Are you in touch with your inner critic? Most of us have one - that nagging, cruel voice in our minds telling us we’re not smart enough, not fit enough, not capable enough, or simply not enough. Sometimes our inner critic can be loud, and speak in a voice we recognize if we listen carefully - maybe a family member, a friend, a teacher - someone who made real-life criticisms of us that we internalized so much at one point in our lives (often childhood), that we now carry them in our heads every day, constantly reminding us of our perceived flaws and faults.

The concept of Self-Care is everywhere these days. The beauty industry uses it to sell us the latest products and the health and wellness industries also seem to have lots of ideas about “doing Self-Care right”, and they usually involve spending exorbitant amounts of money. 

I’m writing this to tell you about MY very basic version of Self-Care, and guess what - it’s free!

Self-Care is exactly what it sounds like, taking care of ourselves, and it can take endless forms. Yes, it can involve luxurious skin creams and expensive supplements, but it doesn’t HAVE to. In fact, one of my favorite forms of Self-Care just involves saying a single word: NO.

I absolutely love forest bathing, or Shinrin-yoku as it is called in Japan. I love it partly for its silly name, but mostly because it’s really good for us. Studies have been conducted for decades to investigate the effect of forest environments on human health. The conclusions of a 2022 study done in Japan are truly extraordinary: