SUMMER VITALITY TOOLKIT
The warmer summer months are the perfect time to refresh your self-care toolkit and create an easy, holistic approach for yourself and your family. Here are some simple strategies to help you listen to your body’s inner wisdom and recharge your vital energy.
Charge Your Battery
Self-care isn’t selfish and it doesn’t have to be what society tells us it is. When we can focus on being in parasympathetic (relaxation response) our bodies can recover and relax better to our everyday activities and stressors, but not when we’re on the go.
What does self-care look like for you? What lights you up? What are you passionate about and makes you feel amazing afterwards? Whatever those things are, we need to make it more a priority.
Self-care is unique for each of us and we want to honor whatever charges your battery and renews your energy. Take 5 minutes, step outside and enjoy the flowers. Count those things as self-care. The more charges we can grab, the healthier we’re going to be.
Listen to Your Body
If you’ve been living too much in your head, it’s time to get to know your body again. Listen to your intuition. The cravings that you might be having, might not be just casual cravings. They're signs that your body knows exactly what it needs to get healthy.
Eat with The Seasons
Optimize your digestion by eating during daylight hours and around the food that is in season. Visit your local Farmer’s Market or pick what is ready to harvest in your own garden. When you can get outside, get your hands dirty, and connect with the earth it will help ground and center our minds and slow down our stress response.
Get Outside and Move
Summer is always a great time to get outside, breathe deep, and fill up our lungs. Give yourself space to stretch and move freely and connect with nature. Regular movement is essential and your body thrives on it.
Physical activity like walking, rocking, or dancing can help optimize our digestion and lymphatic drainage. Our lymphatic system can get thick and congested in the colder months. Movement and proper hydration will help to thin it out, making our skin and body feel better when our lymph is moving. I love to set aside some time to do lymphatic rocking chair therapy to stimulate my digestion and calm my nervous system.
Give yourself the gift of time. Kick off your shoes and walk in the grass barefoot. Ground and let yourself feel good. There are so many ways we can choose to nourish ourselves.
Add Some Sunshine
Turn your face up and enjoy the wonderful sunshine and beautiful fresh air. Sunshine will stimulate your mitochondria and if you expose your belly, the microbes in our belly will thank you. To protect your skin from the summer sun, Jason and I use 100% Aloe to help support our skin. We use the spray aloe from Thrive Market and we’ll put it on our skin a couple times a day. You can also use coconut oil, which has a natural SPF of 4.
I also recommend checking out the Environmental Working Group (EWG) Guide to Sunscreens for what sunscreen’s are clean to use. We support EWG and donate to them and are always a great source of research so you can make educated, healthy decisions about everyday products.
Stay Hydrated
For optimal hydration, we need both filtered water and electrolytes or minerals. Staying hydrated, especially in the summer, is so important because we lose a lot of our water and electrolytes when we sweat.
To replenish my electrolytes, I’ll add a packet of Revitalize to 32 ounces of filtered water to help fuel my body’s energy production. Or you can also add fruit to water and/or use unrefined salt on your food.
Get Your Rest
Good quality, deep sleep is one of the best things we can do to charge our battery. I strive for 7-9 hours per night, but I know that sometimes that can be a challenge. So, that’s why it’s important that at the end of the day we can relax and let go. Here are some helpful sleep tips to improve your sleep.
Give yourself a little time every day to recharge and enjoy this beautiful time of year.