EP 205: Shelly Tygielski | Discover the Power of Authentic Self-Care

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Welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. This is your host, Dr. Fleet Mohl. And today I'm very happy to share with you a conversation I had with Shelly Tugelsky. Shelly is a dedicated organizer, speaker, and advocate for social justice and self care. She discovered the importance of self care as an activist, seeing how many activists were burning out because they were not practicing good self care. So in this episode, I'm going to talk with Shelley about how self care is not a matter of being soft, but rather a matter of self preservation. About the importance of reframing the term self care into community care. Why finding joy and partaking in joy is a moral obligation when self care can be too indulgent. And effective techniques for creating micro practices, sort of self care micro practices throughout the day and much more. So before we get started, you know, if you love our interviews, please don't miss an episode. Subscribe now on your favorite platform. And I wanted to let you know that you can download my free neurosomatic mindfulness ebook@www.heartmind.co NSMPodcast. That's www.heartmind.co NSMPodcast. You can also order my book Radical Responsibility and get over $1,000 in free bonuses today, including courses and challenges by going to radicalresponsibilitybook.com radicalresponsibilitybook.com there you can go to your favorite book online bookseller, purchase the book, get the receipt, post it on the site and you will receive more than $1,000 in bonuses. Please join our Facebook group at facebook.com groups hmisummit10community. You can also become a member of HeartMind Summits and our All Access community for HeartMind Summits and HeartMind courses at HeartMind co. Hmm. HeartMind co. Hmm. Please follow us on Instagram@instagram.com heartmindinstitute and on Facebook at facebook.com heartmind heartmindinstitute. And you can always simply visit heartmind.co or heartmind co to learn more about all of our programs. Okay, so let's get started with this episode with self care advocate and expert Shelly Tigelsky.

And I'm thrilled to be here today with Shelly Tigelsky. Welcome, Shelley. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. I'm so honored to be here.

Yeah, thank you very much for being part of the summit. We're thrilled to start off day one with you, so I'm going to share a little bit of your background and then we'll jump right into the conversation. Sound good?

Yeah.

So Shelly Jjielski had a long career, I think two decades in the corporate sector, has also been an activist, working to support.

Involved in the Women's March and working to support organizations such as Mark For Our Lives, Black Lives Matter, Indigenous Work and so forth. And that activism can take its toll and lead to exhaustion and there can be a lot of letdowns and so forth. So Shelley has a personal investment in self care and she's written a book, Sit Down To Rise How Radical Self Care Can Change the World. And so pretty clear why we're starting off with Shelly today on day one of the summit. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Miami, a master's degree from Columbia University. She's certified in mbsr, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. And she's also in process to be certified by the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. And Mindful magazine listed her as one of the most powerful women in mindfulness. Okay.

So again, welcome. And here we are on day one of the summit. And although self care seems like really a no brainer at this point, especially given the very challenging times we're going through.

And yet I think for many of us, we may have conscious or unconscious arguments against self care or blockages in relation to self care. We may equate it with selfishness or self indulgence or even narcissism. We might feel it's a luxury we can't afford, that we're too busy with our lives, jobs, kids, other family responsibilities, trying to make it in the world.

And so on. So yeah, it would be great, but I just don't have time or for a lot of men, they may regard self care as soft or as kind of a woman's thing. Uh, so given all that, what, what are your arguments for self care and what would you say to those kind of resistances that people might have or, or you know, whatever the real challenges that people may be facing in terms of, you know, finding the time to take better care of themselves?

Yeah, so I mean, all those arguments are certainly valid and many of those are things that I've said to myself at one time or another. However, in this world that we're living in, that really is 24, 7 culture of busyness, 24 hour news cycles, you know, the infusion of a barrage constantly of information about what's happening in the world and there's Always things that are happening in the world, you know, things get heavier and heavier and can be more daunting. And so my argument for individuals is really based in a lot of the work that Audre Lorde has done and has gifted us with prior to her passing. And that is that self care is really not an act of self indulgence. It's not a matter of being soft. It's a matter of self preservation. And when we look at where self care was originally rooted, where the term self care really was born from, and you think about the feminist movement and the civil rights movement.

