Emotional Self Care Tips

Here are 5 of my favorite emotional self-care practices for when you’re feeling stuck, sad, mad, stagnant, reactive, or for any time.

1. Coregulation
2. Kundalini Yoga
3. Punching bag
4. Mantra
5. Nature

1. Coregulation– Our nervous systems affect each other. If you’re feeling frazzled or upset, it can be helpful to talk with another person who can provide safe space for you to feel, process, and reflect which can help you come into more balance. We want to talk with someone who can witness us in our upset state, while still remaining grounded and present theirself. We don’t want to talk with someone who will commiserate with us and fuel the pain. We want to be in the company of someone with a calm and resourced nervous system, one that provides a more stable example to follow. This can be a therpaist or someone or people you trust. Who might this be for you? One key is that we feel supported, seen, accepted.

It’s also important for us to heal in relationship. Hurt didn’t happen in a bubble, and neither does total healing. We can’t think ourselves into a healed experience. At one point, we must interact. We are interdependent beings and we need each other to fully heal and thrive. We need to actually experience healthier situations and interactions to make the healing a real lived experience, one that our brains can accept and wire as new programming. Begin to trust yourself. If a situation or person does not make you feel supported in a time of need, go elsewhere that feels safe and supportive to you.

2. Kundalini Yoga– Kundalini Yoga is a wonderful way to access and move stored energy and emotions. You can do specific practices for certain feelings, energies, or body parts, and you can also do practices focused on moving energy in all the energy centers/chakras. Kundalini Yoga will get energy moving, so be prepared to witness and feel emotions that may have been pushed down, ignored, or embedded in the body. Tears may flow. Joy or peace may be accessed.

It’s healthy for these emotions and energies to get to move and be processed. In their unprocessed or unexpressed state, stuck emotions block our beautiful life force energy from freely flowing and hinder us from interacting freely with life. When all of our energy gets to move, we have an easier time expressing our gifts and feeling all the good feelings available in this vast, infinite existence.

3. Punching Bag– Sometimes energy and feelings get so built up, they just have to move and be expressed. Anger can be one of the scarier and less desirable emotions to experience, one we may suppress and battle with. It also carries great power and force. Anger is a powerful emotion, and if we don’t consciously give it room to be heard and expressed, it can consume us and run our lives, quietly running in the background waiting to pounce or maybe blatantly running the show.

Safely hitting a punching bag is one wonderful way to express and release anger. You can also punch something soft like a pillow or mattress or punch the air. There are kundalini yoga exercises for processing and releasing anger and sadness. It is healthier to process anger and hurt rather than stuff it down or deny it. When anger is given room to be felt and heard, we might find there was more than just anger under the surface. This is where coregulation and kundalini yoga can again be helpful.

4. Mantra– Chanting mantra is a beautiful way to focus and generate energy. At times what we need is to process and move accumulated energy. At other times, we may want to accumulate and generate more of a certain energy (which Kundalini Yoga also does). As we chant mantra, energy moves in the form of sound, which stimulates different energetic frequencies. There are mantras for joy, protection, intuition, creativity and pretty much anything, just like there are various Kundalini Yoga practices with different outcomes and intentions.

Mantra can be translated to mean “mind vehicle”. As our minds are constantly thinking, constantly in motion, it can be beneficial to give our minds a targeted focus.

Mantra can be said, whispered, sung out loud, listened to, and/or repeated as thoughts. Your voice has its own unique signature and vibration and can be uniquely healing to your own being when practicing mantra and repeating supportive thoughts and words. You can create your own mantra with words and sentiment that you deeply connect with and you can also practice Sanskrit mantra that you connect with, as well as mantra in any lineage and language that you connect with. It can be fun to explore the meaning of Sanskrit words and learn about the deities connected with some mantras. There is beauty and lineage in mantra that has been chanted for thousands of years and Sanskrit is a language intentionally created to convey universal meaning.

Get to know the deeper meaning of mantra you connect with. The exploration can be a therapeutic and supportive practice in itself. Create your own mantras that carry special meaning and resonance for you. Maybe you have a supportive mantra/repeated phrase or mindset you’ve heard repeated by a family member or loved one that you enjoy. You are welcome and invited to share your favourite mantras in the comments.

5. Nature– When in doubt enjoy, connect with, and observe Mother Nature. Take a walk. Put your bare feet on the earth. Allow yourself to feel held by the earth. Star gaze. Watch the sunrise. Watch the sunset. Care for and appreciate plants. If you live in a city, look for nature where you might not expect it. If you live surrounded by nature, observe patterns and changes. Notice if you have a favorite spot or not favorite spot. Dwell on the beauty.

What are some of your favourite practices for emotional wellness and self-care? Do you enjoy any of the practices mentioned in this article? What is something you might like to try, mentioned here or otherwise?

Cheers and love to your wellbeing and personal healing process! I respect your unique experience. My intention is to share inspiration, what works in my experience and may be helpful for you as well.