Self-care keeps slipping through the cracks. You know what you need, but ‘when’ feels hard. There’s a piece missing. When you help your system know what’s next, it gets easier. Come explore what transitions can make possible!
What you’ll learn:
- Why “When will I do this?” related to self-care can be hard to answer
- What actually creates space for your personal care
- Why sensing when to transition during different parts of our days matters more than clock-watching
- Something that helps us reduce reaching for ‘quick fixes’
Essential oils mentioned:
- Rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis
- Peppermint, Mentha × piperita
- Lemon, Citrus limon
- Pine, Pinus
SHOW NOTES
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Full Transcript:
Welcome in From Out of the Rain, I’m Quai and this is In Your Hands. Herbal Self-Care for Emotional Bodies, a podcast about the complexities of building your own wellness blueprint. I’m a psychotherapist and herbalist who brings the critical lens to the systems that both help and harm. I’ll hold that tension with you as we explore plant remedies, trauma work, nervous system support, and building self-care foundations.
And now for that awkward dis. Disclaimer, I’ve gotta give you. This shows for educational purposes only and is not a replacement for therapy or personalized herbal care. The herbal remedies and practices discussed are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please consult your healthcare provider for medical advice.
Now, let’s begin.
When I’m working with someone in therapy and something important is emerging, I’ll often talk with them about things they can do between sessions so that they can hold on to that information and get it into their. System in a deeper way. And when I ask the question, when they envision doing this, there’s a particular kind of pause that helps me understand that they’re having a hard time landing on the answer of when, because our lives can be really busy.
And you know, the busyness is partially about capitalism, maybe about personal circumstances, and. Perhaps a phase or a moment of life at the same time. Part of what makes it hard to answer that question is if somebody’s not moving through their days with pivot points or hasn’t thought about that before, doesn’t know why that’s important.
It’s gonna be hard to answer that question. The same thing may happen in my herbalism work when I am talking with someone about a remedy that’s gonna be best utilized. More than once a day. And sometimes that answer of when can you do this throughout the day gets fuzzy. If you’ve ever had a hard time figuring out.
When something would actually be easy or feasible to get into the fold of your day, this episode is for you. I’m going to show you how transitions those intentional pivot points in your day solve the when problem. Naturally transitions are quick, intentional shifts that may hold more possibility for your wellbeing than you realize.
So there’s several things that a lack of mindful transitions can do that lead us away from what our systems need. When you don’t have them, you’re asking yourself to rely on memory instead of rhythms that you can sense and feel. Things are bound to fall through the cracks. You also don’t have an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, and so distraction from one part of the day goes into the next part of the day.
Your system also wants to know what is next. Is best set up for things when it does know what’s next. For example, if your system knows that you’re gonna be eating soon, it’ll start producing digestive juices before the food even hits your mouth. And that means that you’re gonna digest things better.
When there’s opportunity for melatonin to start being released before you go to bed, you’re gonna sleep better. And on a note of circadian rhythm, if there’s sunlight that you have access to in the morning, it tends to boost serotonin, which sets you up for the day. Probably with more of the energy that you prefer.
The other thing is that when there’s no transitions, there’s no easy points to notice how you’re doing and to weave in basic self-care. Lastly, there’s less pleasure and purpose. Without these anchors, they really can be things that we start to look forward to Think about when you’re with kids and you’re trying to entice them to move towards whatever’s next.
In addition to the fact that that’s helpful for you, you’re also setting them up in a way to look forward to something, and that’s care.
And that kind of care is not insignificant. I want you to think about that for a moment. When there’s things that we’re enticed to do that we’re looking forward to, it tells us that things are safe. It gives us a reason to be in a flow. It even supports our mood and our outlook. So if you’re someone that didn’t grow up around.
Adults encouraging you to move towards what’s next with that kind of care. You might not realize how important that is, that we all need that even in adulthood in the same way that young kids needed, that instilled for them.
So let’s talk specifically about what a transition is. It’s an intentional pivot from one way of using time to another. It’s a basic practice or ritual that moves you from this to that, and it’s not mere chronology or time passing. It’s a conscious shift.
So I wanna give you examples of transitions, and we can look at these in three different categories. The first category is establishing starts and finishes. So it could be as simple as closing a notebook and putting it on the shelf. Like maybe we’re just in some type of meeting, or you are journaling something and you’re ready to move into another task.
Actually clearing that out of your space signals to your system. Okay, moving from one thing to the other. It can be like lighting a candle or blowing it out or something that I like to do. That’s. Super simple, but I’m thinking about it as I’m doing it, which is in the morning, opening the shades and blinds, letting the sunlight in, signaling to myself.
I’m starting the day and then in the evening when I’m closing those shades and blinds. I’m creating a space that lets me know, okay, like the work of the daylight hours is done and now whatever the evening holds is is ready. Like I’m ready for that. I like to think about starts and finishes sometimes with aroma therapy.
So I’ll give you just a few things to think about if that interests you. If you want to start your day with. A little bit of stimulation because it feels sluggish in the morning. You can work with rosemary or peppermint, or if you’re someone that wakes up with anxiety, finding an essential oil that can help bring down your anxiety, could help.
Lemon would be an example there. And then for beginning a meditation practice behind is something that helps us to breathe in deep. If we think about what it might feel like to enter a pine forest, and when you enter in there and you’re starting that journey, you might inhale a little bit deeper as you smell that pine, it’s an essential oil that helps us breathe a little deeper.
That’s a good way to start. Okay, let’s move on to category two that’s transforming a feel or appearance of yourself or your environment. So this could be you come home and you’re like, I wanna feel comfortable and so I’m gonna change my clothes. It could be that you change the lighting in the room as you’re moving from one task to another, or one part of the day to the other.
