day and do whatever it is that we need to do for everybody and anybody else.

Sherisse Alexander: 7:27

And if you try, my experience is that if I ever tried to maneuver my routine in such a way where I was doing it more in the later parts of the day, like afternoon or into the evening, there just wasn't anything left and often I just didn't want to. You know, after you've spent the entire day and you know. If there is a different experience, I absolutely would welcome to hear it. But for me, by the time I got to the end of my day, um, and I'm home from work or you know whatever, running around kids, so on and so forth, there really wasn't much left. The only thing I wanted to do was really chill.

Sherisse Alexander: 8:07

And in the periods of my life where I was having a self-care routine that ended the day, for me it was kind of half-assed. For me it was kind of half-ass. It wasn't really as focused or with as much intention as it was in the early parts of the day. So some of the things that I've used are how I evolved through refining my self-care routine and, trust me, I have tried lots and lots of things to the point where it was almost overwhelming because I had a self-care routine that was taking like four hours a day. I mean, who realistically has four hours a day to give to? I mean, some people do and eventually I'll get there, but as of this moment in time, I do not have four hours a day to give to myself, but that's where it had gotten to, because I was doing so many things that I enjoyed on a daily basis that I was like, okay, this is not practical, nor is it sustainable. So where I started with that actually was with yoga, because yoga was you know, it's a form of physical activity. You only need your mat and your breath work. You can practice it anywhere. It can be challenging.

Sherisse Alexander: 9:28

I think of my first yoga class and I'll never forget it. I don't even know why I went back, but it was actually a private lesson and at the time we had the hair salon and I was trading services. So this guy wanted dreads, which, for anyone who's done dreads, you know that it can be a very long process. So he wanted dreads and he was a yoga teacher and he said I'll give you yoga classes if you do my dreads. So I said, okay, no problem. So we came to the shop and we did a yoga class and it was the most frustrating thing that I had done at that point in my life, because this guy's trying to put me into these poses that my body is just not used to and not liking it at all, not liking it at all but I stuck with it and I tried many different types of yoga and I eventually began to find genuine love and appreciation for yoga.

Sherisse Alexander: 10:35

So that practice began like 20 years ago and has really just evolved to where it is today, where I just create my own practice, whatever it is that I feel like my body needs, and I really listened to my body within that and the thing about it that I came to love was that if I wasn't doing it on a regular basis, I could feel the storage of stuff in my body in my shoulders, in my hips, in my back, you name it. But once your body gets used to being flexible and limber, I don't know how I would go back. So that's where the self-care routine really began to evolve to something else. The self-care routine really began to evolve to something else. And then I moved on to meditation and that. Well, if you're like me and you dwell in your brain a lot, which I do that is a real, it is a genuine practice because you are learning how to actually quiet the mind and it is in the quieting of the mind that the divine can find the place and space to enter and guide you on your journey. So that also has been really quite a significant part of the journey for me.

Sherisse Alexander: 12:05

And there's lots of different ways you can do it. There's a multitude of apps. My personal favorite is Insight Timer, because Insight Timer's got guided meditation. It's just got timers, it's got courses on how you can learn to meditate and also learning how to have grace for yourself in the process. So you know, some people get really frustrated because they're like I can't turn off my brain, just stick with it. And you're not supposed to force your brain, you're just, you know, really just being with yourself.

Sherisse Alexander: 12:43

And I personally found that for me once I paired breathwork with the meditation. That's when it really started to gel. So breathwork came in after meditation, but it was because it was the breathwork that allowed me to actually stay fully present, where I just focused on my breath you know the in and the out, the inhalation, the exhalation and allowed me to really tune into my body and not even just like feeling breath fill your chest and your belly. But if you really pay attention to your body, you can feel the breath moving in your body, you can feel where things are stuck in your body, and so it was the breath work that really, really allowed me to come back to center and focus on my breath, because it is truly the only thing that is with us every single moment of every single day. And so that once I learned how to pair the breath work with the meditation, this is really where things started to open up, and you know, over the years it's been paired with lots of other things. You know, there was learning about Reiki and energy work, and how do we again tune into your body, like the thing about energy work and breath work and meditate, like it's very, very subtle.