It'S very apparent that self care, from that perspective of being an act of self preservation, was something that people used to survive. It wasn't until very recently when the industrial wellness complex that we. We have here in the Western world sort of hijacked that term and made it, or associated it with thriving. You know, so many people in this world, and certainly still in the Western world, certainly here in the United States, are still struggling with the very notion with just surviving day to day. And so, you know, my argument to people is that you have to expand your idea of what self care actually means. I understand that the term self can imply, of course, individualism, right? The self. When we say the self, people automatically think, oh, this body, this I, this me that is looking back at me in the mirror. But the reality is, and I think you and I could both agree on this, you know, we probably have the same philosophy that really the self extends far beyond this body suit that we wear. And actually it, it affects our, our community, our self has to do with every interaction, every act of kindness, every act of, you know, of unkindness that, that we may put out into the world on a daily basis. And so if we reframe the term self care and we start thinking about it really as communities of care or as collective care, then it becomes, I think, a pill that's a lot easier to swallow for people, men, for example, who may say, you know, oh, it may be too soft for me, come from a culture maybe that, you know, taking care, being a caretaker, right, Taking care of your family is something that is acceptable. Suddenly, if self care is framed through that lens, then it's something that they can participate in. Same thing for women, right? Women, we are raised to be caretakers as well, but we're not often taught to be self caretakers because that's considered to be selfish. And so I think that reframing the term self care, and I know that it's in the title of my book. But I don't think that the world was yet ready to eliminate.

The term completely. But my hope is that eventually that term gets retired. And we really are talking about it and framing it from, from a lens of collective care and communal care where we take care of one another.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, yet I realize that the self thing always implies the individual. But I mean, we are individuals, so there's nothing fundamentally wrong with being an individual.

Right.

And.

You know, I think to do collective care, to create community, it requires people who are doing some level of self care, who have some level of resil and well being and strength to do that with each other. Right. And can support each other when one is down, one is up and all that. But in general, I think there is the individual and collective work. And what you were saying reminded me of a colleague who's a former police lieutenant and coast Guard command comes from a world of pretty macho kind of stuff. And he talks about engaging in self care as just smart. Like he knows he works in a profession where there's a lot of exposure to chronic stress, primary and secondary trauma exposure. And for him, seeing what he calls his mental health coach on a regular basis, seeing his chiropractor doing all the things to keep himself resilient is just working smart. So I think you could also say self care is just smart, especially in today's world with the challenges we're facing. So you describe it though in your book or in the subtitle of your book, and you go on to talk about it more in your book as radical self care. So what do you mean by radical self care? And is there a point at which self care could become self indulgent, though? I guess those are two different questions.

Yeah. So I think the first, you know, to answer the first question, what radical self care is, as I frame it in the book, is really the notion that again, it's rooted in.

It was rooted in radical times. It was rooted in movements that were considered, considered to be incredibly radical. The civil rights movement, the feminist movement and so on. And so it's this hearkening, this notion that again, that, yes, you're right, there is nothing wrong with being an individual. And you know, and I love the term that Dr. Mishi Jha coined, you know, pre zillion. It's great. Of course, it's important, you know, to go to the gym and to eat. Right. And to do all of these things to sort of create this pre ziliance so that we have that in the bank account and get us to a point where when we need to dip into that savings account, right, for recovery, we're already, we have the pre covery bank account. And so, you know, 100% agree with the fact that you're, you know, saying individualistic notion is important. But I think from a radical perspective, what I would say is that I don't believe that self care can be successful if it's only individualistic. I believe that it has to be rooted in community. It has to be rooted. And when I say community, I don't necessarily mean like every single person in your zip code or every single person in your apartment building that you're living in. I mean your circles of influence, the people that you are connected to on a daily basis. That notion that the Buddhist proverb which is so beautiful that we should tend to the areas of the garden that we can reach. I think that for many people that is especially in a self indulgent culture and in a culture that is very much rooted in me first and make sure that I'm okay first to say, well, let's pause on that for a second and let's make sure that everybody in your community is okay and that everybody has enough. Right. And that if everybody has enough, that rising tide will lift all ships and you too will benefit from that. You too will gain a measure of.

Stability and equity by just making sure that other people are okay too, even if you're not 100% okay in that moment. So that's the radical notion of it. Right. And I think to answer.

What was your other question was regarding self indulgence.

Point at which self care could become self indulgent?

