THE RECIPE FOR WELLNESS

Health authorities around the world all agree on one thing. The best way to avoid or treat illness is to be well. Wellness is simple and requires getting the basic things right. Yet wellness can be difficult to achieve in the modern age when:

• Our water commonly contains disinfectants and their toxic by-products, along with heavy metals, pesticides, pharmaceutical residues, forever chemicals, fire retardants, endocrine disruptors and other emerging contaminants.

• Our food is often high in sugar, salt and fat, nutrient depleted, and contaminated with pesticides and artificial additives.

• Our air contains traffic-related air pollutants and range of toxic volatile compounds and can be further polluted by cigarette smoke.

• We lead sedentary lives, experience life stress and sleep poorly

• Our homes are often unhealthy and maybe affected by water damage and mould, excessive electromagnetic radiation, poor air quality and toxic building products and our personal relationships are impacted by stress and the demands of busy lives.

The Recipe for Wellness is laid out in the following poem:

The Recipe for Wellness

Bathe in beautiful water 

Prepare delicious food 

Make the most of every breath 

Dance through every mood

Tend the soil beneath your feet 

Embrace sunshine from above 

Share your gifts with all the world 

Fill your life with love

#professorial poetry

Let’s break this down and go through each of the ingredients and why they are so important.

Bathe in beautiful water

Adequate hydration is essential to sustain life and the flow of water through and over our bodies, is vital to regulate body temperature and flush away metabolic waste and environmental contaminants. Bathing in ‘Beautiful Water’ goes beyond hydration or cleansing and implies immersion in water that is filtered to remove toxic contaminants, structured to reduce scale and improve absorbability, balanced in terms of minerals and pH, blessed with positive intention, and free flowing to reduce stagnation. 

Bathing in beautiful water supports the microbiome of your gut and skin, preserves the natural oils that protect your skin and hair, and prevents inhalation of chlorine and volatile disinfectant by-products. This requires either the use of a ‘Beautiful Water’ or similar whole-house filter, or access to a pristine, natural water source. Getting this basic thing right enables other things to go right by themselves, while getting this wrong, makes everything else more difficult.

Prepare delicious food

Preparing delicious food means that in addition to eating delicious food, you are also involved in the journey from concept to consumption. This may include hunting, gathering, sowing, growing, breeding, raising, harvesting, butchering, preserving, processing, cooking, presenting, and sharing food. Being involved in your own food preparation makes it more likely your produce will be Seasonal Local, Organic and Whole (SLOW) and your animal products will be well-sourced. 

Preparing food that’s 'delicious' also means it’s more likely to contain complex, sweet, salty, spicy, sour, bitter and umami flavours, along with diverse creamy, crunchy, chewy, crispy and crumbly textures. This diversity may involve different preparation techniques based on traditional cuisines and include different leaves, roots, flowers, fruits, and fungi, and animal products that contribute unique nutrients and sensory experiences. Preparing delicious food is also an act of service that channels positive intention, mindfulness, and gratitude into nourishment for yourself and others. 

Make the most of every breath

Respiration is a biological necessity and breath lies at the intersection of the central and autonomic nervous systems and forms a conscious link between mind and body. Making the most of every breath means aligning your physical and emotional states and being as present as possible in every moment. This optimises your capacity to direct energy without wasted effort and provides a gateway to vitality and presence by aligning your inner thoughts, with your outer words, and deeds.

Making the most of every breath also includes exploring the full range of breath and engaging in singing, laughing, panting, peaceful, and mindful breathing, and not wasting breath on trivial, futile, or hurtful conversations. It also means breathing in nature and participating in the elemental exchange between the plant and animal Kingdoms in places where fresh air and nature dominate, thus transforming the simple act of breathing into a profound wellness practice.

Dance through every mood

All life is a product of energy, frequency and vibration, and moods are simply transient emotions that fluctuate like waves in response to energy in motion. Whether you are conscious of it or not, every move you make is a dance move because your movements and posture natural reflect of your inner emotional state. Dancing through every mood therefore means embracing emotional shifts with grace and fluidity, rather than trying to resist, suppress, or dwell on them. 

Dancing through every mood also involves consciously flowing with life’s ups and downs, knowing that emotions such as fear, anger, and grief can easily give way to love, forgiveness and gratitude. It also means using physical movement to process emotions and channel energy constructively whether through dance, exercise, or other creative expression. Honouring your moods as valid yet transient experiences encourages their physical expression and transformation and cultivates emotional resilience that supports wellbeing. 

Tend the soil beneath your feet

The soil beneath our feet is teeming with microbes that are the planet’s greatest reservoir of genetic diversity and the ultimate source of our food. Direct contact with the soil exposes us to microbes that have a beneficial impact on our gut microbiome and positively influence our food cravings, weight, and mood, while walking barefoot on the earth literally grounds us energetically by connecting us to the earth’s boundless source of free electrons.

Tending the soil beneath our feet includes practices such as composting, sustainable gardening, and ecological stewardship that involves avoiding toxic pesticides, reducing landfill, and managing water use. These practices nurture the environment that sustains us, closes the loop on the food cycle, and connects us to place. They also ground us metaphorically and cultivate stability in our lives by fostering gratitude and a sense of belonging and purpose that creates fertile ground for personal and planetary wellness.

Embrace sunshine from above

Sunshine nourishes the mind and body in profound ways and ultimately supplies the energy that sustains all life on earth. Embracing sunshine from above encourages spending time in nature and intentionally basking in natural full-spectrum sunlight. This uplifts the spirit, combats seasonal affective disorder, and fosters a sense of warmth and vitality. It also stimulates the skin to produce vitamin D, a vital nutrient and hormone that supports physical and mental health by enhancing bone health, immune function, and mood regulation. 

Embracing sunshine also requires you to tune into safe exposure levels and to align yourself with the seasons and the daily rhythms of life by allowing the different qualities of light at sunrise and sunset to regulate your circadian rhythms and enhance your sleep quality. Embracing sunshine from above also serves as a metaphor for embracing openness, optimism, and joy, and promoting wellness by radiating positivity, hope, and vitality.

Share your gifts with all the world

Everyone possesses unique gifts that may include talents, skills, ideas, or vulnerabilities that enrich both giver and receiver when shared. Sharing your gifts requires you to first identify and acknowledge your calling and invest in its development. This naturally builds self-esteem and generates gratitude, purpose, and appreciation for what you have, rather than focusing on what you lack. Generating value also elicits positive feedback, which further boosts self-esteem and creates ripples of positive impact that spread across the world in unpredictable ways. 

It is said that illness is about ‘I’, whereas wellness is about ‘we’. Sharing your gifts with the world helps shift your focus from “I” to “we” by directing your attention towards service to others. This leads to a virtuous spiral as it encourages empathy, reduces social isolation, and inspires reciprocal generosity that strengthens social bonds and builds antifragile communities where individuals are valued, and wellness can flourish.

Fill your life with love

If the currency of wellness is connection, then love is the connecting force that supports wellbeing across the generations and counters the entropy within closed systems. Love is essential for healthy development and is a profound source of joy that imbues life with purpose and meaning. Love supports both mental and physical well-being and has the power to combat stress, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness, and improve immunity, quality of life, and overall longevity. Love also helps navigate life’s challenges with grace by cultivating empathy, emotional intelligence, and supportive interpersonal relationships.

Living a life filled with love means every interaction with yourself, others, and with nature, is an opportunity to manifest love in action. This naturally promotes acts of kindness, forges intimate connections, and leads to a life rich in purpose, joy, and meaningful relationships.  This then builds a legacy of love that echoes through the wellbeing of future generations.