I have always understood ‘nurturing’ to be something very lovely and honouring that I do with myself – like having a bath with my favorite essential oils… or a bubble bath and maybe some candles and plenty of space and time to be with myself in a lovely and relaxed way, enjoying the warmth of the water around me.
Recently I went to an Esoteric Women’s Health (EWH) event presented by Natalie Benhayon: it was an inspiring presentation about Nurturing and being aware of the cycles and rhythms in one’s body. Natalie introduced something that I have never before truly heard or understood, even though it may have in the past been mentioned many times: that sometimes a bath with your favourite oils, bubbles or settings etc., may not actually be nurturing.
When I heard this my ears pricked up! A part of me said “what, why not?” and “how could something so lovely you do with yourself not be nurturing?”. As I listened intently Natalie went on to further discuss how that to be truly nurturing means to honour exactly what we feel our body actually needs at a specific point in time.
For example, maybe one day we come home and feel heavy or stressed from our day, and we immediately go to have a bath to ‘nurture oneself’ or to try and relax and feel better. But if we don’t stop first and feel if this is exactly what our body needs, then the bath is no longer truly nurturing. Maybe in this example if we stopped first and felt what our body truly needed, perhaps a very gentle walk, some body stretching or a tender hand and foot massage may be more appropriate, and therefore the more nurturing response. But because we didn’t stop and feel this and instead assumed the bath would ‘help’, then the bath can no longer be truly nurturing for us – because we haven’t honoured our true feelings first, or the exact needs of our body.
The penny dropped and I now felt a deeper understanding of what Nurturing truly is: “to feel my body in any moment, and make choices that are in line with exactly what I feel my body needs in that moment”…
Another penny dropped – I now understood what a rhythm in my body actually felt like. I realised that there have been times when I do stop and feel my body and exactly what is needed, and I can feel a ‘rhythm’ in my body. It’s like a ‘plan’ or ‘story’ that is being played out in my body in silent or coded text – communicating a natural way that my body follows automatically as the only way to be.
I saw that if we didn’t stop and feel the plan or the story then it was likely that any choice we make may not follow that plan or way. So instead, the choices we make begin to go against this innate way that is constantly playing out within us, and so become unnatural.
After pondering on all of this I began to feel that for me there were a few steps of honouring needed in this new process of truly nurturing in line with my rhythm and my way:
- Make time to stop in stillness and deeply connect with my body and listen to what is going on.
- Be honest about what I feel in my body, and what my body is truly needing or asking for in that moment, in order to support it.
- Honour the above and make the space and time to do this, immediately if necessary, and with the exact precision and timing to what my body felt is needed, with no compromise to myself.
Thank you Esoteric Women’s Health for sharing something that is so natural and true in every woman’s and man’s body. It’s a warm and joyful feeling to have re-recognised this in my body and I look forward to test driving it!
And thank you Natalie Benhayon for living it so we can all feel this natural fact.