Lifestyle Guru Hey Fran Hey Shares 5 Self-Care Tips To Adopt In 2017

Start your new year off in the best way.
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Self-care guru and social media personality Francheska Medina, who popularly goes by HeyFranHey, stopped by The Huffington Post Black Voices’ bi-weekly talk show “BV Breakdown” on Thursday to give some timely advice on how to cater to your mental and emotional health.

Fran is also a co-host of the podcast “The Friend Zone” where she frequently explores issues of mental health and provides helpful ways to practice self-care. Black Voices’ Senior Editor Lilly Workneh and Associate Editor Taryn Finley, who co-hosted Thursday’s episode of the “BV Breakdown,” asked Fran to share some of her wisdom on mind and body wellness. In doing so, Fran provided five helpful tips on how to stay rejuvenated and refreshed in 2017:

1. Put Your Phone Down

To start things off, Fran acknowledged ways to address the very real struggle of social media addiction and ways to escape it.

“Just posting a picture or even your articles online...constantly has you checking your phone all day because you want these quick hits of dopamine [which is] the pleasure center in your body and your mind,” Fran said. “You’re basically looking for that pleasure all day long.”

The self-care goddess said obsession with social media can prevent productivity from taking place. “What happens is your stuck in this dopamine loop of looking for pleasure and things aren’t actually manifesting,” she continued. Her remedy for ending the social dopamine loop is to disable all notifications on your phone.

“That way you’re not so obsessive over whats popping up on your screen and you can actually concentrate all day,” she said.

2. Throw Some Passionflower Extract In Your Bedtime Tea

To simplify the process of catching good sleep, Fran suggested putting a couple of drops of passionflower extract in water or caffeine-free tea before bed. The extract is believed to enable better sleep by allowing you to feel more relaxed.

“It’s nice because it mimics that hormone that tells your body to chill out,” she said.

3. Meditate

As many people don’t have the time or resources to practice meditation in a yoga studio (or even their bedroom), Fran suggested wearing a mala bead necklace instead. The necklaces were created to enable a calmer state of mind as those wearing it are supposed to take a deep breath for each of its 108 beads.

If you don’t want to purchase a mala bead necklace, Fran suggested that a free alternative is to download the Headspace app which allows for a guided meditation.

“It’s nice to get that relaxation and get off that [dopamine] loop for a couple minutes,” she said of the app.

4. Take A Detox Bath With Epsom Salt

If you’re looking for a way to “get the week off of you” come Friday evening, Fran advised taking a bath using Epsom Salt, which is said to get rid of toxins, reduce stress and enhance sleep. You can even throw some lavender oil in the bath to potentially “tap into that goddessy feel,” she suggested.

“You can make a tub full of so many natural oils that will just have you coming out of the tub just forgetting what the week was about,” she said.

5. Essential Oil Diffuser

To saturate the room with good energy and aroma, Fran recommends using an oil diffuser. While any essential oil of your preference would work, she suggests the Palo Santo essential oil which is created with remnants of bark from the Palo Santo tree in the Amazon Forest as it will give your space a more “natural feel.”

Watch the entire conversation with HeyFranHey below and watch more episodes of “The Breakdown” here.

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