Spring is the season to clear out the cobwebs and nurture growth. It’s also the perfect time to check in with your environmental wellness—that is, your health as it relates to your relationship with nature and your environment. Environmental wellness is a holistic approach to maintaining your health, the health of those around you, and the health of our natural world.
1. Clear the clutter.
You don’t have to go crazy and do the whole house at once in order to experience environmental wellness—that defeats the purpose of this whole exercise. Start small. Try to declutter one room at a time. Donate clutter that’s bugging you, whether it’s unused, taking up too much space, or weighing you down. What your eye sees, your mind feels.
2. Schedule sanity.
When your schedule is out of control, so is your wellness. Your diet flies out the window, your exercise routine skips town, and your patience dries up. All that’s left is chaos—and that sends out negative waves, big time. Whether you know it or not, it also negatively affects your health.
To combat these effects, prioritize to make room for calm. Choose the important stuff first, and set boundaries to honor those priorities. You aren’t a superhero, so stop trying so hard to act like one. Find calm by honoring your time and space. That means putting your health and wellness first by making your mental and physical balance number one on the list.
3. Choose wisely.
Choose your food wisely. Choose your spending wisely. Make time to spend in nature. Pay attention to where your food comes from, and make an effort to live more gently on the Earth. Choose more of what uplifts you, rather than what stresses you out or makes you feel crummy.
All of these things contribute to your environment as a whole—whether that means your bodily environment or your spatial environment. Choose things that help you live in a more environmentally respectful and healthy way.
4. Connect.
We are social beings. We need others, and others need us. We thrive when we are surrounded by supporting, loving people and living things. That includes plants, pets, acquaintances, family, close friends, and romantic relationships.
In the hectic pace of life, make sure you’re taking time out for connection in a balanced way by making a conscious effort to connect with your community, too. Opportunities to connect and help others are all around you. Volunteer or just reach out to your neighbors. We are often in the right place at the right time when someone needs us. Here are some other ways to connect:
- Connect with others through face-to-face social engagement—especially when you’ve been working too hard, or have been knee-deep in isolating projects.
- Connect to self through chakra balancing, energy healings, and meditation.
- Connect to nature through time spent outside, or if that’s not feasible, through aromatherapy with natural scents, and the living things in and around your home.
5. Honor the mind/body connection.
The health of the mind affects the health of the body. You can go paperless, walk to work, volunteer, help everybody out, and skip meat, but if you fail to nourish and heal your mind/body connection, all the good deeds in the world won’t save you.
- Meditate. Calm the monkey mind and return to center again. Even if it’s only for a few moments.
- Stretch, and do yoga. It’s a movement-based way to bring the body and mind together.
- Create. Let your right brain out of the cage for a while, while using your physical body to allow the right brain to communicate. Make art. Make music. Create tasty, healthy food to nourish your body. Jump! Dance! Express yourself in whatever way energizes you.
- Play. Whether it’s on the beach, in the backyard, or at home. Make time for fun. The body heals faster through laughter.
- Breathe. Tune into your chakras, and learn how to balance them. Use Ayurveda for mental and physical balancing as well as whole healing.
- With conscious effort you can find ways to sneak in time for environmental wellness and vibrancy. You just need to prioritize with the right intent, and it becomes easy because it’s what we were meant to do.
