We often talk about tending to and exercising our bodies—whether it’s our hamstrings after a run or our back muscles as we move into downward dog in yoga class—and stretching our minds when we learn a new language or read up on a new topic. But how often do we think about tending to the soul? What do we even mean when we refer to the soul? The soul is an elusive concept, immeasurable by science and owned by the realm of religion, but I want to suggest that the soul is the part of us that connects us to everything. Now this isn’t going to be a piece about new age spirituality or about religion. I simply want to suggest that everything is interconnected and that when we live into this concept, we get better connected with ourselves, our purpose and our interconnected self. 

So what does it take to tend to the soul? How do we do this work? 

Compassionately caring for our own soul is so much easier from a place of calm and focus. Concentration practices like yoga and moving meditations, like walking meditation, can help us slow our mental processes and help us bring greater awareness to our experience of our bodies. We are almost rewarded in our lives for ignore our bodies signals that we need something. In school we are entrained to sit in hard desks as children even though our wiggly childhood bodies weren’t yet developed enough to sit still and sustain focus. Our experiences in life can reward us for ignoring our bodies, for working through the pain, pushing past our exhaustion, for grinning and bearing it, so to speak. So it stands to reason that we may have habitual ways of dismissing our own needs, to the point of habitually ignoring the senses and sensations of the body.  Women and caretakers of any gender are very susceptible to this. 

We tend to think of our soul as something that is actually a bunch of thinking. Our soul is more akin to the sensations and knowledge accessible in the body. You now how you can just know something in your gut or intuition? That kind of knowing comes from being deeply connected to our bodies and the interconnectedness of our being with everything. 

We need to be able to recognize when our soul is tired. How about when our soul is injured?

For some, the pursuit of a healthy soul is one that is about spirituality, for others it’s about integrity and being a better version of themselves, and still for others it’s about service and caring for one’s service driven heart and soul. 

Tending to the soul, for a lot of people, can be about relaxing into discomfort and trusting somehow they will be ok when things don’t feel ok. It’s about breathing into the place of tension, like we’re on a yoga mat in a yoga for the soul class. So often our loved ones are willing us to change, to be better versions of ourselves and that can be a terrifying time. We want to be better versions of ourselves and yet we want to be loved and accepted for who we are. So, it can be difficult to relax into being the better version of ourselves when we are feeling judged. Taking time to care for and connect with our inner world means getting away from the source of judgement and then taking a relaxed and open posture toward the feedback we are receiving from our loved ones. It’s nearly impossible to accept feedback when we are in a sped up, stressed out state of fight or flight. How many marriages would survive the blows of growing together, if people took the time to do the inner work and being the best versions of themselves. Hell, I might even suggest that doing this work is the only way to make a longterm relationship survive. 

Taking time to tend to and care for our inner world is a necessity that seems like a luxury in our world. That’s why I’ve teamed up with three amazing women to co-create and offer a weekend retreat that we are calling Soul Care. This September in the amazing context of Richmond Hill, an urban spiritual retreat center in Richmond, VA, we are going to walk through a weekend of Soul Care that will renew us and send us off feeling lighter and in more honest relationship with ourselves.