Jonathan Van Ness said something in an episode of Queer Eye that I felt it in my soul:

“How you take care of yourself is how the world sees you. It's OK to have a relationship with yourself."
~Jonathan Van Ness

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I suggest you hop on Netflix as soon as possible for a wholesome, feel good self improvement show facilitated by five amazing humans with a goal of showing people how to re-invent and love themselves through health, introspection, family, and community.

This article is a little different and much more personal than many of the fact heavy pieces I write in this section of the website. This pandemic has really touched everyone in such different ways and I’ve seen so many people close to me decline wellbeing due to the consequences of this pandemic, so I wanted to write this more personal piece on self care and self assessment.

In my practice, try to stress that the concept and reality of “Health” is so much more than just diet and exercise. Health is also our communities, family, friends, and the relationships we have with them. But overall, health starts with your willingness to show up for yourself and your body.

I used to scoff at the quote “How can you love someone else if you don’t love yourself?". There’s something so intimate and uncomfortable about the idea of “building a relationship with yourself”. It’s vague and easy to brush off with an eye roll, but in reality, it’s so easy to neglect yourself.

What is Self Care and Why it’s important.

According to the Journal of Counseling Psychology; Self-care is defined as a multidimensional, multifaceted process of purposeful engagement in strategies that promote healthy functioning and enhance well-being.

These days, self-care is seen as a luxury rather than a routine part of health and wellness. It’s incredible how many stressors we’re exposed to in life, whether it be physical, environmental, financial or emotional. All of these take a toll on our wellbeing and build overtime which is why taking time out of your days for yourself is so vital.

Life can gets so uncomfortably busy. Personally, I’m so easily distracted and fascinated by my daily surroundings so when those quiet moments of self-awareness and intimacy come by, it almost feels as if I’m a stranger, watching and observing someone else’s thoughts and feelings. To an extent, we all feel as if we know who we are and how we react to the world around us, but we rarely take the time or observe ourselves, our physical and mental patterns, or our behaviors.

Self care looks different for everyone, but if it hasn’t been an active part of your life, it’s hard to know where to start so just simply choose something that soothes and calms you and carve out time in your day to make yourself a priority.

My personal self care activities:

Taking a Bath
For a long time, I lived in a house without a bathtub, so now that I have access to one, I make it a personal ritual to take an herbal bath (Usually with a mixture Rose, Calendula, Lavender, Milky Oats, and Epsom Salt). There’s nothing more relaxing that soaking in hot herb infused water and smoking a joint to yourself.

Yoga
I feel like I misunderstood yoga as this hippie dippy thing for so long. But now it’s become a vital part of my daily life. When I slack on my yoga practice I feel a physical and mental disconnect in my body. Incorporating daily stretches, breathing exercises and strength training has allowed me to create this mind-muscle connection that I’ve never had before. There’s also this amazing sense of power that comes from feeling your body gradually gain strength to support itself that yoga has allowed me to discover in my life.

Reading
There’s nothing I adore more than a well written book. Whether it be research based or fictional, carving time out to read a physical book is surprisingly intimate. During this time I make sure to keep my phone off and out of my sight since I’m so easily distracted, haha. The book I’m currently reading (as of October 2020) is called Virus Mania: How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense by Torsten Engelbrecht and Claus Köhnlein.

Phone Calls
Something I didn’t expect to be a part of my self care routine prior to 2020, but I’ve really enjoyed phone conversations with the people I love. As a mixed woman, I have family all over the Middle East, the EU, and America, so when I have a chance to catch up with them whether it’s a 10 minute call or an hour, it replenishes something deep inside of me and living life becomes so much more delightful.

Making Herbal Infusions
Whether its infused honey, water, or a tincture. Making an herbal infusion is so calming for me. There’s so much respect that happens when harvesting and creating medicine for yourself. Respect for the plant, respect for your body, and respect for the medium and overall medicinal outcome of your infusion. Everything from the feeling of the herbs between your fingers, the aromatics, taste, and energy that herb gives you once your medicine is complete is so humbling. My favorite nourishing infusion to make is a Hibiscus Rose infusion. I use one part of each and infuse it for 4 hours in a quart of water. It’s tart, pungent but also sweet and filled with antioxidants. Not to mention it is the most beautiful color.

Self Assessment: Understanding the physical body to better understand your mental psyche.

There is such an intense connection between physical and mental health. Body and Mind. This is an age old idea but recently due to the discoveries of the microbiome, we can see that not only is this a perceived connection, but it’s a tangible, measurable one as well.

