I’m Lucie Fink and this week is five days of self-care. Hello.
Welcome back to Try Living With Lucie, before we get started give this video a thumbs up
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Okay guys this is about to be the
I had a bit of a rocky January getting back into the
new year and the one way that I was able to pull myself out of that funk was by dedicating
a ton of my energy to self-care.
Seems pretty simple but it's not always that easy.
I did a ton of research to discover what self-care actually is and here's what I came up with;
self-care is the secret to well-being.
It's about reconnecting with yourself.
Being patient with yourself.
Putting yourself first and ultimately self-care is living a balanced life.
I made a recent post on Instagram asking you guys how you practice self-care and I wanted
to let you know that a ton of the activities I'm going to try this week came directly from you.
So first and foremost, thank you.
And secondly, I'm hoping that this episode can sort of be used as a crowdsourced self-care
guide book.
So, let's get into it.
One of the biggest ways that I seem to neglect caring for myself is in the physical sense.
My job is constantly on the move.
I'm running around New York City I'm carrying a lot of gear most of the time, yet I rarely
find the time to do those little teeny tiny physical things that can make a huge difference.
So today I went to Chill House which calls itself a downtown escape for city dwellers,
seeking a modern path to total relaxation.
I started with their signature Chill Me Out Blend.
And then went into the back for a full body massage.
Today's massage was such a great way to start my week of self-care.
And then I immediately followed it up with a chill house signature nail design, done
by one of their in-house nail artists.
It was a full-on pampering process.
We're talking 45 minutes gel manicure with the LED lights, hand massage, moisturizer, the works.
This is what I came out with–
Ooh!
And then for the rest of the day anytime I picked up my phone or I did anything it
was looking at my fingers.
I felt lifted up in a way that I'm not used to feeling because, I typically don't have
my nails done.
There's something about having well manicured fingernails and moisturized hands,
that makes you look down at yourself and think,
Yesterday was focused on physical self-care but today I wanted to take a beat to reorganize
my thoughts here and to really understand self-care a little better.
Because truthfully self-care has become a bit of a fad recently.
And I know here I am making another YouTube video about it perpetuating the fad and that’s
not necessarily a bad thing.
But I read a recent Refinery 29 article citing that self-care is now a 400-billion-dollar industry.
People might start to think that they need to buy certain things in order to feel good
about themselves.
And that's not what self-care is about.
So today I wanted to steer away from the physical and the tangible and instead focused on the
mental and the emotional.
I had a brief FaceTime call with a licensed therapist this morning and the first thing
she had me do was conduct a self evaluation.
I began by defining my needs as she called it.
Do I need more sleep?
Do I need to give myself a break?
What areas of my life are lacking and all these questions that I ask myself led me directly
to my bullet journal.
One of the reasons I love the bullet journal so much is because all you really need is
a pen and paper and you too can have a bullet journal.
I'm going to do an entire vlog following up with my bullet journal, I'll do a flip through
and I'll let you plan with me.
Today I just focused on a few things.
First and foremost, I watercolored.
Painting is an art form that for me really calms me down and relaxes me.
I've actually found that painting helps me feel more meditative than meditating.
And then when I was done with that I used my bullet journal to plan out the five days
in this episode.
I already spent yesterday on physical care.
Today was about the emotional side and then I planned out tomorrow, Thursday and Friday.
As I learned from today's self-evaluation,
I'm not very good at taking time to reflect.
I rarely take time to step back and look at my life and express gratitude for what already is.
So, I use my bullet journal today to create a gratitude log and I just wrote out a bunch
of things that I'm really grateful for.
You can get a journal from anywhere and then turn it into this customized personal bullet
journal that works for you.
But if you're interested in looking for bullet journal inspiration just go on Instagram
You will be amazed.
About a year ago I did five days of natural remedies and I loved how it felt to include
so many natural things like herbs and essential oils in my life.
There's something about connecting with the earth and bringing those elements into me
that made me feel very centered and balanced and I wanted to explore that a little bit
more.
So today is all about the holistic nature of self-care.
I set up a herbal consultation at Naturopathica in Chelsea and it was life changing.
If you're super confused about what this means let me explain.
An herbal consultation is meant to supplement the advice from your general practitioner.
So these herbalists can’t diagnose you or treat any illnesses but they can advise you
on herbs that are traditionally used for health and vitality.
The whole process begins with an intake form where you basically sit down and answer a
million questions about every single aspect of your life: your diet, your stress levels,
your workout, your bathroom patterns, your skin and so much more.
Then you have a private conversation with a licensed herbalist and they work with you
to address any imbalances in your life.
How do you sleep at night?
We only filmed a little bit of my consultation because it's meant to be fully confidential.
I'm going to ask to see your tongue so if you could just stick it way out, like this.
Ahh.
