What are the 5 Dimensions of Self Care?
The 5 dimensions of self care is a road map for establishing a wholesome self care practice that will nourish your mind, body and soul. The 5 dimensions of self care are physical, spiritual, emotional, social and intellectual self care. Read on to explore what these dimensions are all about and how to practice self care for each one of them.
PHYSICAL SELF CARE
Physical self care is, no surprise, taking care of your physical health. This means moving your body in a way that gets the blood flowing and heart pumping, so your body starts releasing all of those feel-good hormones like endorphins and dopamine. But while practicing physical self care means exercising and moving your body to stay healthy, rest is also just as important and should always be a part of your physical self care routine. Your sleep habits and restorative practices such as stretching, dry brushing and self massage all help you take care of your physical self.
Here are 3 practices for physical self care:
SPIRITUAL SELF CARE
Spiritual self care has got nothing to do with religion, but means tending to the values and beliefs that you value and that make you feel good about yourself. This means practicing and prioritising things that nourish your soul, help you connect with your inner self and discover your true desires. To some people Spiritual self care can certainly mean connecting with a divine belief or religion, but to others spiritual self care might just be practicing things like loving kindness, gratitude, or connecting with nature.
Here are 3 practices for spiritual self care:
EMOTIONAL SELF CARE
Practicing emotional self care means a few different things. Firstly, emotional self care is about developing and deepening your own emotional awareness and understanding yourself better. This means tuning in with how you are really feeling and exploring your emotions and where they stem from. Secondly, practicing emotional self care means cultivating positive emotions by doing things that make us feel good so we foster feelings of love and joy, and turning away from and letting go of things that make us feel stressed or anxious. This does not mean that we should always be positive or shy away from the things that are upsetting or difficult, but practising self awareness and learning where our emotions stem from allow us to be more conscious of our emotions and what triggers them. Self care rituals like meditation and journaling help us develop our self awareness, while practises like Yin Therapy Yoga and Qi Gong can help us uncover emotional blockages and dive into untangling these triggers, to help us let go of feelings of anger, stress or fear.
Here are 3 practices for Emotional self care:
SOCIAL SELF CARE
We are meant to find connections and while a lot of your self care is all about you, social self care is about finding your tribe and having someone to lean on. Maybe you have a strong and supportive network of friends and family that support you and help you fill up your cup when it comes to social self care. Maybe you have found a group of people online that you connect with, or you go to a gym or a yoga studio where you all share similar values and beliefs or maybe you are still searching for that connection. There’s no one right way to practice social self care, and the people that you connect with might also change over time, and this is perfectly natural. Practicing social self care is supposed to be inspiring and uplifting, and it shouldn’t feel like a chore.
If you’re landed here and are reading this blog, chances are you might find your people through The Self Care Space. When you sign up for the membership, you can also join our members only Facebook group, where we share inspiration, tips and connect with each other about anything and everything.
INTELLECTUAL SELF CARE
Intellectual self care is about growth and consciously exploring the new and unknown in a mindful and nourishing way. Thinking about intellectual self care in this way, means that it does not necessarily have to be “intellectual learning” in the way the traditional sense, it doesn’t have to be about getting “smarter” or “better”. Intellectual self care is instead about staying curious and open minded. Perhaps you want to learn a new skill or you are curious about a topic you are not familiar with, diving into these things is your intellectual self care.
Here are 3 practices that might be brand new to you, that you can do as intellectual self care:
- 3 min How to use Sage for Clearing Energy
- 4 min How to use Oracle Cards for Inspiration
- 23 min Back to Basics Yoga Flow
The Self Care Space is your online wellness hub for you to come and top up your self care. With 250+ on demand videos including yoga flows, pilates classes, yin yoga therapy classes, guided meditations, sound healing, breath work, self care rituals and more, any time you can come to the library, select your choice of self care and pad out some time in your day to look after yourself.
Whether you enjoy a 10 minute gentle stretch in the morning or a full yoga class in the evening, the library is your access to your daily wellbeing.
Sign up here to start your self care healing journey today.
