5 WAYS I CREATE AND CULTIVATE SELF CARE AND SELF LOVE

I'm so excited for this year's Create and Cultivate Summit. I've always wanted to attend since learning about the event about three years ago. Even though I was a late bloomer in finding out about it, Create and Cultivate was founded in 2012. Since it's start there has been about 75 conferences that has included guest speakers like Issa Rae, Gloria Steinem, Meghan Markle and so many more women of influence. The platform encourages and inspires women to create and cultivate the lives and careers of their dreams.

This year's Create and Cultivate summit will be digital and held Saturday, July 25. The focus of this year's summit is near and dear to my heart, self love and self care. I started my career as a massage therapist in 2000 and what I learned as a therapist not only assisted me in helping my clients, but I truly believe that all I learned changed my life.

It's a fairly long story that I'll share some other time, but long story short, in my 30's I was overweight and my cholesterol was high. Considering one of my grandparents died at age 59 from heart disease, I definitely was not heading in the right direction with my health nor my life.

It took some time to create long lasting habits of eating well, exercise, detoxing my body and also some people out of my life, as well as changing my mindset on a host of things.

I'm excited that self care is taking a forefront and being seen as essential and not just a luxury. I'm also very happy that it is being seen as not selfish. That's one of the things I would share with my clients, that it is not selfish and that they were doing more than treating themselves, they were taking care of where they had to live, their bodies. I would share that it was essential for them to take care of what they feed their bodies literally, spiritually and mentally as well as what they put onto their bodies.

I'm so looking forward to this year's conference. I'm also looking forward to trying the box of goodies they've shared. And although I look forward to hearing about the industry being a trillion dollar industry, it has always been important to me that self care rituals, as an essential are affordable.

Here are 5 Ways I've created and cultivated self care and self love rituals that happen to be pretty darn inexpensive.

1. Spend some time alone with a good book or magazine or doing absolutely nothing. Just Be.
2. Do things that brings you joy. For me it's writing and reading my poems, photography, playfully creating, spending time with friends, playing my cajon :), trying new things, travelling which I've learned to do so frugally, and oh my gosh, there's so much more. I try to juice every single moment out of this beautiful and crazy thing called life.
3. Enjoy a nice long bath. I indulge in a nice long bath for 3o minutes every other week. I love to light candles, infuse the bath with essential oils and sometimes candles, turn on my favorite music and just relax, uninterrupted with a small glass of wine, tea or sparkling water.
4. Exercise. A good sweat from exercising is my jam. It feels so good and my mind afterwards feels so clear. I don't sweat after my swims, however I love it so much as it gives me the same feelings of calm and clarity. I also LOVE to box.
5. When possible, take your time cooking. I love to cook slowly while listening to music as well as taking my time to enjoy my meal. I read somewhere that it should take us 20 minutes to eat. I don't time myself or anything, lol, however I enjoy that I allow myself time to eat.

What self care rituals have you created for yourself?