To embrace holistic living is to embrace wholeness. It is to re-imagine our lives as a system in the sense that every aspect of our life feeds right into the other. If one is off balance, the other will be. To truly understand and incorporate a holistic perspective, we often need to take a broad view of our life and evaluate how our health might be affecting our relationships, or our diet might be affecting our work, for example. It’s all related. We can achieve a deep sense of fulfillment, joy and well-being when we tend to all aspects of our mind and body, to rebalance and patch any leaks in our holistic life system.
Here are some areas of our lives that can we look at and modalities to find balance:
Professional Work Life
Meditation – Clearing your mind and breathing for just a few minutes of each day can help ease anxiety. “Research suggests that daily meditation may alter the brain’s neural pathways, making you more resilient to stress.” Meditation will help you be happier and calmer in the workplace.
Time Management – Make sure you allow yourself time each day to properly care for yourself to maintain your wellbeing. In our fast-paced world, it is essential to maintain wellness and balance in order to rejuvenate our spirit and reconnect with ourselves.
Social Life
Compassionate Communication – Also known as non-violent communication, this is a tool for developing a deeper sense of compassion and connection with others. It’s a great tool for helping us see our common humanity and helps to create life-serving friendships, communities and families. Communication is key to getting more out of your social life and cultivating empowering relationships.
Conscious Partying – Find better balance in your life by attending events like a local Ecstatic Dance event, having a substance-free talking circle, or hosting a drum circle or music jam around a bonfire – instead of the typical bar-hopping and drinking that our society embraces. You can find a joy and wholeness from celebrating and deepening relationships without alcohol, and there are communities everywhere that embrace this way of “partying”.
Dietary Habits
Blood Type or Ayruvedic Diet – Every body is different. Therefore, finding out through testing, what types of foods your body should intake based on either your blood type or an Ayruvedic assessment can help you eat the right foods to fuel your body most efficiently. Find out what makes your particular body makeup balanced. Maybe a vegetarian diet is better for you...maybe it isn’t.
Detox – Reset your system and do a body cleanse. Whether it be a few days of juicing, only eating veggies and fruits for a week or doing a specific organ cleanse, there are thousands of different kinds of detoxes you can do. As we are coming into winter, you may want to consider a Winter Weekend Cleanse to revitalize yourself when energy get’s slow and stagnant.
Health & Wellbeing
Qi-Gong – Qi-Gong forms, a combination of body posture and movement, breathing, and meditation, are practiced to heal and regenerate the body, reduce stress, calm the mind and soothe the central nervous system. Qi-Gong can target specific illnesses or body functions. For example, Dragon and Tiger are used in China to help treat cancer and mitigate the effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Using traditional Chinese medical and Qi-Gong diagnostic methods, doctors design exercises for specific health problems, similar to the way herbalists create prescriptions. The treatment and how the exercises are done change as the individual progresses.
Full-Body Balance Screening – Many of us live our daily lives not understanding how great we could feel if we understood the deficiencies and imbalances in our body and took action to nourish and re-balance. The first step in obtaining optimal health and wholeness is by taking a full-body balancing screening that most naturopaths can provide for you.
Most nutrients are supplied to us through food and water. Factory food processing and modern farming practices deplete essential nutrients from food. Not only that, but many nutrients are not bioavailable to our bodies for a number of reasons, and we need to use proper methods in preparing our foods in order to make the nutrients more bioavailable so they can be absorbed into our bodies. Additionally, our stressful and chemical-laden lifestyles we live in today puts extra strain on the body and increases nutritional requirements. This leads to many health-related issues in the body, as nutrients are vital in all bodily processes.
Other areas to explore balancing are creativity, spirituality and play. Our health, relationships, work life, social life and how we engage with our world are interconnected. We can empower ourselves by taking small and sweet steps towards obtaining a holistic lifestyle that honors the mind, body and spirit. Even if you just focus on balancing one area of your life per month for the next 5 months, you will begin feeling the effects right away. Happy holistic living!
| Disclaimer: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.