Or maybe something simple like just rearranging the pillows for. Couch time. The third category is preparing for what’s next. So smelling your food, getting ready to eat a meal, setting you up for that. Um, if you’re gonna sit down to work, maybe bringing in water to your workspace and taking out your office supplies, and just having a moment of feeling into the focus and the intention of the work that you want for yourself.
Or perhaps you wanna prepare for a social gathering and you want your energy to be maybe a little bolstered, and so you listen to some music that gets you moving a little bit. Or another example could be you’re doing something that. Is really important to you and brings up some anxiety, maybe performance, and you want to drink a calming tea or work with another remedy to help ease things a little bit as you move into that space.
And then another example that I like to talk about a lot is preparing for sleep. Jotting down what’s on your minds before you get into your bed can help empty out the mind chatter. And it sets you up for having more of that internal quiet space. Right? So I wanna talk about things that you gain from having these transitions.
One is awareness. A moment to moment sense of how you’re doing, knowing what your energy reserves are and considering what’s left in the day. If you give that to yourself, you might find times where you’re like, I need to switch. A little bit of what I thought I was doing next, or there isn’t the energy that I was hoping for to do this.
Perhaps you recalibrate that it helps to clear out stress so that one part of the day doesn’t bleed into the next part of the day in a way that you’re not looking for. Um. And it makes it easier to build in self-care. So whatever those little tasks are that you want to be doing for yourself, maybe there’s some stretches you’re working with, certain parts of your body that need attention, or you’re in a like heightened period of stress in some way, and you wanna be.
Your nervous system regularly if you have these transitions built in. It helps you figure out when you can do that, and then there’s no more self-care catch up or at least less of it. And something that I love about this is that it helps us with reaching for those quick fixes a lot less when you’ve got that buffer time to move from one thing to the next.
There’s less accumulation of. Stress that tends to come throughout the day and fewer moments of maybe wanting to grab extra caffeine, sugar, or a social media hit. And no shame about reaching for these things, but I find most people wanna scale back on vices when they can. Using your felt senses during transition times can help.
If you can sense when it’s time to transition, instead of always relying on timers or clocks, you’re doing something significant because you’re shifting to do things based on your own needs rather than somebody else’s schedule or an arbitrary time that maybe does or doesn’t work for you.
And the last is these transitions really do help us reduce stress. Anything that helps us reduce stress is a service to all of your systems, your digestive system, your respiratory system, your circulatory system. So every part of us actually gets to benefit from this. Pausing briefly here, if you like the care put into this listening experience, you might also want in your hands, my monthly newsletter.
It’s like a thought based care package in your inbox. Lincoln Show notes. Okay, back to it. Here’s something else that can develop over time. These transitions start creating containers, periods of your day that have a particular feel to them, and those feelings become familiar and comforting. You start to develop an affinity for them, then you don’t wanna give ’em up, and that’s when self-care gets easier.
Because tasks naturally get attached to those good feeling states that you’ve made your own, they’re from you, and they’ve just fit. Let me give you an example from my own life. I use a magnesium cream to support my body, and for a long time it felt like a chore, annoying, something I had to make myself do.
Then I realized something. After I exercise, I’m riding this wave of contentment about having done the work to support my body. There’s pride in that moment and that feeling state that post exercise satisfaction makes applying the cream feel natural instead of forced it fits, fits the container of time.
So now that task happens in that transition between exercise and work mode, and it doesn’t feel like a chore anymore because I’m working with a natural feeling that’s already there.
But let’s recap. Transitions are intentional pivots from one way of using time to another. It’s not just the clock moving forward, but they’re conscious shifts that help your system know what’s next. They can look like establishing starts or finishes, transforming the feel or appearance of yourself or your space.
For preparing for what’s coming. You may already do some of these things, but when you do them with intention, they become anchors and they become things that you start to look forward to. You gain a more awareness of how you’re doing on a moment to moment basis. Stress from one part of the day doesn’t accumulate and move into the next part of the day, and self-care becomes easier to remember, and you get that answer to that hard question of, when do I do this?
What do you lose? By not putting transitions into your day, you’ll never discover what can transform with these subtle, meaningful moments. And obviously I can’t tell you exactly what will happen for you, but I do know if you’re rushing through or grinning and bearing your days with no intentional pauses, certainly things are falling through the cracks and here’s what matters.
You stop abandoning yourself between one thing and the next Happy transitions. Till next time. Alright, I hope this. Leaves you in a better place. If this episode was useful, please share it with someone who might benefit. That’s how the show grows and reaches people who need it. You can also subscribe to my newsletter for monthly insights on Herbal Self-Care and building your Wellness Blueprint.
Links in the show notes. If today’s episode sparked a question or perspective you’d like to share, reach out, especially if you’re speaking from lived experience or your prep. Petition working with similar themes. Take care however that looks for you today, and I leave you with birds I recorded on my city block to wherever you are.
Hi, I'm Quai - psychotherapist, herbalist, and host of In Your Hands: Herbal Self-Care for Emotional Bodies. This show is for anyone deepening their self-care practice, exploring intergenerational patterns, navigating harm reduction or recovery work, herb-curious folks wanting practical guidance, and practitioners looking for resources to share with clients.
I combine herbalism, trauma work, and a critical lens on the systems that shape wellness. Whether you're piecing together care skills that weren't modeled, working with your relationship to coping strategies, or thinking deeply about how oppression impacts wellbeing, this show offers context, frameworks, and practical tools.
We explore plant remedies, nervous system support, and the often-overlooked infrastructure that makes sustainable self-care actually possible. Join the newsletter at for care tips, episode announcements, and herb recipes.
