3 Takeaways From My Recent Trips to the Hospital

You may have noticed that I have not written any blog posts or been on social media much lately. That’s because I had some more important issues to deal with, as you may have guessed from the picture above. My husband is currently in the second week of a flukey illness, two days of which he has spent in the hospital. (He is back home and on the mend, but still not quite at 100% yet.) So, besides the day to day of running my yoga + wellness business, I have been helping him out and picking up a lot of the slack around the house. Needless to say, it’s been a somewhat chaotic and stressful couple of weeks. Here are three takeaways I’ve had during this time:

Staying as healthy as possible is super-important.

I don’t know about you, but spending time in the ER (my husband waited 8 hours until he was finally seen) and a basement hospital room strengthened my resolve to take extra-good care of myself. Why end up in places like that if, by eating well, exercising and cutting out stress, I can lower my risk of spending time in the hospital–as well as some exorbitant medical bills–throughout my life? Prevention is key. This is one of the main reasons I am so passionate about incorporating holistic wellness themes into my yoga courses. (In fact, my upcoming course, aptly named 7 Weeks of Wellness, includes a different wellness-themed yoga practice each week for digestion, bones + joints, Seasonal Affective Disorder and much more.)

Self-care on a daily basis truly makes a difference.

As you can imagine, the last couple weeks have been busy and stressful. But through it all, I have been determined to keep my self-care a priority. This is a promise I made to myself a couple of years ago after doing a lot of my own personal work around this topic, and I am fierce about keeping it. Yes, my husband’s health was a priority, but when I knew he was getting the care he needed I prioritized what else mattered on a day-to-day basis, and kept my self-care toward the top of the list. Don’t get me wrong; I would often push myself down the list as the day went on and unexpected things popped up that I had to attend to–but I NEVER took myself off the list. That made all the difference in the world. I have been able to feel much more grounded and centered throughout this ordeal, not to mention less stressed and resentful. In case you are curious, I share everything I learned about the obstacles standing in the way of my own self-care, and all the solutions I used to overcome them, in my Stop Sabotaging Your Self-Care online course.

Mind-set matters.

The last takeaway I had during my recent trips to the hospital is that mind-set matters. If you are a Highly Sensitive Person like me, you know that my idea of hell is driving endless loops through a hospital parking structure looking for a place to park while not one, but two, different car alarms are going off and a jackhammer is hammering away someplace nearby. (If you aren’t an HSP and these things wouldn’t bother you, count yourself lucky.) I could feel my nervous system reacting–my heart started beating faster and the adrenaline started pumping through my body–on my first visit to the hospital. On the second visit, I took a different approach. As I drove to the hospital, I recited two different mantras to myself. The first is an affirmation (sankalpa) I often use during my daily meditation practice: I move through life with ease and grace; I am relaxed. (I share this helpful affirmation meditation in my new Meditation Medley audio download series.) The second I have borrowed from the author Glennon Doyle’s podcast name: We Can Do Hard Things. So was that second experience in the hospital parking structure any more pleasant? No, not really, but I moved through it with ease and grace, much more relaxed, because I can do hard things! My mind-set made all the difference.

What I want you to take away from this blog post is that if you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed out,  anxious or resentful; if your self-care or health are suffering; if you don’t have the motivation to exercise or eat well, there are things that can help. I share so many good resources on my website and wellness blog, and in my classes, courses and in-person sessions. I have personal experience with all the tools and techniques I share, and have greatly benefited from them myself. My hope is that these offerings do the same thing for you that they do for me: build your resiliency so that you can move through life with ease and grace, you can do hard things.