Sherisse Alexander: 14:28

And I remember, very early in this journey for myself, having a conversation with my bestie and I would say to her I'm like I just want, I want God to give me signs that are really obvious, like punch me in the face, kind of obvious, like go this way, like bells and whistles, and you know, maybe that happens for some people. But I think what I've learned over time is that the divine does not necessarily at least for me, does not work in the obvious. Necessarily at least for me, does not work in the obvious. It is very much in the subtleties it is. So that's why, when I say quiet the mind so we can tune into our body and hear the whispers of our soul. That's what the experience has been for me Learning how to quiet my mind, really tune in to myself and observe the subtleties where energy feels stuck, where there's tension, where I can recognize there's opening that needs to happen. And once I can try and bring balance or alignment into those areas, then I can hear, hopefully, the whispers of my soul. So that has kind of been how that piece has really evolved for me.

Sherisse Alexander: 15:52

Now there's lots of different modalities that are out there and I'm not gonna really speak too much on the things that I'm not familiar with. But you know I spoke about Reiki and Reiki is a ancient modality and it is really all about energetic healing. And how do we? It's very similar actually to acupuncture, but really more in a less invasive way. It's. You know, if you've ever been to a practitioner, generally speaking, they don't even touch you, they're just putting their hands around on you not on you but around you and feeling you know where there might be energetic blocks, and this was supremely cool. So I took a Reiki practitioner course during COVID actually, during COVID actually, and when you can start to feel the vibe of the energy around you like you really do have to pay attention. And so for me I'd be like, oh, I'm feeling like tingling in my feet or in my hands or things like that.

Sherisse Alexander: 17:08

And anyways, I was one day I was, I asked somebody, I said okay, can I practice my Reiki on you? And they said yes, and I said, okay, great. And so they're laying down and I'm just, I'm going through my process and I got to their back. They were laying on their stomach and I got to their lower back and, because I have a close relationship with this person, I did have my hands on them. So I just put my hands on their back and my hands got real hot. And this person was like what is that? And I said those are my hands. And it was really only in that spot that there was like this extreme.

Sherisse Alexander: 17:51

Now somebody might say you know well, your hands were warm. If you know me, my hands are. My extremities generally are very cold. My feet and my hands are usually pretty cold, but in this particular scenario they were like on fire, hot. And so because this was like at the very, very beginning of my exploration into Reiki, I understood, and so I said to the person I said do you have tension in your lower back? And they said yes, and I said, okay, do you feel that? Because I can feel it. I can feel the heat emanating from their lower back.

Sherisse Alexander: 18:25

So this is what I mean when I say that the subtleties are, they're there. We just have to learn how to quiet the busyness of the exterior world so that we can hear what is going on inside of us. And the journey has been so rewarding in some ways, you know, as much as it's been rewarding, there have definitely been challenges, and so the challenges I'm talking about is like when you hit a roadblock, you know, because there was a time after you know, having this new discovery of energy work and healing and so on and so forth, where I couldn't feel it anymore. So I'm like I'm broken, I broke myself, I don't know how to do it anymore. But I think really what happened is just, I evolved, I shifted, so it was showing up differently, so it was okay.

Sherisse Alexander: 19:20

I had to figure out how do I feel this again, how do I connect with it. But the truth is is we're always connected. So I have learned how to ask myself better questions in that process. So you know, am I feeling stressed? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I drinking enough water? Am I eating right? Am I stressed?

Sherisse Alexander: 19:44

Stress is a big one and if I'm stressed in my emotional world, so generally speaking, if I'm stressed in my emotional world, your vibration is lower. You feel whatever anger, sadness, depression, any of those low vibe feelings. And when you are in those low vibe feelings it is difficult to connect with the lighter and higher vibrations that we all have within us. So that's also been part of the journey. I'm feeling low. How do I shift myself in an authentic way, not in a fake way of just saying, okay, I choose to be happy? Yes, it can be that easy, but let's be honest and let's be sincere with what this is. If you're feeling angry about something, it can be difficult to just turn off anger and move straight to happiness. So all of that was part of the learning.

Sherisse Alexander: 20:43

So I felt that I needed to share this today, because the next couple of episodes we'll be talking to other individuals who are about self-care. You know, I talked about self-care more in a spiritual and energetic sense, but the next couple of guests that we'll talk to they're going to come at it. Well, one of them for sure will come at it from maybe more of a physical sense. So I hope that today this you know discussion or conversation I guess it's not a conversation if it's me by myself, but I hope that the thoughts that I'm sharing with you today might provide some value or some insight, with some maybe different modalities that you've never considered before in how you can bring more to your self-care routine. So with that, thank you so much for joining today and until next time, take care. Thank you again for listening today. If you enjoyed the content that I'm bringing you on a bi-weekly basis, then please, please, please. You can send me an email at sherisse@yourcollectiveca. That's S-H-E-R-I-S-S-E at yourcollectiveca. Take care.