Well, I think we've seen that. I think if you Google the hashtag self care on the Internet or on your social media, you'll see many examples of things that are not self care that people are trying to qualify as self care. Right. If it's retail therapy or ways that people are, you know, spending enormous exorbitant amounts of money to, to have like immediate gratification or short term wellness, if you will, or, or de stress for short term, but not necessarily, you know, investing in that long term that we're talking about, that the things that maybe are unsexy, the things that are not fun.

Right.

Having to give up certain vices, going to bed early, those things are not as enticing as what we seem to see on people's highlight reels.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so we have a day on the summit focused on social self care as well, as the need to really take care of each other and take care of our communities. Even our own individual self care can't be divorced from the community, from our social connectedness, because we're social animals and our social connectedness is a big part of our well being and our resilience and so forth. So. Absolutely. So just, you know, considering something like self care though, could for some of us trigger some issues around self worth or feelings of not enoughness or brokenness. And so I'm wondering how we can work with that and actually, you know, in a sense give our self permission to focus on self care as well as, you know, engaging in the collective care. But, you know, it could bring up those issues. I'm curious if that's been your experience.

Yeah, I mean, personally, that has been my experience. You know, I talk a lot in my book about how I still to this day sometimes suffer from imposter syndrome. Right. Which is just something that a lot of people suffer from. And how I did have a lot of issues growing up, even, especially being an immigrant to this country of self worth or not being, not fitting in, being different, you know, always, always feeling like the.

And so absolutely I didn't think that, you know, needing to invest in myself was something that I was worthy of doing. And it wasn't really until I had my son and I had this responsibility for this other person that, you know, I kind of recognized through a lot of deep inner work and shadow work that I had to work through that, that I needed to get my act together and that I did need to take care of myself, put that oxygen, the proverbial oxygen mask on myself first so that I could take care of this little human being who was depending on me. Right. So I think that, you know, again, that goes back to this notion that the first place to start is really, of course, the, you know, the inner. You have to be willing to really try to get to the root of where, where those issues are stemming from. So for me, a big part of it was really intergenerational trauma and you know, sort of the culture that I grew up in and the way that women were treated specifically in my family, in my own lineage. And I had to really work through and get through a lot of those, those issues that were suppressed for a very long time. And when I was able to at least be self aware of them, not necessarily fix them and say, okay, now I've got it all figured out, you know, but actually just get to a point of self awareness where I could say this is this is what I'm feeling. And these are the possible reasons why I'm feeling this way. That, to me, was a big breakthrough, and that allowed me to.

Slowly start to.

Understand that I could. That I'm not that emotion, that I'm not.

The story that I am telling myself, but that rather I could completely rewrite my story going forward.

So I know you are a mindfulness practitioner and mindfulness teacher, and so certainly mindfulness practice can help with that self awareness you're talking about and also create, you know, give us the ability to kind of hold a healing space around the traumas that we've been through and that are still bad and so forth. And also, I think, in my experience, anyway, mindfulness, various forms of meditation, mindfulness contemplation, can take us into the depths of our being, kind of blow all the problems and all the tangled circuitry into a part of our being where it's kind of unmistakable that we do have wholeness, innate wholeness and innate goodness, and that we're not broken. So I'm curious about that and your experience as a mindfulness teacher.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think I had put so many layers and coats of paint, so to speak, band aids for so many years over trying to. To. To fix myself, right. And to think to myself, like, okay, this part of me is broken and I can't. I can't fully show up or I'm going to sort of mask the way that I'm showing up, because this is my perception of myself. And what I realized was that actually, you know, all of those parts of me.

Were the connecting points for me as a mindfulness teacher with so many of my students. Eventually, you know, those were the ways that I could be most vulnerable and be brave enough to talk about the things that were.

You know, just the scariest for me to admit to myself, certainly out loud. Right.

Yeah, I absolutely believe that, you know, it was the reframing. What mindfulness has helped me do was to reframe things from the idea that, you know, woe is me into sort of wisdom is me that all of those things, all those things that I thought made, contributed to my brokenness, to those fractures, were actually the things that made me more relatable and authentic to people.

Well, you mentioned before that women in our society are often caretakers or the caretakers even, and your own experience of becoming a mother. And so for many women especially, their lives are focused on taking care of others, taking care of children, spouses, other family members, or aging parents. And so on and sometimes perhaps even build an identity around being caregivers at the expense of taking care of themselves. So how might someone who's kind of in that place of constant self sacrificing and never really giving themselves the time or space because their kind of role in life is, I'm a caregiver, I'm the caretaker in my family. How might they begin to shift that pattern in healthy ways?

