Today in our world mental, physical, emotional and spiritual wellness can seem out of reach for some. There are simple approaches you can take towards improving your own overall mental, physical, emotional and spiritual wellness:
1. Mental Health and Well-being:
Stress Management: Techniques for stress reduction, mindfulness, and meditation. There are plenty of options for guided meditations, or just music meditations, or better yet walking meditations. Youtube is the best source for these types of meditations. The Harmony Hands Energy Healing YouTube channel has a lot of different types of meditations for your consideration. Here is a link to the playlist page where meditations are broken out into categories:
Digital Detox: Focusing on reducing screen time and managing technology use for better mental health. Unplugging is very important for our social-wellness, our mental wellness, our emotional wellness and our eye health. Take time every day to step away and unplug with purpose and do something completely different. Maybe go for a short walk outside, or pick up a good book you have been meaning to read or relax with a cup of tea just looking outside and reflecting.
Emotional Well-being: Prioritizing emotional wellness through therapy, self-care practices, and emotional intelligence. Self-care is not selfish, it is what we need to do to maintain our overall wellness. Self-care might mean saying "no thank you" when you are invited out because you really need some quiet down time to recharge. Self -care might mean having a pajama day, and just lounging around resting your body. Self-care might mean connecting with friends or family to reset, reconnect and recharge your energies. Self-care might mean a nice warm salt bath during a guided meditation or some chanting or breathwork. Self-care might mean making yourself a really nutritious meal for yourself. Whatever self-care means for you, make sure you are taking time for your own self-care.
Always remember you need to receive before you can give. Self-care is the receiving part.
2. Holistic Health and Integrative Medicine:
Functional Medicine: Addressing the root cause of health issues through a personalized approach. This is something that many modalities help one with, especially counselling, reiki, thetahealing, quantum healing hypnosis, access consciousness and more. Understanding the root cause of an ailment, ache or pain is instrumental in allowing your body permission to release that cause.
For example: when someone is experiencing tightness around their neck and shoulders, it is a sign they feel they are carrying a heavy load. They might feel responsible for others, or they may feel the need to take burdens off other people's plates and put them on their own, as a way of helping out.
Another example is lower back and hip pain and ailments. This area of the body relates to a feeling of being supported, or not feeling supported. When someone has pain in the lower back and hip area, it is an indication they do not feel supported in some area of their life.
When one understands the emotional correlations between the physical ahces and pains, it is easier to address because you know the underlying cause. Addressing the heavy load or the feeling of not being supported, as the two above examples detail, will help the person to lessen the tension, tightness and pain in the body. By letting go of the cause of the problem, allowing things to unfold as they are meant to unfold will help the physical healing occur. By realizing we have a lot of support from our angels, guides, ancestors and past over loved ones, we would feel more empowered and confident in life versus feeling all alone and unsupported.
Ayurveda and Traditional Healing: Incorporating ancient healing practices like Ayurveda into modern wellness routines. Traditional healings and medicines can be very helpful to our complex needs in the world today. As more and more Drs. become less available due to the demand, we need to take control of our own wellness practices. Exploring ancient and traditional healing traditions and modailities is one way to do this. There are many traditional healing tools like Ayurveda Healings, Tai Chi, QiGong, Yoga, Meditation, and even Chanting.
Energy Healing: Exploring practices like Reiki or sound healing for holistic well-being. Reiki, Crystal Reiki, Thetahealing, Foresnsic Healing, Quantum Touch, Quantum Healing Hypnosis Therapy, Sound Healing are all examples of wonderful holistic healing modalities. Each modality, although different in their approach, all help a person to relax, release, realign, balance, heal and grow.
If you have not yet tried energy healing in some form, be open and give it a try. You may be very surprised at how much better you feel after only just one session.
3. Nutritional Trends:
Plant-Based Diets: Increasing interest in plant-based and vegan diets for health and sustainability. Eating more dark green leafy vegetables as well as a mixture of all colored vegetables will boost the vitamins and minerals in your body. When the body has the appropriate nutrition, it functions better, its vibration is higher and there is an overall higher state of wellness. Good energy food in, means good energy food out.
Eating a Big Mac for example will not give your body the good food energy it needs, versus eating a spinach salad with garlic toast would. When you feed your body good food, it creates good energy from that food and you feel more awake, stronger, healthier, happier and you have way more energy.
Gut Health: Focus on probiotics, fermented foods, and their impact on overall health.
Taking a prebiotic and a probiotic for your age group will help you maintain your gut flora.
Personalized Nutrition: Tailoring diets based on individual needs, genetics, and microbiome. This is a great suggestion as well, as everyone's dietary needs are different. The IBS.Org FOD MAP diet plan is a great place to start if you are unsure of what foods to eat and not eat to maintain a good gut flora.
