"Finding the time" and self-care

She just keeps going, and going, and going....

Marcus Dall Col

"I can't make a dance class. I'm booked up!"

"Sorry, I can't fit that into my schedule this week."

"That looks like it'd be amazing! But how will I ever find the time?"

Believe me, I hear these all constantly-- sometimes from my own mouth. I imagine they sound familiar to you, too, and I sympathize. It's a busy world we live in. Work needs to be done, bills paid, kids hugged, dishes washed, walks shoveled, and so on down the line. The work we do is important and needs to get done.

But why is it that our needs and wants are always at the end of that line? That barely enough time is left for us to rest, and no time at all is left for our creative, spiritual, artistic, and mental development?

It's always a question of priorities.

All I suggest, in the aftermath of this new moon, in this time of sloughing off the old and welcoming the new is that you make yourself a priority. Move aside time devoted to  some of the more never-done tasks like laundry. Carve out a little space for self-care.

That might mean that occasionally, the floor doesn't get swept, because you got a good 10 minutes of practice in. Or that the household can survive off of a dinner of sandwiches once a week while you make the trek to class, to exercise your body, feed your soul, and enjoy the special community that is a belly dance class.

Think about it this way: for all the necessary and vital tasks that you must fulfill in your life, which are so important to you and those you love, why are you not important enough to maintain? Why isn't the body you use for working, cleaning, hugging kids and helping with homework not strong or beautiful enough to share in dance? It is, I promise you. Come and enjoy your ownership of it.

It's just past the threshold of the New Moon-- a time of emerging from darkness. A time of beginnings and renewal. A time of waking from dreams, so that dreams become reality.

I hope you'll come and dance with us.

-Posted by Jennifer Parsons

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