The body heals with play.
The mind heals with laughter.
The spirit heals with joy.
Proverb
Choosing to live a holistic lifestyle is to treat and care for your body from the inside out. A natural approach addresses the body’s needs and root causes offering safe benefits to enhance physical and emotional health without added side effects.
Taking care of mind, heart and gut
Our bodies have 3 brains! The mind, the heart and the gut. The mind houses logic and intellect including the subconscious mind that directs over 90% of our behaviors. The heart which houses our intuition. There are actually more neural pathways that run from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart.
And finally the gut. The gut and brain are in constant bi-directional connection and since 80-90% of the body’s serotonin and other feel-good chemicals are produced in the gut it’s important to support a healthy microbiome.
Our daily rituals & diet truly impact our emotional health and well-being. Balancing our healthy bacteria in our gut influences our overall behaviors by creating neurotransmitters through digesting what we eat.
Supporting your gut health with a diet rich in whole foods including vegetables, fruit, healthy fats, efficient water intake, exercise, high quality probiotics and multivitamins will help to balance your overall emotional health. We hold the power in the foods we choose to fuel our bodies, the activity and ways we move our bodies, the quality of sleep we obtain, how we manage stress levels, support our emotional health, the care we take to rid our homes of excess toxins and the time we gift ourselves for restorative self-care.
Let’s break it down for you.
A proactive medical approach
Proactive medical care is in the forefront of caring for your emotional health. I have found that food allergy and food intolerance tests often help individuals to get to the root cause of their gut health and can help lead to deeper healing of the whole body.
Just because a food is healthy doesn’t mean that your body responds that way. Food allergies generally have an immediate reaction such as a rash or stomach ache, they are often easier to discover on your own. Food intolerances are much trickier as they usually don’t have an immediate reaction, but they are impacting your immune response and lead to lowered immunity, brain fog, slow digestion, leaky gut, headaches, skin irritations, mood crashes and instability to name a few.
It’s often not immediate so it can be really hard to target what it is. Symptoms can also show up more if your body is already run down and working extra hard. This will not be covered in depth in this program as it is a program within itself. I do recommend getting in contact with your provider to further this discussion and ask about their recommendations for food intolerance tests as well as hormone testing.
A proactive decrease in toxins
Reducing our toxic load in areas that we can control is another beneficial way to support our emotional health. Chemicals in our homes that we clean with and put on our skin can disrupt our hormones leading to a wide array of physical and psychological disruptions.
Learning how to reduce the toxins we use in our homes is an important first step to getting to the root cause. The average woman applies 200+ chemicals onto her body daily. And studies have shown that home cleaners are just as toxic to our lungs as smoking cigarettes. Yikes!
On average it takes less than a minute for most of these toxic chemicals to enter our bloodstream. We then absorb up to 60% of what we put on our skin. Children actually absorb 40-50% more than adults. So scary!
These dangerous toxins are found in everyday essential items such as body wash, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, make up, perfume, toothpaste, lotion, hair products, and skin care. Conditions linked to the accumulation of these toxic chemicals include infertility, breast cancer, hormone imbalances, autoimmune diseases, skin damage, thyroid imbalances, birth defects, liver and kidney disease, and advanced skin aging.
There are more options!
This was a crucial piece in our family learning how to truly care for our bodies and once we began it became super fun and empowering! The products my family and I use are plant based and don’t contain any of the alarming fillers. I know I am supporting our wellness each and every day. We have completely removed all hazardous and toxic body products, home cleaners, and irritants like candles and air sprays. It gives me such a peace of mind knowing I’m doing all I can to take care of our physical and emotional health. If you need any help getting started or suggestions on what to exchange in your home, please ask!
Intentional self-care is also an important component of healthy living. Journaling, taking a bath, reading, creating, hiking, biking and setting healthy boundaries for yourself are all part of self-care. Self-care is welcoming in more of what truly brings you joy and replenishes your mind and body.
Rest and stress management
It is essential for our bodies to get adequate rest. The hours vary for each individual. You can use a variety of apps to track your sleep to give you more insight. Also learning ways to effectively manage your stress is crucial to thriving. Stress will always be present in our lives, the way we manage it is what impacts our physical and emotional health.
Keeping active
Moving our bodies helps to shake up the stagnant energy in our cells. It helps to release stress reducing hormones and all the feel good emotions. This doesn’t have to be dreaded or strenuous activity, just something you enjoy and gets you moving. A walk, stretching, yoga, elliptical, hiking, etc.
Healthy eating feeds healthy living
Fueling our bodies is crucial in supporting your emotional health. The fundamental supplements I use and recommend, add daily support with minerals, micronutrients, and healthy fats. They include essential oils to enhance the absorption of nutrition on a cellular level.
The foods you eat are also a crucial piece to supporting your hormones and emotional health. Reaching for sugar, alcohol and caffeine are only going to increase your feelings of overwhelm, brain fog and energy crashes. I’m not saying you have to avoid at all times, but noticing how you feel when you indulge and the after effects of your mood are imperative to helping overcome emotional overwhelm.
Besides choosing healthier options, eating regularly is also important. Have you noticed in yourself or others that when we are hungry we become hard to rationalize with and become more irritable. Hence the word, hangry. Fuel your body with healthy foods you love. Mix it up with new recipes when you notice yourself drifting towards the foods that don’t make you feel so good.
I know the hardest thing sometimes is just getting started, which is why I put together my 5 best getting started tools into a new, free guide where I combine art, mindfulness and essential oils to help clear thoughts, energy and stress.
You can grab your free download here
Healthkaylahelenske.click/guide & Happiness,
Kayla