So I think that the reason that self care can be incredibly, seemingly unachievable for, especially for single mothers. Like I was a single mother for a period of time, right? The thought of having to take an hour for myself, or even 20 minutes for that matter, right? Like to meditate for 20 minutes or to wake up even earlier than I was already waking up seemed impossible. It seemed impossible. And so for me, the idea of creating these spaces throughout my day, right, These micro practices which. Which I know a lot of authors and people are leaning into now and have been for several years, but really, you know, before there was even this, like, notion of micro practices, I called it the mudrooms or the foyers of my life. And so I would create these very brief, you know, one to two minute.

Moments for myself throughout the day between one activity and another activity. So, for example, before rushing in to my son's preschool, for example, to pick him up, after sitting in traffic for an hour from a commute from work, you know, I would stay even if I was late, even if I was running late, which I was perpetually always running late, I would sit one more minute, wouldn't matter. I would sit in the car for that one minute and I would just sit in silence, the radio off, and just, you know, do a breathing exercise and show up completely differently. When I walked into the classroom, I wasn't flustered and I wasn't this, you know, just not present as, as. As I wanted to be for him, right? And instead I was more collected, more calm. I was able to actually be the nurturing and loving mother that I. That I wanted to be in that moment. And so I did this always throughout my day. Like, even when I was at work before meetings, when I was, you know, in the bathroom washing my hands. And I. What I will say about the bathroom fleet, which is really interesting, is that, you know, people often ask me, like, you know, where. Where do you meditate? Like, do you have a special place? You know, what's your. And I'll say this sounds absolutely crazy, but it's the truth because for so many years, it was the only time and space That I had was the bathroom floor. Sometimes it's the only place that a mom can get away from her family. And so for, for a very long time, you know, like, whether it was five minutes, whether it was 10 minutes, it was like the bathroom floor, I was like, mom's going to the bathroom. And I would literally go to the bathroom, shut the door behind me, and just sit on the floor and, and take my time for myself. So it's really about kind of carving out these, these spaces for yourself throughout the day. And I love calling them the mud rooms because it's like you're. You're essentially taking all of the dirt that has been either thrown at you or that you've accumulated throughout that activity or throughout the day, and you're able to sort of just leave it all behind and emerge in an acceptable manner or the best version of yourself at.

That moment that you could possibly be.

Yeah, I love those very practical strategies and the idea of micro practices or mudroom and so forth. And there are so many wonderful, very simple breath regulation techniques that we can do. Even one conscious, full, deep breath can shift everything in a moment. So really helpful. And also wondering, though, with, you know, because it's sort of the flip side of self care, this, this identification of being a caregiver.

Yeah.

And, you know, someone might, could be a mother, someone becomes an empty nester and then maybe is not yet taking care of parents, aging parents or something, but, you know, where there's, you know, if we build our whole identity around something and then we do have a little space for ourselves, that can be very unsettling. So I'm wondering if, you know, both with these approaches to self care and with mindfulness practice, whether it's important to hold some of these identities a little looser or get a bigger sense of who we are. And maybe it's part of that collective sense you were talking about.

Right. Bingo. That's exactly the case. I think it is really about.

You know. Yes. We have, we have all these labels, we have all these identities for ourselves. And you're right. Being an empty nester is a perfect example. You know, you. You've spent your entire life being a mom, and suddenly that person doesn't need you anymore. And you're like, looking around, maybe you have a partner that you're still with and you're looking around and you're like, what do we do now? You know, what do we do with this extra time that we have on our hands? I think the idea that having, you know, if you're if you're willing to, if you're willing to at this moment in your life, whichever stage you are in your life, whether you're, you know, just starting out your, your family or you're a new mom or new parent or you're taking care of your aging parents at this point, you know, or you yourself are, you know, aging and, and, and need to be taken care of. Right. Maybe you're the recipient of the care. The idea of having a community of care means and, and, and you can define it any way you want. Right. A community of care, I'm just giving it a label, but really it could, it can mean anything is incredibly important because that ability to.

To get input and feedback and ideas and you know, have, and have conversations with others who are maybe going through similar things that you're going through is incredibly important. So if it's, you know, yeah, don't hold tight, you know, to a specific practice, even if you're a mindfulness practitioner, like, absolutely. Try other types of practices, explore, branch out. And if you're somebody who practices alone all the time, find a sangha, find a group of people that you can practice with. Because the things that emerge, the things that are then shared by others are really the puzzle pieces I feel that we need in order to help improve and help each other grow. Right. Like I may have stories and, or experiences that are just the same salve and the healing words that you need for whatever wounds you have at this moment, and vice versa.

