Democratic Self-Care: Your Breath
How will you resource yourself when you feel stressed? When you need support and care, but you find yourself alone in the house with a newborn? The best answer for stress is to have a community of support (family, friends, & neighbors) that surround you and ensure your needs are being meet.
Unfortunately modern culture has left many without those strong community connections and you may need more support. Self-care is a HUGE buzzword these days, but the solutions that pop up in your Facebook feed or Instagram feed are filled with consumer goods, pricey items, and complicated self-care protocols.
I’m here to tell you that what you need as a new mama is democratic self-care options.
Democratic Self-Care means the care is accessible, simple, and can be enjoyed by anyone. That the care isn’t limited to those with financial resources or husbands or partners that provide time away from the children (think about massages, vacations, getting your nails done). It’s fine if you have fancy self-care regimens as well that help you feel good, but we also need those simple recipes that do the trick at 2am when your baby is fussy. Democratic self care isn’t complicated and doesn’t rely on an answer from consumerism to support our health. We don’t have to leave our house to access this care and it makes it easier to center our care as mothers.
The most powerful and democratic tools we have as mothers to restore our energy and heal our bodies after birth is our own breath.
Time alone in the early postpartum can often be filled with racing thoughts, worries, and a long to-do list. Being in a relaxed state through our own breath improves circulation, reduces stress, maintains the body’s pH balance, supports healthy digestion, support more restful sleep & helps your brain and body slow down. The more relaxed you can become, the more you will restore your natural energy, which is so important when caring for babies and children!
You don’t need an advanced meditation practice for your breath to restore health!
Start with awareness of your breath. We breath 20,000 times per day! Take a few moments or minutes each day to focus on breathing in and out without judgement of how you are doing it.
When ready, learn a basic deep breathing practice, I like Dr. Mimi Guarneri’s from her webpage on Breathing for Stress Reduction:
First exhale completely through your mouth. Place your hands on your stomach.
Breathe in slowly through your nose, pushing your hands out with your stomach. This ensures that you are breathing deeply. Imagine that you are filling your body with air from the bottom up.
Hold your breath to a count of two to five, or whatever you can handle. It is easier to hold your breath if you continue to hold out your stomach.
Slowly and steadily breathe out through your mouth, feeling your hands move back in as you slowly contract your stomach, until most of the air is out. Exhalation is a little longer than inhalation.