Self-Care for the Practitioner
As a therapeutic practitioner practising self-care is an essential element of your work to ensure that you are able to fully care for and treat your clients.
Developing some grounding skills that work for you is essential. These are some of the self-care practices I use in my own work that I hope will inspire you to develop your own.
1. Plan short breaks between sessions.
2. Ground yourself before the session. Take of moment of silence at the beginning and the end of each session where you just hold the feet. Centre yourself and breath in.
4. If you get distracted, take a moment to come back to yourself. Breathe. It can help you to centre yourself again.
5. Be aware of where the other person’s energy is and where necessary let it pass through you and into the ground. Use your breath to cleanse yourself.
6. When the treatment is over wash your hands with cold water, washing up to your elbow if possible.
7. Open the windows and door to change air in the room and clear the room from the energy of the client.
8. Remember you cannot change the client’s life but you can help them and join them for a short while on their journey. You will learn so much along the way from your clients and that experience will make you an even better therapist. You should learn from each treatment and then been able to use what you have learnt in your future treatments. It is a privilege to embark in so many journeys and learn from each one of them. You will learn about psychology, life and yourself.
As a therapist, I consider myself very honoured that people come to me and they trust my experience and what I am able to offer them. It is truly a blessing to be able to help sick people, kids, the elderly and watch the difference in their health, moods, behaviour even after sometimes only one treatment. BE AWARE of your feelings and emotions and keep in touch with them. You get tired if you don’t look after yourself properly. It can be difficult to remain serene and calm and detached when the client’s circumstances reflect our own, we can often find ourselves triggered. Maybe they are the same age as us, or we share similar circumstances, or we can identify with their pain… so put into place some essential self-care practices to remain healthily detached in circumstances like that.
Tatiana
