Inner Workout: Strengthening Self-Care Practices for Healing Body, Soul, and Mind

By Taylor Elyse Morrison

"Inner Workout offers ease and accessibility when it comes to transforming our thoughts around how we take care of ourselves. Required reading!" —Alexandra Elle, author of After the Rain and How We Heal

Caring for yourself is essential. But we need both direction and intention if we want to find out what we truly need in the moment. This is where Inner Workout comes in: First by redefining what self-care truly is and then by diving deep into areas where you might need some help. Addressing issues like body positivity, burnout, brain fog, self-confidence, and more, this guide offers a variety of practices, prompts, and actionable advice to strengthen your connection to each aspect of yourself.

Think of this as a choose your own self-care adventure: Take the Take Care Assessment and find out which practices you deeply need right now. Flip to a section that resonates with you. Or read through each chapter to discover what each dimension of care can offer you. The guidance within these pages isn't meant to change who you are, but to strengthen the wisdom you already have within. Whether new to self-care or wanting to deepen the connection you've cultivated with yourself, this book is here for you at every step in your wellness journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781797223254

Taylor Elyse Morrison

Taylor Elyse Morrison is the CEO of Inner Workout where she spends her days working toward a world without burnout. She's a sought-after international speaker and facilitator. You may have seen her talking about self-care in publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, and The Thirty. Taylor is also an ICF ACC Coach, a certified 200-hour yoga teacher, a certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher, and a Certified Resilience Practitioner. Taylor lives in Chicago with her husband, Matthew, her dog Blue, and an ever-growing number of plants.

Book preview

Introduction

This is not an aspirational wellness book. It can’t be, because I’m writing it.

Yes, I lead a self-care company, also called Inner Workout. Yes, I’ve facilitated experiences for a diverse array of people, from high school students and working mothers to small business owners and executives.

However, I come to this work because I need it, not because I’ve mastered it. My self-care journey began in earnest on a Sunday night in 2017. Before that night, I was a classic overachiever. For the curious, I’m an Enneagram Type 3, Sagittarius sun, Capricorn moon, Virgo rising, and a Generator in the Human Design typing system.

Doing is in my DNA, and I’d tied up my entire identity in achievements. That approach served me well for a while. I got a full-ride scholarship to Vanderbilt University, my dream school, where I double-majored in human and organizational development and Spanish. I graduated cum laude and stepped right into a leadership-development program at Allstate, a Fortune 100 company.

Chasing achievements worked until it didn’t, which brings me back to that Sunday night in 2017. I was newly married, leading operations at a health-and-wellness start-up, running a brand-strategy side hustle, and volunteering at multiple nonprofits. Just thinking about that time of my life makes me want to take a long nap. I could hardly find the time to truly rest, let alone the space to fully process all the personal and professional transitions I’d experienced.

I attempted to combat my overflowing to-do list with an evening of planning and preparation. On that particular Sunday night, I sat in the living room of our little garden apartment with my laptop and my paper planner. Before long, I was mindlessly switching between tabs and hoping that, if I clicked around enough, I’d find a tab to erase my near-constant sense of being overwhelmed. All that doing finally caught up with me. I wasn’t on the verge of burnout—I was burned out.

While I never found that magical tab to cure my anxiety, I found something better: a bath. I shut down my laptop, captured the water filling the tub for an Instagram story, and didn’t engage with my screens again until Monday morning.

I appreciated the experience so much that I kept up those Sunday-night baths for quite a while. They were my first true self-care ritual. No matter how demanding my week was, there was always a bath waiting for me at the end. I found joy in both the practice and the process. Choosing combinations of bath salts and essential oils with loving intention. Adjusting the length and the activities based on my needs. Some Sundays called for a long soak as I read a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Sometimes I journaled. Other nights, I took a quick dip as my melatonin pill kicked in.

Over time, I found that I wanted to tap into that Sunday-night feeling during a Wednesday-afternoon slump or a Friday morning. I craved an approach to self-care that could meet me where I was at the time, one that was accessible to me at any given moment. My exploration of that desire is why this book exists.

I could put an Instagram filter on my self-care journey and let you think I spend hours meditating daily, that I subsist on green juice, and that I live a near screen-free existence.

I could, but I won’t. I don’t even claim to be a self-care expert, although I’ve created tools, resources, and trainings that have supported countless people in their own inner work. In fact, I’m still more well acquainted with burnout and being overwhelmed than I like to admit. My real life is filled with paradoxes and gray areas, just like everyone else’s.

Sure, I might decide to take a nap in the middle of a workday, but my husband often has to be my accountability partner to make sure the nap actually happens. Though I can recognize my need for rest, I haven’t fully kicked the habit of trying to do just one more thing before closing my eyes. My husband has a practice of gently checking in on me twenty minutes after I say I’m going to take a nap to make sure I’m not working on my phone from bed.

