A Self-Care Toolkit For Mom

Ahhhh Mother’s Day. A day moms are treated to brunch, flowers, cards, hugs, handmade mugs, and praise galore. For one day of the year. It’s appreciated, no doubt. But this Mother’s Day, perhaps we provide a gift that will keep caring for mom the rest of the year just as she does for all those in her life?

Wholistic Health YYC and Rocky Mountain Soap Co. have teamed up to help you curate a custom self-care toolkit for your mom. Because one hour of alone time and feeling pampered is great, but it shouldn’t just happen at a spa once a year! She can use this toolkit to sprinkle mindful exercises throughout the day or to integrate all together into her morning or evening routine.

Visit your local Rocky Mountain Soap Co to choose self-care products for your mom. Some suggestions that pair well with the mindfulness practices included in the Mindful Mama Routine Building Kit:

• Essential oils
• Soap bar
• Body Wash
• Bath Salts
• Soap Sack

After you’ve handpicked the products that suit mom’s tastes and needs, find a basket or bowl in the house that you can reuse for mom’s present. Print the free downloadable self-care practices to include in the basket. If you want to go the extra mile (like mom so often does for you!), visit a local craft shop to hand pick the paper that you will print the self-care rituals on. Write a card that acknowledges how hard mom works year round, and offer any support, from helping around the house to protecting a time period each day, that will help her build a mindful routine.

Does mom live a distance away and you can’t get this custom self-care kit to her? No problem! Download and forward the self-care toolkit and do your online order to send to mom’s doorstep today!

Mindful Mama Rituals

Mama, you work hard year round, there’s no reason your self-care and pampering should happen for one hour a year in a spa!

mindful movement + breathing exercise

A daily home yoga practice may not be in the cards for you at this stage in life. And that’s OKAY! Try this mindful movement and breathing exercise in your routine and see how it blossoms. This mindful exercise adapted from Vietnamese Buddhist monk, author, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

The mindful movement “Open Like a Flower” involves the following steps:

1. Choose a floral based essential oil such as lavender, serenity, sweet orange, or any others of your choosing. Place a few drops in a diffuser or rub between the palms of your hand breathing in the essence.
   
   
   
2. Stand confidently but not stiffly. Ams at your side. Allowing your legs to descent from your hips like the stem of a flower, and grow roots from your feet into the ground below.
   
   
   
3. Allow your gaze to soften to a spot in front of you or close your eyes if comfortable
   
   
4. Breath in. Lift your arms straight out to the side, palms up, until your hands are in line with your shoulders.
   
   
   
5. Breath out. Now touch your shoulders with your fingertips while keeping your upper arms parallel to the ground.
   
   
6. As you breathe in, open your arms wide, extending them until they’re stretched out to a horizontal position parallel with the ground again.
   
   
7. Breath out. Bend your elbows. Touch your shoulders with your fingertips.
   
   
   
8. As you breathe in, think of your body as a flower, opening up to the warm sun.
   
   
9. As you breathe out, think of your body as a flower closing up.
   
   
10. With your fingertips back touching your shoulders, do this movement of opening and closing your flower 3 more times.
    
    
11. Now lower your arms back down to your sides.
    
    
12. Take 3 deep belly breaths, open your eyes, feeling refreshed and with a renewed sense of vitality.
    
    

mindful bathing

When children are young, time is carved out to bath and play. For moms of teens, you’re often feeling like a broken record reminding them to bathe. It’s a chore. But what if we reframe it to being a mindful moment for YOU mama, where you can sprinkle your shower with awareness, relaxation, awaking the senses?

Try one or all of these tips and tools:

• Breathe: When you first step into the shower or lie down in the tub, take one deep inhale through the nose to the count of 4, hold for 7, and take an extended exhale through the mouth to a count of 8. Sigh as you exhale. Do a few cycles of this breathing exercise to start your shower time. This is your moment, here and now, you have nowhere else to be.
• Smell: Use toxin free body wash, soap bars, and essential oils to engage your senses! You can also put a couple drops of essential oil under running water or on the floor of the shower. Close your eyes and inhale the aroma deeply.
• Feel: Notice the glide of the soap bar or the gritty exfoliating effect of a soap sack along your skin. Notice the temperature of the water. Notice the texture of your hair between your fingers as you wash it.
• Listen: There are layers of sound when running a bath and being in the bath, as well as in the shower. From the sound of the water coming from the showerhead, the sound of lathering shampoo in the hair, the sound of treating your skin with a scrub.
• See: Watch the water running, the bubbles forming on your skin.
• Mind The Mind: It’s easy to think of a million things in the shower or bathtub… from the emails awaiting you in your inbox, to what to make for breakfast or lunches the next morning. The mind will naturally wander when bathing. it takes practice and anchoring into your senses with the tips above to start to be more mindful in the sensual experience of a shower or bath!

Sally Powis-Campbell - a local Registered Psychologist, Yoga Teacher, Meditation Guide, Author and Public Speaker who is passionate about helping people infuse mindfulness into their everyday lives.