So you've been an activist and you've worked with activists. And activists are known to sometimes drive themselves to burn out in the name of a cause or the urgency of dealing with the injustices in the world. And another group of people that do that are professional caregivers, which are very many of whom are women. Not exclusively so, but.

Nurses and social workers and even physicians.

Often drive themselves in this way in a very self sacrificing way and develop an identity around that and it ends up becoming unhealthy. In fact, in some of the.

Training communities I work in, they have a term for called pathological altruism. And so I wonder if you could talk about that as well as the danger that both activists and professional caregivers face in shortchanging their own self care and even participating in institutions, collectives, communities that don't honor self care, that don't honor collective care and therefore they become unhealthy for everybody involved.

Yeah, you know, I used to work in an organization.

Where I said to the team, it's like your productivity is rewarded in this space with more work. So the more productive a person was, the more they would show up for other people, the more that people were like, oh, I can count on this person, so let me give them more to do. And that's oftentimes the case with activists or with volunteers or people who work in nonprofits, certainly in the healthcare, you know, industry and as you said, you know, just matters of urgency that are existing in the world today. So I'll share with you. You know, I, I just came back from the border between Poland and Ukraine and I work with, with, with a nonprofit, with an NGO and have been for, for many years, since 2008. And, and it's interesting to sort of be able to wear the mindfulness teacher hat too.

Right?

And to see where the cracks are starting to form in our humanitarian aid workers, especially when we were dealing with, and we are dealing with at this moment, with such a volume, an unimaginable, an unimaginable volume of people that are coming over the border on a daily basis. And when I returned, which was just a week ago, I.

Myself was struggling and I've talked about this on my own social media pages as well because I think it's important that we as teachers do talk about that. I came back and I was struggling. First of all, I was very fatigued. I had slept maybe two, three hours a night, which you know, is very unsustainable. While I was there, I wasn't necessarily eating healthy. Poland isn't necessarily the best place for a gluten free vegan to find meals.

You should see the looks I got when I was, I'm like, excuse me, do you have gluten free? And people are like, what? Pierogi is gluten free? But you know, I, I came back and I was really struggling. I, I, besides the fatigue, the physical fatigue that I felt, there was a lot of guilt and shame that I felt of what am I doing here? What am I doing here in this space? You know, I'm in Lake Tahoe now, it's so beautiful. And I'm trying to commune with nature as a measure of self care to just be able to find some solace and peace and balance and to get myself to like a place of equilibrium again. And I was really struggling and I found that I was also.

Really not able to fully partake in even like joyful moments without, without the feeling of guilt, like, why am I here?

I don't deserve to be here. All these people are suffering and you.

Know, I was reminded by.

By the French philosopher Guide's work that, you know, states that.

Joy is a moral obligation, that finding joy and partaking in joy is a moral obligation, and that the way that we show up for others, like if I was going into a refugee camp, for example, to work with refugees, and I was downtrodden and melancholy and tired and cynical and you know, didn't have any faith in humanity because everything was just terrible. And the things that I had witnessed and the atrocities that I saw were just, you know, so horrible. That would reflect on the work that I'm trying to do with these individuals. And so I recognize that, you know, as difficult as it may be, it is a moral obligation. It's incredibly important that, especially when we're working with people who have lost everything. And I don't necessarily mean to the just the extreme of refugees, like if you're working, if you're a caretaker for your elderly parent who can't drive anymore, for example, you know, and I'm thinking of my, my late father in law that for him that was everything. He was like, that's it, you know, life isn't worth living anymore. I can't drive myself and be independent. And now I have to depend on people to drive me around. And so, you know, this, whether it's real tangible loss or ambiguous loss, the responsibility that we have to invest in ourselves is so important. And that's where I go back to. And I'm saying this ad nauseam, but it's incredibly important. I have a formal self care plan, but more importantly, I have a formalized community of care. What does that mean? It means that I literally have a piece of paper that has, it's my break glass in case of emergency paper, that it also exists on my phone. But the idea is that when I am so down in the dumps, when things are so bleak, I don't have the ability cognitively to start thinking about the things that bring me joy, right? But having that reminder and having it compartmentalized for me as a visual learner, you know, as something that's spiritual and physical and, and you know, wellness oriented, etc. But having it sort of compartmentalized into different categories is very helpful. But more importantly, having a community that I, that I share that plan with and that shares that plan with me, their plans with me, the ability for them to hold me accountable is very important too for them to be able to reach out and not just say, you know, if you need anything, let me know. Because you and I both know that Asking for help can be really hard sometimes when you're so, when you're so activated you don't even know what you need, you're so overwhelmed. So like, maybe you do want to ask for help, but you don't even know where to start. So having a community that I touch base with on a daily, on a weekly basis, excuse me, that knows what my self care plan is and that can hold me accountable to making sure that I enact some of those measures is incredibly important because a lot of times I am not motivated to do it for myself. But I'm the type of person that would rather let myself down than other people down. I'm working on it, but at the very least, you know, the fact that I, I, if I tell somebody I'm going to do something, even if it's for myself, I don't want to let them down.