So why should you listen to me if I haven’t transcended my own self-care struggles? While I may not have all the answers, I have cultivated a dynamic relationship with my whole being, a relationship built on deep listening and loving responses and curiosity and joy and tenderness. I’m becoming the premier expert on myself.

I want the same for you.

So, no, this book isn’t meant to be aspirational. I don’t think you need to change who you are. I don’t think you need to get away from your day-to-day. Rather, I invite you to get to know yourself as you are, at this precise moment in time. Then let that self-knowledge inform your care. It’s simple. It’s difficult. And isn’t that true of all of life’s most rewarding journeys?

My hope for this book, and for all the tools and practices in it, is that it brings you back to yourself. You’ll expand your definition of self-care, explore your Take Care assessment results, and learn the language of the Five Dimensions of Well-Being. This knowledge strengthens your self-expertise—it doesn’t override it.

As a Black woman, I know what it’s like to be taught content that doesn’t seem to be created with me in mind. I’m deeply honored to share my perspective on a topic that has traditionally centered people who don’t share my skin tone or my body type. While my intention is for every reader to feel seen in the words that I write, I acknowledge that my personal experiences and privileges might, at times, undercut my inclusive intentions.

To that end, I’d like to take a moment to do something that I wish other leaders and teachers had done when I was learning from them. I want to take a moment to state a few realities of my experience that color my perspective. I am married to a man, my husband Matt. We both have college degrees. We have two incomes and no children. We have health insurance from Matt’s job. We have access to emergency savings. We live near both of our families.

This is my experience. I don’t share it to brag, nor do I assume that it’s the norm. I share this information because I’m honestly tired of wellness leaders refusing to talk about how their privilege impacts the way they think about what it means to be well. I don’t want to position myself and my situation as being exactly the same as yours when that may or may not be true. I don’t want to leave you wondering why you apply your learnings but generate slightly different results.

The same things may not keep us up at night. You might not nod your head in recognition of every anecdote that I share. That’s okay. It’s the beauty of the human experience. We don’t have to ignore our differences—we can acknowledge and honor them.

Ultimately, I believe you are your own best expert. You don’t need me to be just like you. This book serves its purpose if it leads you into deeper conversations with yourself.

To sum up the advice of many wise teachers before me: Investigate what this book ignites within you. Take what resonates. Let go of the rest.

That, in and of itself, is an act of self-care.

As you’ll learn from this book, self-care doesn’t mean that you have to go it alone. Sometimes getting to know yourself can stir up emotions and sensations that a licensed professional is best suited to help you navigate. Seek the support you need.

May this book help you experience the love and care that you so deeply deserve.

Now it’s time for your Inner Workout. Let’s begin.

part I

ONE

Redefining Self-Care

Self-care is a loaded word. It elicits guilt from some, eye rolls from others, and genuine enthusiasm from a select few. The term is so muddied that it’s hard for me to tell people I lead a self-care company without immediately clarifying what I mean. Do we offer teletherapy? Sell luxury toothpaste? Host silent retreats?

Societally, the idea of self-care has become a jumbled mess of consumerism, aesthetics, the pursuit of being that girl, and quotes designed to make you double tap. Open any app, and you’ll be sold products, routines, and beliefs you must buy into in order to be well.

There’s no shortage of self-care advice and information. But finding people who actually feel well cared for? That’s a struggle.

You may not feel well cared for because you live with a painful chronic illness or the residual effects of traumatic past experiences or a mental-health condition. If any of those are true for you, the multidimensional self-care we’ll explore in this book can act as one part of your broader treatment plan.

It’s also likely you don’t feel well cared for because you’re stressed the heck out. Stress, unfortunately, is the great unifier in this day and age. The Deloitte Global 2021 Millennial and Gen Z Survey found that 41 percent of millennials are stressed out most, if not all, of the time. Gen Z came in slightly higher at 46 percent.

It’s easy to blame those numbers on the roller-coaster ride of living through a global pandemic, but the numbers show that the pandemic simply turned up the heat on an existing pressure cooker. When I spoke about self-care at a conference in London in 2019, I shared this statistic from a Mental Health Foundation survey: 74 percent of respondents at some point [in the last year] felt so stressed that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope.

Stress is not new to us. In my circles, I hear stress manifest itself in questions like, Am I doing enough? and Am I doing enough of the ‘right’ things?

Do any of these questions sound familiar?

Am I saving enough? Am I networking enough? Am I journaling enough? Am I raising my hand at work enough? Am I dating enough? Am I strong enough? Am I resting enough? Am I reducing my carbon footprint enough? Am I ambitious enough? Am I working out enough? Am I volunteering enough? Am I funny enough? Am I setting aside enough for retirement? Am I reading enough? Am I earning enough? Am I traveling enough? Am I staying informed enough? Am I healthy