7 Dimensions of Holistic Self-Care: How to Start Today

Holistic self-care is NOT binge-watching your favorite TV show with a tub of ice cream. It’s caring for your whole self, including your body, mind, and spirit, consistently and intentionally.

Taking the time to support ourselves allows us to face life’s challenges better. It builds a stronger and happier you, so you can live your best life no matter what.

Explore this holistic approach to self-care. It has seven dimensions that address our mental health, physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, social health, environmental health, and financial health. Then consider some examples of easy holistic self-care practices that you can start today.

Holistic Self-Care for Beginners

Holistic self-care is bigger than self-care. The word self-care is thrown around so much these days, fueled by wellness and beauty trends that are pushed out by companies and the products they sell.

There’s nothing wrong with self-care products, and I have some favorites, too. But for me, real, valuable self-care starts right inside of me. It’s in the unseen, in the untouchable. And the best ones cost nothing.

Holistic self-care is an approach that considers the whole person. It is a powerful tool to account for the many dimensions and unique needs of us.

To better demonstrate, consider the following framework.

Primary Foods and Secondary Foods

What’s food got to do with it, you might ask.

A while back, after I’d just discovered my son’s food allergies and needed to figure out an entirely different way of cooking, I stumbled upon an idea that blew my mind. Maybe it’s obvious to you, but it certainly wasn’t for me.

Our nourishment comes from primary and secondary foods, according to this view. Joshua Rosenthal at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, who introduced this terminology, says that the foods we eat provide only secondary nourishment for our well-being.

Primary foods, he asserts, are the intangible nourishment that comes from things like a fulfilling career, meaningful relationships, spirituality, and creative expression.

If we don’t get enough of the primary foods, then we tend to compensate with the secondary foods. The sugar, the alcohol, and all the other stuff that we know are not great for us, but still consume anyway.

Maybe it’s just another way of saying that we shouldn’t eat our feelings. But this new framework provided a fresh perspective on our needs and how they are all related.

What is Holistic Self-Care?

In this context, holistic self-care becomes pretty simple: figuring out how to nourish ourselves with the primary foods so we can live a healthier, happier life.

It’s completely okay that we sometimes feel like we have holes that can only be filled with ice cream.

Having a daily routine to care for yourself differently, however, can help you not feel those holes, or feel them less often.

Because we are complex beings with many needs, and the needs are all interconnected.

7 Dimensions of Holistic Self-Care

According to my research, holistic self-care includes seven main areas. The first four—mind, body, emotional, and spiritual—are probably the main, with social, environmental, and financial playing supporting roles.

(I’ve also seen an eighth in some sources, the intellectual, but I’m including that in the mental.)

But make no mistake, each of these aspects is important. They all influence our daily life and overall health.

Let’s look at each of the 7 pillars and their examples.

Mental Self-Care: Activities that stimulate your mind and reduce stress. Examples include mindfulness meditation, journaling, learning new things, and reading.

Physical Self-Care: Caring for your physical needs, health, and energy levels. Examples include regular exercise or movement, a balanced diet, mindful eating, hydration, sleep, and medical care.

Emotional Self-Care: Understanding, processing, and expressing your feelings in healthy ways. Talking to a friend, seeing a therapist, setting healthy boundaries, practicing self-compassion, gratitude, and cultivating resiliency are examples.

Spiritual Self-Care: Connecting with your sense of purpose, values, or something greater. Meditation, prayer, spending time in nature, practicing gratitude, spiritual study, energy work, and service are examples.

Social Self-Care: Building and maintaining meaningful relationships. Community and social support are important! Examples include companionship, social connection, and setting healthy boundaries.

Environmental Self-Care: Creating and maintaining a space that supports your well-being. Clean and healthy environment, reducing clutter, and access to a peaceful space are some examples.

Financial Self-Care: Actively managing your finances to meet your needs for today and tomorrow. Examples include budgeting, saving, reducing debt, and investing.

As you can see, while these areas are mostly distinct, some overlaps exist. That’s because each are parts of the whole, and everything is related. If you do one thing in one area, the other areas will be affected. This brings me to my next point.

How To Start Today

Holistic self-care isn’t about how many boxes you can check. As with setting any goals, start with a couple of easy self-care strategies that you can accomplish consistently. After you see some wins, expand the menu and add some activities you have to reach for.

Holistic self-care is about being aware of who and where you are, and the willingness to take care of your whole self to invest in your personal growth.

Take an inventory of your life according to these 7 dimensions of self-care. Rate each area with a number between 1 to 10, then pick one or two areas to focus on. Come up with some achievable goals for those areas that you can start working on today.

Here are some questions that might help you.

Questions to Ask

In which area do you need the most support right now?

Can you visualize a different, better way?

What can you do to care for yourself in that area?

What are some easy goals that you can set that you can do every day?

The questions can get more specific, as follows:

Do you get enough sleep every night? If not, what can you do to support your sleep?

Are you budgeting and/or saving for the future? Financial stress can derail your mental and emotional well-being.

How about social self-care? Do you have people with whom you feel seen and heard? Do you make regular phone calls to your loved ones?

Or, maybe you’d like to spend five minutes each day to practice gratitude. Gratitude can reduce negative self-talk and support your emotional and spiritual well-being.

Choose your medicine, my friends. There are a variety of practices you can choose from. Then gently go about making them a part of your routine.

My Self-Care Routine

For me, meditation is the primary practice that keeps me on the super-speed railway, so to speak.

Meditation checks the boxes for my mental, emotional, spiritual, and even social self-care. How social? A more balanced sense of self through meditation helps me relate to others better and to have more compassion.

I could use more intention and action in regular physical activity. My current goal is at least 15 minutes of walking every day, plus the daily gardening activities.

Environmental self-care, I’m afraid, may be limited as long as I have two active kiddos running around, leaving trails of toys behind.

If you want to learn about how meditation can help you, see How Does Meditation Work? Change Your Brain, Find Your Happy Place, or Can Meditation Heal the Body? Secrets of the Mind-Body Connection.

Self-Care is Not About Perfection

Going back to the idea of self-care not being a trend, it is also not about achieving perfection. There’s no such thing, my friend.

But it’s about self-awareness, and a framework to support your inner self.

Self-support is SO important! Especially for women, and ESPECIALLY for moms.

I’ve seen many cases where, because we are trying to do it all, have it all, we ignore so many signs from our body and mind. For a long time. It then manifests as illness, divorce, or any other drama you can think of.

The dark night of the soul may be the Universe’s way of letting you know that you have to start choosing yourself over all others. That by loving yourself, you can love others.

Practicing holistic self-care is self-love in action. It’s about loving yourself, despite all of the questions (I’ve got many!), little by little, every day.

Final Thoughts

Holistic self-care is not a luxury. It is also not about any products, or even a book to read. It’s a mindset.

If nothing else, please start your holistic self-care journey by being kinder and gentler with yourself. Practice self-compassion as your moment-by-moment self-care routine.

You don’t even have to say a word. Just look inward, and say “Yes!” Give yourself an energetic hug by forgiving and encouraging yourself today. That’s a great start to holistic self-care.

I’d love to know if this post inspired you to take a first step towards a new self-care practice! Please comment below or share any other thoughts.

This post was all about holistic self-care, and I hope you enjoyed it!