Sacred Self-Care: Daily Practices for Nurturing Our Whole Selves
A seven-week guide to help you shift your behaviors and create lifelong habits to care for your whole self-- mind, body, and soul.
"In a world that has cheapened self-care, Chanequa Walker-Barnes provides a valuable, faithful, and much-needed antidote." --Jeff Chu, author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?
Taking care of ourselves is essential, and lately, we've started to pay more attention to the ways our physical bodies need and deserve nourishment. But we are not just bodies, we sacred beings, and our souls need just as much care and attention to be healthy.
As a clinical psychologist, pastor, and activist, Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes has studied and worked with clients, clergy, seminary faculty, faith-based activists, and others to encourage them to think of self-care as both a divine right and a sacred obligation. She has developed a seven-week guide gathering activities, habits, disciplines, and practices that promote spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, and relational wholeness.
Each day includes a story alongside short and simple prompts and scripture passages that help us shift behaviors in the short term and create lifelong habits. Each week walks readers through the following areas:
- Mastering the Self-Care FundamentalsPracticing Self-CompassionSetting Healthy BoundariesCaring for Our Emotional SelvesCaring for Our MindsPracticing Self-Care as a Way of Life
Also included is an inventory for identifying areas you may need to focus on, and a "Rule of Life" guide to help you direct your self-care practice and maintain it throughout the year. Inspiring and practical, ruminative and actionable, Sacred Self-Care invites us on a journey to craft a sustainable self-care practice to care for our whole selves.
Reader's Best Award for The Englewood Review of Books, Honorable Mention
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Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes is a clinical psychologist, womanist theologian, and ecumenical minister. She is the author of I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation and Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength. She teaches at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta.
"Pragmatic, prophetic, and liberating. Each chapter offers practical and powerful advice to enhance our spiritual and mental health. A book I will highlight, underline and write notes in the margin to remember the wisdom between the pages for years to come." -- Dr. Otis Moss III, senior pastor and author of Dancing in the Darkness
"Walker-Barnes beautifully reveals her own self-care journey while expertly leading us toward building a judgment-free approach of our own; one driven by self-compassion and vulnerability. What a wonderful blueprint for facilitating not just self-care but healing!" -- Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts, Author of Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration
"With sage wisdom and compassion, Walker-Barnes leads us into a sacred season of divine awareness, self empathy, and holy practice. Engaging this book is a resurrection; not only will it change the way you see, respect, and care for yourself, it will help you find your path toward living wholly." -- Matthew Paul Turner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Is God Like?
"This book is a treasure. With tender patience and gorgeous grace, Chanequa Walker-Barnes invites us into a holistic vision of embodied self-care rooted in God's abundant love. Bursting with hospitable, practical wisdom, Sacred Self-Care helps us not only to honor our whole selves but also to extend love to and pursue justice for others. In a world that has cheapened self-care, she provides a valuable, faithful, and much-needed antidote." -- Jeff Chu, author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?
"Dr. Walker-Barnes has given us such a beautiful and practical path-way; each of these practices point us toward love, compassion, and resurrection for the long haul." -- Sarah Bessey, Editor of New York Times Bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer and author of Jesus Feminist
"As informed and informative as it is inspired and inspiring, Sacred Self-Care is especially timely in this current era of civil, political, economic, spiritual, and secular unrest." -- Midwest Review of Books
"Walker-Barnes seems to be part of a growing movement that claims self-care as a human right, and it seems like many of those leading the way are Black women.... What Walker-Barnes does so well is bring the spiritual and the psychological together with her own experiences... A holistic approach to self-care." -- The Presbyterian Outlook
