How can we make "wellness" and "self care" less snooty? 🍵

Ethel (my alter ego) still has a few ideas

Welcome brilliant being. Hope you’re holding tight, or loose, or somewhere in-between with ease. Wanted to offer you a space to land which i hope might be useful at this time. As always, i love to hear from you, how you’re doing, and what you’d like to see in this landscape. Thank you for being here, take care of you 💜

hello frens, a throwback to 2018 with this piece, but it still feels resonant, and i’m ever-interested in having this conversation so would love to hear what you think! i also made an audio version of this post, so if you’d rather dive into that, you can find it here ✨

Ethel, my alter ego, holding space for two things to be true at once: enjoyment of green juice, and a question mark about what feels authentic, true, real and accessible in our rituals of care.

Can we talk about this phrase “self care” for a little bit?

And “wellness” too, and all that stuff?

Many of you know I’m always thinking/talking about how resistant I often feel being near those words...do you relate?

At times, these words feel deeply uncomfortable to use in a sentence. And associate myself with. Yet...i’m struggling with language to talk about what it is i’m doing in the world.

I forever find it challenging to answer questions asking me to define my work via easily understandable categories. Self care is one of those expressions i’ve often used over the years. I don’t know, somehow it feels less...dogmatic than a lot of terminology. But it’s also felt awkward in moments, clumsy or ...it’s ruffled some internal feathers in me, if that makes sense? In the same way my relationship to the word “yoga” has, since first embarking on my journey (more on that via this storytime from the year 2000, which is technically the late 90s but i digress).

I’m still not sure how to define what it is I do. It doesn’t get any easier as time goes by, in fact, i think it gets even more difficult! I am resistant to restrictive labels! For i believe we are limitless beings!

I also recognise the neurosis our society has in needing to define things via limited categories (and my resistance to that, felt on a cellular level) in order to make sense of what something is, or isn’t.

But-And, because we can hold two things at once, honouring that language is an ever-evolving thing. What starts out with the best intentions can mutate into something that creates barriers and distance when it becomes commodified and popularised.

There’s nothing wrong with something being popular.

I’m all for more people exploring ways to feel better and am a big encourager of us all feeling free and hopefully empowered to do so. I have a problem when someone, particularly someone with a lust for power, weaponises it in a way to manipulate people. You know, like making bombastic claims that aren’t true for everybody. Which excludes giant portions of humanity, and worse, makes them feel shit about being who they are and how they want to live their life.

It’s age-old of course. Power, control and hierarchy rule out, because that makes more money, doesn’t it? Pretending you’ve got the answers when you actually don’t have a clue is one hellovadrug, and we see it playing out like a moody CD. Faking it works, and arguably, some would much prefer the quick-fix and to be told “this is the answer”, rather than being offered tools to explore their own (much more powerful) truth, right?

And i’m not “coming for” anyone in particular, for the stuff that gets in the way of liberation is part of bigger obstacles, systems and barriers that reinforce mindsets with the pressure to have it “right”.

Am i going on a tangent here?
Do i talk about this too much?

✨ cue a pause for a chew over some instagram stories from 2018✨

*a deep sigh for all of that*
*a deep sigh for all the chews i’m still chewing over*
*a deep sigh for all the black squares circa June 2020 and all the people who have caused me so much harm in this “wellness” space - the AUDACITY!*

(let’s just take one big arsed sigh for all of that!) ….still not over it my friends! but it’s ok, i’ve got receipts!

You know i’m not shading people who study and practice and learn and develop their craft and share it with the world as an offering for people to take or leave. I’m on that path, forever will be. I’m curious though, about the intention beneath.
How is it used?
To elevate oneself over others?
Or to encourage peeps to make empowering choices that resonate with their needs and feels so we all rise?

I care about people feeling better. More at home in themselves. Remembering their agency in a world that can often imply we are never enough. And countering unhelpful bias, rejecting limited ideas on what “wellness” and “self care” is, and how we “should” “do it”.

These performative dogmas of “care” are generally loaded with other bonus extras to wade through, such as enforced barriers to access, be they cost, dominant hierarchies controlling a “one size fits all method” or icky messaging that distances us from our own truths, experience and felt knowing.

As opposed to building relationship with ourselves, developing trust in our body wisdom, however estranged we feel or might have felt, implementing care into our worlds, however seemingly small or silly. So this practice of taking care of ourselves might ripple outward, extending into our communities, and the wider world.

✨Self care as community care✨

Having accessible tools to take care of ourselves in ways that feel good, which are inclusive and non-snooty.

Dismantling ideas that in order to be well, you need to give up stuff you love and punish yourself. Rejecting the notion that taking care of yourself needs you to sacrifice precious time that you don’t have.

And instead, inviting the idea of taking care of yourself feeling like an enhancement. Offering you more energy to dedicate to the stuff you want to do. Doing nothing counts here my friends! How To Do Nothing with vim!

Ideas for doing nothing might include:

• Resting your bones, inviting softness in whatever way feels good for you

• Eating a burger because that’s what feels delicious right now

• Watching a marathon of an excellent series (i recommend Abbott Elementary by the way, amongst other things) ← that was a link to a shared document of films and things to watch for self care which is collaborative, baybee, so feel welcome to add your own bitz n bobz!