So I'm going to do that.

And they hold me accountable. They hold my feet to the fire.

Great. In your book you use the term kindsight. Could you talk about that a little bit, what you mean by kind sight?

Sure. So kind sight actually is a term that was developed or written by Karen Samuelson, who's great, she's a great author. And kindsight is basically looking back at your life and not saying what have I done, but actually saying what have I learned? Right. So it goes back to the little phrase that I threw in earlier, which is not woe is me, but wisdom is me. And understanding that if you can change the lens with which you view your past, whatever the infractions were, instead of spending the rest of your days lamenting over them and, you know, feeling guilty and shame and really allowing that point in your life, that one moment, that one page in one chapter of your life become the defining moment. It can actually just be just that one page, a learning experience, something that.

You can build upon.

And you also talk about sustainable self care and it seems like self care is part of having a sustainable life. But what do you mean by sustainable self care?

Well, that's really again about having communal support. It can't be sustainable if you don't have a community because there's going to be a. We're intraconnected and we're interconnected as human beings. And all of us here on, even on this conference.

Right.

We wouldn't be here without the support of the people at Zoom who were able to get us here. Right. And the thousands of hours of research and technology and development and then the people who maybe created social media or wherever the Email, technology, how you even learned about this event that you're a part of today. So we're all interconnected and intraconnected human beings. And if we start with that notion, if we start and we understand that because of that and because life is not a flat line from point A to point B. And it really does look like when we're breathing ups and downs, peaks and valleys, we know without a shadow of a doubt that we're going to have valleys at some point. And we've, we've already maybe overcome many. But when we hit those valleys, the only way that self care is going to continue the momentum of our self care plans and us investing in ourselves and investing in that pre zilience and recovery or even using what we've banked in, you know, in the past is with the, with the assistance of the people around us. Because maybe when we're at our peak, somebody else is at their valley and when somebody else is at their valley.

We'Re at our peak.

So it's really about creating a system of mutual aid and a system of an understanding that every single human being on this planet has something that they can offer in the world regardless of their socioeconomic status, and that every person in this world has something that they need regardless of their socioeconomic status. We all need each other. And it's really about creating these symbiotic relationships that can help us create true equity, which is very sustainable.

Fabulous. Well, that's what the summit's all about. And hopefully that's what we're doing together with all the wonderful human beings that are taking part in this. And yeah, it's so important because those valleys for some of us can show up as significant depression. And one of the real.

Thing with depression is you don't have the motivation to do the things that might help you get out of the depression. Right. There's just no motivation and you get these non virtuous cycles that just take you further and further down. And so it really requires almost.

The intervention of others to kind of try to lift us up and try to at least hold a mirror so we see what's going on and we have some chance of, of lifting ourselves up out of that. Yeah, absolutely. So you're coming back to this again and again, this idea of community and a collective and it's really important and that's really what this summit is all about. So you make the somewhat bold claim in the subtitle of your book that radical self care can change the world. So tell us how radical self care could change the world.

