The following text is a personal reflection by psychologist Jana Zemandl on self-care from the perspective of everyday practice. It is not a professional article or therapeutic guide, but an essay on the present.
In it, the author points out the difference between care as a performance and care as a quality of experience.
The text focuses on ordinary situations and small rituals that have a regulating and anchoring effect. It reminds us that self-care does not happen in plans or in the future, but in how we are present in a particular moment.
In my life, I take care of others a lot, I give them my full attention. It's also my job and I have a lot of education for it.
But the most important condition of this job is to take care of myself. I have less education for that. All I need is sensitivity. I have everything I need.
It's not about what I do.
It's about how present I am.
I can be in the most amazing place in the world and my nervous system will be in a state of tension.
Or I can sit on the couch under a green blanket, feel its softness on my skin, the warmth that soaks into me, and the scent of tea that gently surrounds me.
And at that moment, my nervous system gets a hearty dose of treatment.
Self-care is not about performance, plans, or "getting better."
It's about contact.
About those moments when I'm really here.
When I allow the world to touch me.
I made some coffee.
Not because I drink coffee in the morning. But because I want to feel it.
The smell, the taste, the warmth in your hands. The sound of water flowing through the filter.
It's a little ritual that tells me — I'm here. I'm breathing. I'm feeling.
Moments like these are a source of inspiration for me.
Not as a reward, but as a return.
The scent of an aroma lamp. The light of a candle. The warmth of a blanket.
A book that softens me from the inside.
Music that makes me melt.
The touch of nature, the smell of wood, the laughter of children.
And sometimes just silence.
For me, contact is where life happens.
Not in what was, nor in what will be.
But in that moment when something touches me and I let myself be touched.
When I look—and for a moment I really see.
Not just things, but the beauty that is present in them.
Sometimes it's all in one glance.
A touch of reality, subtlety, meaning.
And sometimes it only happens for a few seconds — but that's enough.
Because it is in those moments that I can connect with the person I am looking into.
Running through the forest, when my foot hits the trampled ground and I feel which part of my foot touched it first. The rapid heartbeat, the cold air, the rhythm in which everything that has accumulated inside me dissolves.
Not for performance, not for numbers, but because I am reenergized with every step.
On myself. On nature. On the life that flows through me. Thoughts flow freely and filter. A lot happens to my thoughts while running.
Beauty is also a form of contact.
Not the one captured in a photograph, but the one that happens — in one glance, in one breath.
My self-care is not about what I do, but how I am.
When I stop, I soften, and allow ordinary moments to revive me. The smell of root vegetables.
And then — without effort — I find a deep anchor within myself again.
My nervous system dissolves in a cup of coffee, in candlelight, in one deep breath.
Gestalt says that in full contact the whole world is present.
And sometimes just one look is all it takes.
To capture the light on the leaves, the change in the eyes that stare into each other, the scent of rosemary.
And for a moment to feel: I am here. We are here. HERE there is no fear. Here is freedom and my nervous system has the opportunity to encounter it.
- Jana Zemandl
