Why Is Self-Care So Exhausting?

Hello! You there!

Yes, you behind the computer screen.

You behind the phone screen.

It’s us. Root Adventures.

Also real people behind this email.

It’s been awhile. How are you?

We’re excited to be back at it! But in our time away we’ve decided to do things a little differently.

We noticed something happening that we aren’t totally cool with.

Have you noticed that in pursuit of wellness, authenticity, purpose, peace, truth, etc - in pursuit of our “beingness”, we’ve resorted to a whole lot of doing?

More practices, more courses, another thing to add to your 10 step morning routine, more ways to be better, more ways to “hack” life.

Oh and 10 more things not to do, and the ways in which you’re keeping yourself limited and blocked and not able to manifest the life of your dreams.

Sometimes feels exhausting, no?

We’ve noticed this trend. And whomp whomp…we’ve noticed we are part of the problem.

Every week we give you a new practice to do, a new thing to add to your “wellness to do list.”

And we are so sorry.

So instead, we are committed to not giving you more to do and we want to stop perpetuating the idea that we know something you don’t. Or that we have something to give you that you don’t already have.

Because the Truth….like capital “T” Truth…is that you have more to give yourself than we ever could. The insight and intuition that resides within you is more powerful than any practice we can give you.  

So instead of more practices, each week we’d love to offer you things that inspire us, things that move us to have deeper conversations with our loved ones, things that put us in deeper contact with the intimacy of life.

Which leads us to our first offering:

In the 13th century, Zen Master Eihei Dōgen taught that enlightenment is just

“intimacy with all things”

That’s it. Short and sweet.

Now, there’s nothing you have to do with this.  No practice that we are going to give you to tell you how to implement this concept into a life only you have lived.

Sometimes just simply sitting with a story or a picture or a piece of information or insight can yield so much.

It’s just like the practice of mindfulness.  Read the words and just be with them.  Notice what arises, what surfaces from your own depths. Maybe a practice does arise, but it’s something you get to give yourself, not one we will prescribe for you.

And if you want us to help you craft a practice that works in your life, we absolutely would be happy to help.

No, seriously. Because here’s the next part:

We want to learn from you. We know the power of learning comes from a back and forth conversation held with open minds and open hearts.

The transformational experience comes when two different minds, two different bodies, two different lives lived, experience the same thing in two different ways and have two wildly different experiences.

So let’s do something crazy, shall we?

Will you respond to this? Send us an email?

Let us know what you think. How it moved you…or didn’t. If you felt inspired or talked with friends about it. If you have insight as to how, if at all, you want to integrate it into your life. Do you want us to help you craft a practice?

Just send us a note!

We want to hear and we want to share.  If you have a story or writing or poem or painting or meditation or something that happened in your own life that you’d like us to share, send it our way!  

The magic happens when we go from a one-sided email that we send off into the void, to a 2-way back-and-forth highway of sharing.  

We’re ready to start the conversation. Because at the heart of Root is you, The Root Community. And us.

Much Love,

Carisa + Breanne

P.S. This email was written at 1 in the morning when the inner voice of intuition and inspiration struck. Call us crazy! Because we just might be. And we’re pretty okay with it