Making Sense of Self-Care

A Weekly Integrative Health Program to Engage Your Five Senses for Self-Care

Integrative health blends conventional and complementary approaches to health and wellness in order to increase awareness of the mind-body connection, examples of which include aromatherapy, color therapy, music therapy, mindfulness eating, and acupressure.  

Making Sense of Self-Care is a 5-week series dedicated to different integrative health techniques that utilize each one of the five senses (eyesight, hearing, taste, touch, smell). Every week, users will be invited to learn how to more actively engage one of their five senses by learning a new integrative health technique for self-care. Each of the five senses is featured on its own unique web page, with activities that use your senses to create a more holistic experience. 

Give this brief mindfulness exercises a try to help you get a feel for how to focus on each of your five senses. Before you try out the exercise, we suggest you settle down, take a few relaxing breaths in your nose and out of your mouth. Allow yourself to be fully present for the next two minutes without any distractions.

Self-care can be defined as any action, behavior or thought that a person engages in to directly improve the quality of their life. There are numerous approaches to stepping up your self-care practice and learning integrative health techniques can be a wonderful new way to do so. These types of approaches aim to increase the user’s awareness of the mind-body connection. How we think and feel are connected, harnessing the mind-body connection through the senses, is a great way to manage stress, increase health awareness and increase overall wellbeing.

What to Expect in this Series: 

Each week you will be introduced to an integrative health modality such as aromatherapy, color therapy, music therapy, mindfulness eating, and acupressure that will spark a sense and will connect you to your mind, body and the environment surrounding you.

Aims of the Program:

• Introductory understanding of the benefits of integrative health exercises and practices for self-care.
• Increased awareness of engaging the five senses to promote health practices
• Recognition of the mind-body connection.
• Greater sense of awareness and connection to environment and other.

 What You’ll Need:

For each week we suggest you carve out 5-15 minutes of secured quiet time for you to learn, and practice each of the techniques. In addition to the reserved time, you may also benefit from the use of the following items:

Week 1: Sight: Print-out or screen to view color wheel, paper and writing utensil to document

Week 2: Smell: Tissue/cotton ball and lavender or lemon essential oil

Week 3: Taste: One apple

Week 4: Touch: Hand sanitizer

Week 5: Hearing: A quiet space