• Sitting on a bench to notice your surroundings in that moment
  
  ✨ Insert your own ideas that feel resonant here… ✨ and again i’d love to hear your thoughts!
  

  
  

Here are some things i’m not interested in

• Learning imposed rules about how to “behave” yourself. (laughing because, do you know how many times i’ve been told to “behave?!" or how i “should behave” in my lifetime my friends? I think i could shock a few people but here we are! That’s what you get for being yourself - lol!)

• Changing who you are in order to be deemed “healthy”

• Losing weight or adjusting your diet. Eat whatever the hell you like. (read this and this for more on that 🍴) I wrote those pieces back in the day and this topic is always on my mind - i’m a survivor of an eating disorder and so this is very close to my heart so if you’re interested have a read.

• Or measuring success by how many f💫cking pushups you can do or how stupidly complicated a posture you can perform. I mean….

  I’m eyerolling cause this topic makes me a bit enraged….

  ✨Let’s take a breath for nothing! ✨
  

Because i can see how over the years the messages i’ve been fighting against for decades seem to be infiltrating at every level.

“Wellness” is “cool”, apparently. And you don’t want to get left behind by not participating in some way. This is sarcasm in case it’s not clear!

And seriously, I see worrying signs of dangerous messages being perpetrated, normalised and often celebrated. We have a big issue with this word i hate: “healthy”, and it’s definition. And all the phrases and jargon that somehow get lumped along with it into this weird soup (like “self care” + “wellness” + “yoga” + “cleansing” + “vegan” + “green juice” + do we add “cold water bathing” here? - i know you know what i’m talking about and i don’t need to keep going here….)

There’s nothing wrong with any of those words, but
How do we use them?
How do we read them?
What do we associate with them?
What do we mean and imply?
I hope we can examine what lies beneath and create our own deeper relationships to care that aren’t tainted by lucrative manipulation and elitist intention.

Here are some things i am interested in:

• Causing less harm.

• Less barriers to everybody having access to tools that empower them to feel better.

• Radically challenging the commodification of being well and considering who gets access to it. Who gets to participate. Whose indigenous ways of being on the planet are ridiculed then co-opted and then excluded.

This of course is a much bigger and wider conversation which has everything to do with capitalism and white supremacy.

I’m ever-conscious of reframing ideas about “who is centered”.

I’d like to nod to ancestors and elders who have come before, who have lived and demonstrated there are Other ways of being. I am also grateful for my 42 years of life lived from Other vantage points and thus “not fitting in” which has offered me a privilege of sorts in this regard: because i am not seeking the limited “centre” which is prescribed by dominant culture. But i’m not immune from having to exist in this world…I’ve got to eat, i’ve got to pay rent, i’ve got to survive! So i’d like to encourage us (self included) to continue to dream and practice and remember what possibilities there are for us to reframe “wellness” as required, for ourselves and each other.

🌺 infinite possibilities, bb 🎶 🌸

There are other ways of being that exist outside of the bubbles of “popular wellness”.

Our ancestors taught us. Our knowing reminds us. Our communities offer us a chance to practice. We get to define wellness and what it means to us.
I hope we might feel more free to ask questions about how we are in relationship with being well, and feel agency to seek out more inclusive, accessible ideas and resources to support us.

💡 Practice moment

So here i’d like to add, as an optional extra, encouragement for you to contemplate what feels interesting to connect with and practice when it comes to your own ideas of “wellness” and “self care”. Here are some offerings to wet your whistle:

• invite not-knowing. which might look like sitting with something. not needing to “fix” as a knee-jerk reaction.

• practice ways to befriend the body in non-competitive ways e.g. with aims that centre a “goal” or “target” perhaps explore prioritising sensing and feeling into sensations as a priority.

• explore new ways of taking up space in the world with your body, if that’s accessible, which might look like heading outside in the morning when you might usually pop round the block later in the day. or choosing a soft restorative practice as opposed to a “no pain no gain” approach

• notice when and how you feel most free and in resonance with something which could look like noticing what foods feel delicious. what activities are feeling good, particularly ones which might be framed as “bad” or “naughty” and getting curious about when that shows up (notice patterns, ideally without nagging judgement or criticism of yourself, rather, curiosity)
  

  So over to you!

How can we make "wellness" and "self care" less snooty? 🍵What do you think?

Does the mention of these terms make you feel bored? interested? hopeful? angry? I’d love to know….

You can also leave me a voicenote - shoutout to everybody who has been leaving me voicenotes by the way! i DEEPLY appreciate it by the way!

Reach out and connect and let’s be in community with each other so we can explore this together. We can’t do this alone, we’ve gotta do it by hearing what we all think and chewing the cud, together.

All i know is, for me, self care and wellness have always got to be accessible and inclusive.

And like Cheryl Lynn says, real.

In other related news»

🌈 Upcoming online event this Thursday

This Thursday i’m hosting an event for London Writers Salon this week, yoga and movement for writers, which you can find more about here! it’s free for all members and will also be recorded, hope to see you there!

i held off gifs but i really don’t want to frens, they are part of how my brain wants to excrete information so i hope that’s ok! 🥴

📼 Time machine: a video + some ideas

Honouring two years of social distancing. And remembering myself. Nature + recommendations from the Other Bookclub (my bookclub!)

dionne_______

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That’s all for now, but hope to meet you in the comments! As always, this is always a conversation.

Respect and tenderness

dionne 💜

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