Every week, I get calls from people who want to begin their healing journey. They sound eager, hopeful until I hear the same familiar line:

“I really want to start, Rashida… but I don’t know how to remove time for myself.”

That single sentence says so much about the world we live in.

It isn’t awareness that’s missing. It’s space the willingness to carve out a moment for ourselves in a life that never pauses.

The Myth of “When Things Settle Down”

Let’s be honest life never truly settles.

Mornings start in a rush: cooking, school runs, emails, deadlines. Evenings blur into traffic, work, and family needs. By the time the day ends, energy runs out, and self-care quietly slips to tomorrow.

But tomorrow never arrives gift-wrapped in free time.

If we wait for the perfect day to start, we’ll wait forever and by the time life finally slows, the body may already be asking for recovery, not care.

The Cost of “No Time”

Cities today are filled with parks, studios, wellness centers, even evening yoga batches. Yet people struggle to pick one hour for themselves. It’s not the lack of opportunity it’s the belief that self-care is a luxury.

In truth, it’s maintenance.

Your body doesn’t wait for your next vacation to repair itself.

Your mind doesn’t postpone burnout until the next holiday.

If you don’t give yourself time now, time will eventually take it back through fatigue, imbalance, or illness. The body will demand what you kept postponing.

Preventive Health Begins With Choice

True health starts with one decision to value your time and claim it.

No one can do that for you: not a therapist, not a doctor, not even your loved ones. You can delegate chores, but never your healing.

Once you decide that “my health matters,” everything begins to shift.

You stop chasing time… and start creating it.

When Care Turns Into Repair

Many people plan to focus on their health after retirement, when work slows down and children grow up. But by then, aches, sleep issues, and hormonal changes have already set in. That’s when you’re no longer nurturing your health you’re repairing it.

Healing was never meant to begin at crisis.

It was meant to be lived daily, gently, intentionally.

Coming Back to Yourself

At The Health Oasis, I often call my studio a health haven a space where people reconnect with themselves.

It’s not about squeezing another task into your schedule.

It’s about remembering that you deserve a place on your own priority list.

Because being WELL-thy truly well doesn’t begin when you have it all.

It begins when you finally have yourself.

 

— Rashida Vandeliwala

Founder, The Health Oasis | Where healing becomes a way of life.