I know it takes a little time.
If you need to re-salivate don’t be shy.
So far you seem pretty human.
But then the cameras left and I wound up sitting there with Torin for two hours.
It's a very personal and private experience so I'm not going to share too much about what
we talked about but just to give you a general idea of two major takeaways that I got from
this first consultation.
Number one: caffine has not been great for me.
It always leads to a stomach ache for me and also general feelings of over activity.
I talk in my sleep.
I feel higher levels of stress than what’s normal.
So, I think I need to keep coffee in just for one more week because the next video I'm
filming I'm going to need coffee but after that I'm cutting it out cold turkey and hopefully
we'll see if that makes me feel any better.
And number two Torin wants to help support my liver is functioning because as you might
know I had my gallbladder taken out last year and so without that organ there’s
a bit more pressure being put on my liver and then we finished up the day with an herbal
infusion made at the Naturopathica vitality bar.
To make your life easy,
it's just equal parts.
You know it's just tea it's not rocket science.
So i'm going to put some linden, lemon balm, some sage, orange peel.
So then what I'm going to do is take some hot water, pour that hot water over your herbs.
Let It steep for, in this case, a good 15 minutes.
Typically, I just kind of give it a little stir or two to help absorb.
Oh, it smells good.
How is it?
Really good.
I know it might sound like we went real in-depth today talking for two hours but the
truth is we've really only skimmed the surface.
Thank you, Torin.
My pleasure.
I want to hug you.
I’m so excited to work with you.
Yeah, likewise. It was great to meet you.
I will keep you up to date.
My whole series at Refinery 29 is about trying new things and I've found that learning every
week and delving into new challenges has been one of the most effective forms of self-care.
So today I wanted to keep that up and try out a new healing practice that I have never
attempted.
A sound bath.
I went back to Naturopathica and where they have the guided sound bath meditation series
going on and I hopped in on one of the classes.
The instructor Tamalyn had these crystal bowls of all different sizes and she was using a
mallet and running it along the rim of each bowl and each time she did it it was creating this
resonating sound in the room.
Right now I'm playing you the actual audio from the room.
It's difficult to describe but it's almost as if the sounds are not coming from external
places but the sound is just coming from right inside of your head.
And if you think of your ears as two different sides of the ping pong table the sound is
like a ping pong ball that's just pinging back and forth between your ears.
I thought it was very cool it had me feeling incredibly relaxed.
But the moment I got home the first thing I thought of was I want to make sure that
the self-care exercises that I practice this week and show to you are things that are doable
at home, which is why I decided to try and build my own DIY sound bath at home.
And what better way to take a sound bath experiment to the next level than to do it in the bath.
So, you might have noticed already I'm in the bathroom.
Here's the toilet paper I put on a bathing suits that I could bring you...
and you and you and you and all YouTube into the bathroom with me and lit a row of candles
along the edge of the tub, poured in some Naturopathica Body Oil, stepped in, and then put on a pair
of noise canceling headphones that were playing a sound bath meditation video from YouTube.
I have to be honest with you the in-person version was a lot more effective than the
DIY at home version because I was actually feeling the sound and it is resonating within
my body.
But listening through your headphones did not give me the same effect as sitting in
a room and listening to those bowls live.
Every single person out there has a unique method of caring for themselves and what works
for person A might not work at all for person B.
So, this is an exploratory game here.
I wanted Friday of this episode to be about practicing self-care the way that I myself
most often do it, so that I can give you guys a glimpse into my typical practice.
I invited my co-worker Empress to my apartment and in my living room we did a private yoga
session with Amanda, who is the yoga instructor that I go to pretty much every Saturday and
Sunday.
We focused on twist's, balance.
Lots of balance.
And we did breathing exercises.
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
And by the end we felt so chilled out.
Then Amanda walked us through a crash course in
essential oils and they were the type of oils that were safe to both apply topically but
also to ingest.
So, we got to taste them, smelled them.
It was a lot of fun.
Afterwards we did unique facemasks based on our individual skin needs.
And then we just hung out on the couch and watched a few episodes of Friends.
That to me is a classic self-care day: spending time with people I love, doing yoga, learning
something new, skincare rituals and friends.
You got to know what you like.
But now I want to know what your ideal self-care day looks like
so comment that below.
Remember, self-care is not about selfishly considering your needs and your needs alone.
It's about understanding that if you don't care for yourself properly how are you ever
going to be able to care for or give to the people around you?
So love yourself and take care of yourself fully.
Because it's key to an improved mood and a good relationship with yourself and others.
Thanks for coming back and let me know what you want to see me try
next time for five days at a time.
Oh, wait!
Self-care.
Hey YouTube thanks for watching.
Click here for another video on Refinery29, right here to subscribe to us on YouTube
and here for my personal YouTube channel.
See ya!