“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.“
Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
In the rush of daily life, you can easily lose touch with the rhythms of your body. Emails flood in and a never-ending to-do list hums in the background. Your mind races ahead, strategising, planning, solving—but what happens to the body beneath it all?
Too often, we push aside its quiet needs until they scream at us in the form of pain and tension. We sacrifice sleep for “just one more thing.” We rush through meals or skip them altogether. That lingering ache in your neck? You ignore it because there’s simply no time to deal with it.
But your body—this soft animal that Mary Oliver writes of—doesn’t ask for penance. It doesn’t demand perfection or grand gestures. It only asks for what it loves: kindness, rest, nourishment, care, movement. It asks you to pause and listen.
You Don’t Have to Be Good
Let go of the idea that self-care is another task to perfect. Wellness doesn’t come from guilt or pressure, nor does it require you to push yourself harder, as you might in your career or obligations. Can you meet your body where it is?
What would it be like to give your body what it loves? To carve out time for yourself to rest and receive, without feeling the need to earn it?
Make Space for Care
Regular massage can help you avert stress before it builds to unmanageable levels, whether it’s weekly, biweekly, or monthly, scheduling a massage is a powerful way to plan time to pause and let go of stress. Thai Yoga massage combines heated herbal compress, deep pressure, and stretching. This powerful bodywork can reconnect you with your body, slow down your racing mind, and guide you to listening to your deeper needs.
By committing to this kind of care, as sincerely as you would commit to a friend’s birthday or an important meeting, you schedule yourself time to reset and restore and as you honour your body’s need to slow down and receive care, you’ll find that taking time for yourself becomes easier and more natural. This doesn’t just make you feel better—it equips you to handle life’s demands with more energy and clarity.
Listening Is Enough
When you stop to care for your body, you remember that it isn’t a machine. It’s alive and deserving of time to be heard and tended to. You don’t need to overhaul your life to listen. You only need to begin—one act of care at a time.
So, pause. Breathe. Carve out space and let the soft animal of your body guide you back to yourself.