In their map, it shows 'red' and 'green' items. Red items will give you digestive upset. Green items, for most people, won't give you digestive upset. It is a great place to start to learn what foods are good for your digestive system and which ones should be avoided.
Here is the link to their current FOD Map: https://www.ibsdiets.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IBSDiets-FODMAP-chart.pdf
4. Fitness and Movement:
Home Workouts: Do at-home fitness routines and virtual online workout classes. Anytype of movement is good. YouTube has alot of free content people have posted who just want to help people get more active. Whether you are just walking up and down the flight of stairs in your home twenty times, or you are walking around the block, or you are out in the garden, or you are out shoveling snow, all exercise is beneficial. Do lunges while you fold the laundry or mop the floor. Do leg lifts as you prepare your dinner. Do stretches as you dust or vacuum. Find ways in your home to incorporate activity while you are doing the chores.
Mindful Movement: Emphasis on mindful exercises like yoga, Pilates, and tai chi for holistic health benefits. QiGong is one of my favorite types of mindful movement because if very much aligns with the elements of water, earth, fire, air. The movements are slow and fluid. Tai Chi and Yoga are similar, with slow movement very focused on stretching a certain area, activating the energy within and building a better energy, blood flow and lymphatic flow through the body.
Functional Fitness: Incorporating exercises that improve everyday movements and prevent injury. Functional fitness is about stretching things out so if you have a fall or some type of injury, your muscles are flexible enough to withstand the extra stretch and strain that accompany injuries and accidents.
Yoga or Pilates is especially good for this, keeping all the muscles limber so if something does happen it doesn 't lay you up for weeks and weeks.
5. Sleep Optimization:
Sleep Hygiene: Techniques and practices for better sleep quality and addressing sleep disorders. Using guided meditations to help you relax at bedtime can be quite helpful in optimizing one's sleep. Taking warm baths or a jacuzzi before bed can also be quite helpful for a sounder sleep, because as your body cools from the heat of the water it goes into a natural state of relaxation. Having a note pad and pen by your nightstand is a good idea, so if you wake up in the middle of the night with a 'to do' list or something to note of importance, you can write it down, get it out of your head space and go back to sleep knowing you have captured the information in your head.
Sleep Tech: Use of technology like sleep trackers and apps to monitor and improve sleep patterns. Many biological trackers (ie: FitBit) actually track your sleep patterns, how many hours of sleep you have had, whether they were hours in Delta, or Theta brainwave states and how many hours spent in each brainwave state. Delta is the restorative brainwave state. Theta is the REM sleep, where you are processing, feeling like you are half here and half somewhere else. There are also newer devices like the Healy, that emits micro-frequencies to help improve your sleep patterns and overall sleep wellness.
6. Environmental Wellness:
Sustainable Living: Incorporating eco-friendly practices into daily life for personal and planetary health. When we reduce, reuse and recycle we feel good inside. We know we are doing something positive for our planet and the future generations. It makes us feel like we are actively part of the solution. When we live in a more sustainable way, we tend to start being more aware of our choices and how those choices impact our environment and our world as a whole. It makes us more mindful overall.
Nature Therapy: Recognizing the benefits of spending time outdoors for mental and physical well-being. The sounds of nature have been used for thousands of years by all cultures across our entire planet for healing. Shaman, Medicine Men, Herbalists, Chineses Medicine Practitioners, Monks, Preists and Healers across the world have recommended to their community to spend time in nature. Go sit by a creek or a stream and just relax. Go for a walk in the forest, listen to the trees blowing in the wind and the birds in the trees, and just breathe in the forest energy. Go sit by the ocean or a lakeshore and listen to the waves rolling in, how rhythmic it is. Nature is one of our best healers. The energy of the forest, oceans, water, mountains and valleys is so powerful for our soul's nurturing. The sounds that natures shares grounds us, relaxes us, recharges us and helps us let go of stress or tension in our lives. It is a free source of sound healing helping to regulate, align and heal one's body, mind and spirit.
7. Workplace Wellness:
Remote Work Health: Strategies to maintain well-being while working remotely, focusing on ergonomics and work-life balance. If you are one of the lucky people who can work from home, this is a wonderful way to increase your work-life balance. There is nothing better than putting on a load of laundry and then sitting down to do some work. Remote work takes work - life balance to a whole new level. For some, they can even work in their pajamas all day, making a work day not feel so stressed and full of pressure. It does have a bit of a downside, in that you lose your social connections in the workplace. It is important then to make an extra effort to help solidify social connections in other areas of your life so you do not feel so isolated. It also requires you to more disciplined at home, ensuring you actually get the work done.
Are there areas you can see, in your life, that could use improvement? Are there any ideas here that you could start incorporating into your life?
....Laurie Fulford, Owner Harmony Hands Energy Healing