Recently, I asked a neighbor if he was training for a triathlon competition. “No, just trying to stay in shape and take care of myself,” he said. I see him daily running through our neighborhood sporting his floppy safari hat and know that he swims daily in the Wakulla River in our neighborhood swimming area.
This week from the neighborhood dock, I heard what I thought was a manatee taking a deep breath, but was instead John, impressively swimming against the current of the river for the length of our community dock and beyond, before turning around and allowing the current to carry him back to the swimming area.
His loud intake of air sounded very much like a manatee breath when her nostrils break the surface of the water, her nose flaps open, and she draws a deep breath. “I thought you were a manatee,” I called out to John from the dock. “Nope, just a man,” he replied.
August is National Wellness Month. Founded in 2018, the hope was to broaden the scope of those interested in selfcare beyond the spa, and to move the wellness conversation from luxury to lifestyle. The emphasis is on making a commitment to small, lasting changes that support physical and mental health.
Meditation on wellness
National Wellness Month is a month-long campaign promoting practices that reduce stress and improve overall wellbeing, and the five wellness tips recommended for this year’s Wellness Month include: increasing your daily water intake, adding more fruits and vegetables to your meals, monitoring your sleep and making adjustments for better sleep habits, joining a walking, aerobics, or yoga class, and learning to meditate.
Hopefully some of us, like John the runner/swimmer in my neighborhood, are already practicing some of these possible ways to improve wellness.
While it seems there is not one consistent definition of wellness, nor a consistent distinction between wellness and well-being in the literature, the concepts are cousins and have benefits for those who are willing to do what they can do to work toward a greater sense of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
What feels most important to me is the idea that even small changes can improve our wellbeing and that we have some agency in the outcome. Too much of what is happening all around us feels so overwhelming and impossible to influence, but this initiative gives a sense of being able to make a difference for our own lives, which can impact the difference that we make in the lives of others.
Self-guided online programs
Mayo Clinic Health System offers a variety of free, online, self-guided programs that can improve different aspects of one’s health and wellness.
The five programs found at mayoclinichealthsystem.org/wellness include a month-long focus on “Discovering Gratitude,” including journaling prompts and a program on building healthy habits of nutrition, exercise, sleep and hydration, preventative health, stress reduction and passion cultivation.
The concise suggestions and downloadable calendar for this particular program, “Fall Into Wellness,” makes it easy to keep track of your progress.
Another of the self-guided programs is called “Journey to Wellness,” and is a curated set of resources organized into 24 toolkits about topics like the winter blues, or developing resilience, or taking charge of your pain. You simply click on the topic of interest.
“Kickstarting Kindness” is the fourth of five free programs at the Mayo Clinic Health System website, and it is an invitation to cultivate a spirit of helpfulness, being generous and considerate, and doing so without expecting anything in return. Such kindness has been shown to increase self-esteem, empathy and compassion, decrease anxiety and stress, and improve mood and relationships, all of which promote wellness.
The last of the comprehensive and creative programs to encourage wellness is titled “Slim Your Screen Time.” It invites participants to complete 30 or more of the nearly 100 ideas suggested over the course of two months to reduce screen time.
Being more intentional about wellbeing
It would definitely be information overload to try to do more than one of these free, well-designed Mayo Clinic programs during the month of August in celebration of National Wellness Month, but it would be worth the time to select one of the programs or perhaps another wellness plan that you may find through your own research, to be intentional about nourishing your wellbeing.
However, knowing what to do to create wellness and wellbeing may not be the issue for some of us. Rather, we may be reluctant to prioritize our own wellness because of our learned response to focus on the wellbeing of others.
We may feel it is selfish to care for ourselves and wonder if finding a healthy balance in life is an indulgence or luxury. In my experience, selfcare can be particularly difficult for women who may feel it is their duty or role to care for others before themselves.
Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter was an important champion for caregivers and for mental health in our country, and was careful to stress the importance of selfcare in both of these arenas. Established in 1987, the “Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving” (RCI), which has now merged with the “Carter Center” as the “Rosalynn Carter Mental Health and Caregiver Program,” has been committed to the promotion of caregiver health, skills, and resilience.
When my dear friend, Regina, and I used to teach the RCI curriculum “Dealing with Dementia,” we each shared from personal experience how difficult selfcare is, but also how important. The number one of 10 tips for caregiving from the curriculum includes “the best way to care for another is to take care of yourself first.”
Rosalynn Carter’s approach, based on years of personal experience and research, is rooted in the belief that self-care is not selfish, it’s essential. By protecting your own health, you ensure you can continue to provide compassionate, effective care over the long term if you are a caregiver. It also plays a significant role in maintaining your mental health and supports your treatment and recovery if you have a mental illness.
I am inspired by my neighbor who is trying to take care of himself with his daily routine of exercise. It suggests that he cares about himself and about those who love him to want to tend to his well-being.
It is my prayer that we all will find the will and way this month of August to invest in ourselves in ways that increase our wellbeing, and to encourage others to do the same, as we also do what we can to repair the world.
The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Meditation on wellness: Start with 5 steps to improve your lifestyle
Reporting by Rev. Candace McKibben, Guest columnist / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Rev. Candace McKibben, Guest columnist | USA TODAY Network
