Wellness

What is Wellness?

What does wellness mean to you? It is such a loaded question. However, it has been a subject that has been close to the heart during this pandemic period with our way of life being challenged. It has been an opportunity to consider our perspective of daily life. Considering what we appreciate and value it. How and why, I choose to do things the way I do. And generally, how wellness ties into the everyday existence of us as Human beings.

To consider wellness by definition:

“The condition of good physical and mental health, especially when actively maintained by proper diet, exercise, and avoidance of risky behaviour.”

For most people wellness has become an active daily task in many forms or an event with the idea of encompassing wellness. The physical actions of self-care, such as going out for a meal, seeing friends, having a spa day, taking a relaxing holiday to unwind. Partaking in yoga classes or self-teaching practices, or even a day at the gym. Or opting for a drink in the evening. During this period many of these activities were stripped from us abruptly. We were presented with a new challenge. How do I adapt to attain a new level of equilibrium without most of the conventional methods I had available to me? Equilibrium as in a state of peace of mind, fulfilling and treating the self in the best and most fulfilling manner, opting for that wellness in totality over picking at our vices. With a world of added stress, health and financial insecurity, generally less mental space away from this imposing’s situation we find ourselves in, naturally we had to adapt quickly to maintain ourselves.

In the event of a physical accident, the body will self-regulate by shutting down parts of the body that are not needed and focuses on the fundamental systems and their responses to accommodate it. But in a mental emergency we do not have such a responsive and immediate answer, we consider the situation in whole instead. When your way of life is taken away so suddenly, what is the routine to maintain our fundamental mental wellbeing? Many of us seek external connectivity, through devices like our phones, engaging with online social media, videos, TV and other things to preoccupy the mind. Which for many, is a great way to disengage from addressing issues too troubling for now.

As much as we have an element of control on the content of what we consume, it can be hard to control the frequency in which we do these things. With even the creators of such devices showing you so with screen time statistics and such. It is hard to tune out and entirely switch off. It has become a time to face these situations and orchestrate life in the limited space, physical and mental, that we have available. A space to see how you feel, to see what is going on with yourself. Inside this space, we can create a foundation to build from moving forward in life without a constant pressure of the external influence. It could be as short as a 5-minute moment in a day, preferably when we wake, to pause and consider how we want to grow and what we want to address. How do we maximise this space we have available to us, the small changes that will lead to the large?

Personally, once I got past the stage of hysteria, I was more like, cool, this is how it is going to be, how can I adap to stay in control and implement order. I found controlling that space and managing your energy, observing how things make me feel was a way to create an internal balance. Simple exercises like journaling how I felt after watching something or highlighting a conversation. I found that conversations I had were embroiled in fear or other emotions that make someone muse over the past and what if. Would not leave me feeling in a state of wellness. With this information, it allowed me to be more conscious of how and where I engage. I started to view my phone the same way as a TV, keeping it away at times when I needed to focus and using it more purposely instead of habitually. Allowing set times for scrolling instead of doing it with no limit. Spending more time than usual in my space made me to aware of how I can keep things fresh, essentially cleansing my energy and controlling my output. Alternating my mood when my brain needed an injection of wellness. Other constants like adding aromatherapy blends to my life, light but necessary exercise to keep the body flowing. Creating time for a weekly long bath with blended salts also gave me a great chance to relax those tense muscles and relieve the mind. I created routines that will be important for me for now and the future. Tuning into my space will be a way of life for me even when some of the external restrictions have been lifted. With technology and the outside world here to stay it is our responsibility to utilise methods to operate our internal world. The element of balance will only come from our spirit.  Our essence that makes us free will always be found from the inside first. What we project externally is always a projection of that.

Tune in and Reclaim Your Power

H