Pillars of Health

I love when friends send me podcast suggestions. I am a person that loves to reflect and find the connections between things. I love being exposed to new ideas or ways of thinking because sometimes it is just the missing link I was searching for in my reflections. I have always had a love for or rather fascination with health and wellness. However, I've never felt really competent or super knowledgeable of various aspects of health because I don't get all that jazzed up about the specific scientific processes that are happening in our bodies. At least, the chemical reactions themselves (sorry Dad!). I intuitively understand how it all works, so I never feel the need to know the specific names of pathways or vitamins or processes. I find that often makes me more confused and takes me away from the real lessons nutrition and health has to offer us. While knowing the specific scientific processes can help us to more fully understand and make more informed decisions, I full-heartedly believe that nutrition and health are incredibly personal and unique to each person. I believe our bodies offer us the answers we are looking for if only we pay attention. There is no set in stone "good" or "bad" food or exercise or supplement that affects all of us in the same way, and yet, we often treat nutritional advice like dogma. I love this podcast because it speaks to general frameworks we can all follow to intuitively connect to what works for us. Because that's really what health and wellness come down to, building our intuition to know what is helpful for us.

This podcast episode offered me a delicious question to build this intuition: What are your pillars of health? Ella offers these 5 pillars as foundations for a healthy life: Nutrition (aiming to get 30-40+ different plants in your diet each week including fruits, veggies, nuts, and beans, minimizing processed foods and high sugar that triggers our stress response cycle, and eat what is nourishingly delicious to you, aka what makes you feel good!), hydration (make sure you are drinking at least 2L of water a day), sleep (getting the right amount of sleep for you where you feel well rested and energized as sleep is the time when our bodies and brains work to rid themselves of toxins from the day), mindfulness (finding presence and cultivating calm), and exercise (moving our bodies to encourage blood flow to support our muscles, organs, and minds).

From the research I have done for my thesis and my personal life experience, I would rather change the question from what are your pillars of health to what are your pillars of well-being? Well-being, in my mind, feels much more holistic and therefore I really think about all of the things that support my overall feeling of wellness in my life, not just my physical health. I know I can get stuck in the body and somewhat in the mind when I think of the word health, but wellness, to me, encapsulates the connection to ourselves, others, and the world around us.

There are various models that depict dimensions of wellness: the indivisible self, the 8 dimensions of wellness, the ecowellness inventory, etc. While all of these offer great information, in my search for wellness over the past two years, I have been trying so hard to fit myself into these models instead of trying to find out how they exist in my life. It became a to-do list of wellness as a method of making sure I was well instead of actually checking in with myself. Therefore, while I don't claim to make a new model of wellness by any means, here are the things that are happening in my life when I feel at my best:

• Movement: "Find what feels good." I have spent a lot of my life exercising and trying to discipline my body to look and act in a certain way. I became obsessed with steps, miles, sets, time. It took the joy out of the sports I loved to play, because I could never meet my own unrealistic expectations of how I should be performing or look. When I started focusing on movement > exercise, I stopped focusing on calories burned or what I was supposed to get out of the exercise and instead started to feel how different forms of movement made me feel and to sense when I had enough vs. only being done at a certain mile, time, etc. This switch reignited my love of running and has helped me to try different ways of moving my body to find what feels good. When the movement feels good and is nourishing, I want to do it more often because I know it will make me feel better. Ways I am currently moving through my world are yoga, walking, running, climbing, hiking, and lifting (not to mention kitchen dancing!).

• Flow: mastery, mindfulness, mattering. Flow is the sensation of being "in the zone," where you are so focused on the present experience of an activity you are involved with that the rest of the world fades away. I heard in a podcast awhile ago that the opposite of work is not play, it is depression. When I heard this, I was almost entirely submerged in grad school work and feeling the lowest and most lost I have ever felt in my life. As I do, I started to conduct an inventory of my life and found that I did almost nothing to play. Everything had a purpose: running for health, meditating for my mind, painting for envelopes I had to make, climbing or biking so I could teach it better, etc. Everything was a pill to swallow instead of a journey to wander. I wasn't doing anything "just for fun." In fact, if you had asked me then, I would have said "what's the point?" Ironic as an outdoor recreation/leisure major and enthusiast. I cognitively knew and preached the importance of play and leisure in our well-being, but was failing to take my own advice. Now, play is an integral part of my day. Play is how I ignite flow in my life. Play and flow are how we connect to ourselves and others. I am currently finding flow and playing via climbing, learning watercolor, cards, SuperSmashBros Brawl, Mario Kart, running and listening to audiobooks, and playing Ecologies with Mark.

• Sleep: I MEAN IT. I never used to really understand how important sleep was to my well-being until I started experiencing depressive and anxious symptoms. In the podcast mentioned above, one of the guests mentions that sleep is integral to the prevention of diseases like Alzheimer's because sleep is the time the brain and body use to detoxify the body from the daily build up of stress hormones. I currently try to be in bed by 8:45/9:00p.m. every night and wake up around 6:00/7:00a.m. ever morning. I find when I am more consistent with my sleep schedule, my body is better able to prepare for sleep and wake up more naturally because it knows what to expect.

• Nutrition/Hydration: The Gut-Brain Axis. What we put into our bodies actively shapes the functioning of our minds and how we feel. Ella has these as separate categories, but I see them as one and the same. This is the space for all of the things I am actively and intentionally bringing into my body. What I have found is essentially good food = good mood. When I eat lots of plants and fibrous foods, I feel better. When I eat processed and refined foods, I have a burst of YUM! followed by a crash of dissatisfaction leading to more craving. As someone who has struggled with anorexia for a good portion of my teenage years, this mental switch towards food and water as delights and energy has helped me form a better relationship with what I am ingesting and how it makes me feel. While I definitely still have a ravenous love for chips and salsa, I am currently working on trying to crowd out processed foods with other more nourishing options to support my brain and my body.

• Nature: Get Out! Getting outside is absolutely INTEGRAL to my well-being. I know the days that I spend most of my day inside hunched over a computer screen, I feel it. It's the grogginess of my mind, the lethargy of my body, and the dullness of my spirit. As soon as I step outside, the literal burst of FRESH air is just a deep cleansing breath for my whole system. Nature is filled with the little moments of magic and spectacular moments of wonder. When I am among the trees, (as Mary Oliver would have it), I feel seen, rooted, myself, home.

• Community: Reach out! My go-to when I am in a place of stress or overwhelm is to retreat, withdraw, and go within. I see myself as unfit for others consumption and curl up into a cave of self pity. While my instinctive response is just my way of trying to create space to understand what is going on within the walls of my mind, I forget that those moments are the moments that I need perspective the most because I can't find it for myself. I am beyond grateful for the people in my life, though I know I have not always showed it. I know the people I have chosen to be my friends are always there for me and love me for all that I am, not just how I want to be. I have always been a "go big or go home" sort of person and friend, but as I see it now, friendship and any relationship is not built on the big moments, but rather the "small things often."

• Reflection/Introspection: As an introvert, creating time to be alone and with myself is essential for my well-being. As Glennon Doyle says, "Be still and know." I can often get swung up into the currents of other's emotions, wants, and needs, and forget myself in the process, like a speck of sand swirling in the undertow unsure of which direction is up. Time by myself (often in nature), is a time for me to slow down, crawl back into my body, and discern what has been helpful and unhelpful throughout the day. Reflection and introspection are critical to finding my own voice and speak from a place FROM me, rather than about me or other topics. I am currently finding reflection/introspection via journaling, tarot, meditation, and writing.

What are your pillars of well-being?