So for me, you know, the book is written in three parts. It's written. The first part is the journey to the self, right? The inner work, which is always important. We should never skip over the inner work. The second part of the book is the we, which is the, the journey to sort of the collective, our community and how we can, when we heal ourselves and when we're, we're in a position where we have, you know, our cup overfloweth a little and we can, we can give to others, then it's our moral obligation, it's our inherent obligation to, to help others in our community to make sure that they're okay and that they have enough as well. And then it's the idea that from that point, as a community, as an entity, as a living organism that is doing well, that we have the obligation to then move out into the journey of us where these communities can really start to these ripples of influence, if you will, that we can create, start to intersect. And almost like a Venn diagram, they start to overlap one over the other and create social movements. They start to change, actually and rewrite the way that things are happening in the world and move things in a direction that are hopefully more just for everybody that is living in this world. And so.

That'S really the through line of the idea that, you know, the inner work is important, but if we're not connecting it to the way that we show up in the world and to the outer work in the world, then my question for people always is like, why are you then doing the inner work? Like if the intention eventually, once you've done the inner work is not so that you could show up and do more for the world, then I always question the motives behind why we're doing.

The inner work in the first place.

Yeah, absolutely. So this has been extraordinarily rich and a great place to begin with our summit. I'm wondering if you could just. And we're going to have a whole summit about this. So you don't have to answer this in any exhausting way. But if someone kind of feels like, well, I really am not doing much in the realm of self care, how might they get started? What might be a reasonable way to just get started?

Well, I would say that micro practices are a great way to get started. So I would suggest that for those individuals that don't have a daily practice, or maybe you're a crisis meditator and you only show up to meditate when things are going wrong in your life, maybe it's easier to commit to just building those small micro practices and throughout your day. So one really simple idea, and we'll take it back to the bathroom fleet, because that's where all humans have to go at some point or the other, Right? But you know, this. Thankfully, in the last two years, I think we're all on the same page because the CDC told us how we should wash our hands, Right? So you spend 60 seconds washing your hands. And, you know, a lot of times we're doing that and we're looking in the mirror and we're kind of checking our teeth and our makeup and our hair and, you know, thinking about what we have to do next or looking at our phone or whatever. And if we could just take those 60 seconds multiple times a day as a gift. This is like a gift of time. So that while you're actually just washing your hands, could you possibly do a breathing exercise that regulates your nervous system? Right. So could you do a 4, 7, 8 breath or 6, 18 breath, meaning you breathe in through the nose for a certain number of seconds, and then you pause for a certain number of seconds, and then you breathe out through the mouth for a longer amount of time than you were breathing in. And if you could just do a few cycles of that as you're washing your hands, the way that you'll feel when you come out of the bathroom will be remarkably different. It will be as if you had anointed and washed your entire body, not just your hands. So that's just a very short micro practice. I think it's very doable for all of us and really practical and a good place to start.

Yeah, absolutely. So I wonder if, before we close, if you'd be willing to maybe lead us in a brief one of your mudroom practices or micro practices of some kind. Just, you know, maybe two or three minutes or something like that.

Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure.

Sure.

So I will invite those of you who are listening to this, this, this session. If you're somewhere safe, if you're not driving, I invite you to close your eyes.

And you don't have to. You can lower your gaze. It's your choice. It's whatever is comfortable for you in this moment.

And if you're sitting, begin to just feel like the chair or the ground.

Or the cushion, whatever you're sitting on.

Is cradling your body.

As you're pushing.

Towards the earth, thanks to the force.

Of gravity.

Begin to feel that your body is actually just settling.

That your spine is like a string of pearls.

You Want to align those pearls from top to bottom, straight up.

And so taking a long, slow, deep.

Cleansing breath in.

Through the nose and slowly exhaling out through the mouth like you're fogging a mirror.

One more cycle.

Long, slow, deep breath. Feeling.

All the molecules.

The oxygen reaching every part of your body.

Bringing one.

Or both hands to the heart center.

Saying to yourself, either softly or quietly.

I have enough.

I do enough. I am enough.

I have enough.

I do enough.

I am enough.

Giving yourself a moment to thank yourself for being here, investing in yourself.

When you're ready, you can.

Open your eyes.

And just feel a measure of gratitude and understand the opportunities that lie before you to gain many tools. Thanks to this community and thanks to your willingness to join it.

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I'm good to go for the rest of the day now. That was wonderful. So thank you so much. Shelly Chielelski and people can find out more about your work, I believe, at shelleytielski.com is that correct?

That's right. And they can also visit pandemicoflove.com, which is my organization, if they need help and they want to, or they want they need help or they want to give help in mutual aid. Community.

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being part of the self care summit and getting us off to a great start on day one. Thank you so much, Shelly. Be well.

Thank you.

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