I’m a very analytical person, I don’t know what to do with advice as vague as “Love yourself first”. In my life, I attempt to learn about myself by understanding my physical health before tackling my mental health.

Thankfully, I was taught the amazing art of physical self-assessment and observation by the amazing Dr. Ed Bauman.

We’ll be talking about two very important but simple physical self assessments:
-Stool Transit Time Test
- Iris Contraction Test

Self Assessment is simply observing and recording your own actions, feelings, and functions to determine patterns, underlying issues, bad habits, and overall have a sort of map of how you physically treat your body.

Stool Transit Time Test

Yes, It’s exactly what it sounds like. This test is gross, super interesting, and very informative. Transit time testing is simply marking the stool. This can be done using white sesame seeds, charcoal capsules, flax seeds, poppy seeds, corn on the cob, beets, or even liquid chlorophyll to mark your stool. The goal is to observe how many hours it takes until the first sign of the seeds whatever marker you used to show up in your stool.
Your transit time will fall between the time you took the testing agent and the time when you noticed them coming out in your stool.

Remember, your gut is a colony and has a brain of its own. Unhealthy digestion has the power to influence your mood, emotions, and energy.

What information can be found out from the Stool Transit Test?

Yes it seems wack, but this test can tell you so much about your body! Everyone will have a different transit time, for example; generally, people who eat lots of fruits and veggies and grains have a quicker transit time than those who eat refined foods.

• Optimal transit time is considered between 18 and 24.

• Less than 24 hours is faster than optimal, meaning you're eating something at night, and it's eliminating in the morning, or vice versa. This is a sign of hypermotility or poor nutrient absorption. Digestion is going too fast.

• 36 hours or more is slower than optimal. This could mean there's a likelihood of toxicity as substances that need to be eliminated are sitting too long on the colon and could get reabsorbed meaning more stress on the liver.
  
  Transit times will vary each time due to the amount of food you eat, changes in exercise and mobility, medications, menstrual cycle, even seasonal changes.

This test is great for identifying how your digestion is moving. If you’re noticing a faster or slower than optimal transit time, then it’s important to ask yourself some questions:
“What could be in my diet or lifestyle that is causing my digestion to act this way?”
“What are the most obvious changes can I make in my diet and lifestyle to improve my digestive health?”

Iris Contraction Test

Iris contraction test is an amazingly informative and incredibly simple test to gauge the bodies stress levels, mineral reserves and overall health. We are all aware that modern life is incredibly stressful, and most of us don’t get a lot of downtime if we want to live comfortably. Over the course of years, this constant stress can weaken our adrenals, making us less able adapt to stressful events, control our emotions, reduce our overall mood, and limit productity.

Luckily, Dr. James Wilson came up with a simple, at home test using a light and letting our bodies tell us the rest.

A healthy individual will see the pupil dilate
An individual with adrenal depletion or depleted mineral reserve will have an iris that is too weak to do so. To be more accurate, the sympathetic nervous system is too weak to maintain that contraction in the iris, so it will either waiver or stays open.  

The tools you’ll need are:

• a weak flashlight or penlight, not super bright.

• A stopwatch, or watch that shows second hands.

• A mirror since we are looking into our own eyes.

You’ll want to find a dark room and wait for the eyes to adjust to the dark.

Shine the light into the eyes from the side, not the front. Watch your iris in the mirror, normally we would expect the pupil to contract immediately and stay that way for a couple of minutes.

An individual with a normal, well-balanced, nourished, sympathetic nervous system will have a pupil that dilate.

This dilation will take place within 2 minutes and will last for about 30-45 seconds before it recovers and contracts again. Time how long the dilation lasts with the second hand on the watch and record it along with the date. After you do this once, let the eye rest.

What you’re looking for is a sustained, non-pulsing contraction for 30 seconds. The longer the sustained contraction, the better. Pulsing is better than fully releasing, and some people don’t contract at all, which would be a big indicator. What we're looking for is when the dilation occurs, how long it lasts. If you shine a light, and you don't dilate, that means your nervous system is weak and depleted.

This test can be re-done every week to look for improvements in mineral reserve and nervous system reaction.

This test is an early indicator of adrenal fatigue. Pupillary contraction is not nearly as high on the priority list for your adrenals as blood sugar control or blood pressure maintenance. So not doing well on his test doesn’t mean you’re in major depletion and need instant intervention, but rather a nudge to think about stress management, nutrient density in your meals, and self care.

I hope this provided some helpful tools and clarity on the idea of physical and mental self-care. I’d love to hear what your self care routine is or the results of your self assessments in the comments below.

<3

Much love

-Sasha