Owning Self-Love: Reclaiming Your Peace 11/25/2009
 Tyrika Swails is the owner and Chief Element Officer of mainelement: love – a spa product gift company. She creates spa products that incorporate natural elements creating healthier alternatives to popular brands. She offers scents that have aromatherapudic benefits and her products line intentionally avoids the use of many elements commonly found in personal care products that are harsh, abrasive, drying and linked to cancers. You can follow her on Twitter and take a look at her constantly growing product line on her website. Busy, BusyLet me share with you a brief glimpse into my days. 7:00 – alarm goes off 7:09 – alarm off again (I snoozed it) 7:17 - *knock knock* my 10 year old son is letting me know he’s up 7:30 – I finally roll out of bed to find him in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal or waffles from the toaster. I grab the laptop, plop down in front of Good Morning America, check my email, Facebook and Twitter to respond and touch bases with anyone that needs tending to this early in the morning, as I verbally usher my son through his morning ritual and out the door for school.  This is how I start pretty much everyday. I’d love to wake up at 6:30 and enjoy a quiet moment of meditation to start my day with a clear, peaceful head. Unfortunately, the day before was so hectic: processing orders, meeting with clients, checking homework, cooking dinner, playing games with the family, blogging, cleaning, football practice, that I’m thoroughly exhausted by the time my head the pillow every night. Finding a moment for me, just ME, to just sit still and just breathe, and just BE is next to impossible. Sound familiar? Maintaining a sense of peace and harmony can be challenging when you are being pulled every which way. The duties of wife, mother, friend, and employee are all very rewarding in a sense but also lead to a lack of time for self. It takes recognition, acknowledgment and acceptance to work on bringing a sense of balance back into your life. You have to show yourself the love you deserve, and you have to experience some tranquility from time to time.  We as women have to reclaim time for ourselves to relax and mentally unwind. One place I am always able to find time for myself is my daily bath ritual. A bath for me has never and will never be just a means of mundane cleaning. This is the time that I take for myself to pamper and unwind. I have a set of bath products that were created with lavender and vanilla essential oils for the sole purpose of aromatherapy to wash away the stress of my days. I drop in a bath bomb and as it fizzes I look forward to stepping in to indulge myself in the aromatherapudic properties of the essential oils, the healing qualities of the sea salts, and the shea butter that is going to help replenish the moisture I lost throughout my day. And then I just sit. I force myself to mentally check out and just be still, something that I have a very hard time doing without intention. Sometimes I pray, sometimes I try to meditate, but most importantly I tune myself out to anything and everything that is outside of the bathroom door. When I’m ready, I take my time climbing out, pat dry with a towel, apply my body butter and go on about the rest of my evening.  It’s very difficult to set aside time to simply do something to keep yourself at the level of peace and harmony that you truly deserve. It’s much easier to look for bite size pieces of time that you can ‘steal away’ and not feel so guilty about. Using my bath time is my way of reclaiming the peace of mind I deserve to have and have to have in order to be the best me I can be to my family, my friends, and my clients. Reclaiming your peace, your harmony, your joy is a choice. I make the conscious choice to take time for myself. I make the conscious choice to incorporate aromatherapy because the healthy aspect of it is very important to me to maintaining the quality of life I deserve. I choose to try aromatherapy before taking other avenues of de-stressing because I love myself enough to avoid synthetic, manmade alternatives whenever possible. Will you? CommentsLeave a Reply |
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