15 minute read
MIND + BODY
MIND & BODY BELLA
WELLNESS FROM AROUND THE WORLD ∙ STRENGTHEN YOUR MIND & BODY CONNECTION FROM HOME LIVING WITH AN EYE ON THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD ∙ HOW TIME SPENT IN NATURE CAN HELP WITH YOUR HEALTH
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WELLNESS FROM AROUND THE WORLD Many people are dreaming of getting away. Even more are reflecting on the beautiful times they have had on vacations with friends and loved ones. While we are in the midst of uncertain times, it is nice to think about where to go next or where you have been that has brought you so much joy. We decided to bring some of these beautiful locations to us by asking some of the leading experts at these exquisite resorts what we can do at home to feel pampered and relaxed. By Jennifer Walsh
FOCUS ON SKINCARE SIENNA CREASY - SPA DIRECTOR, PLAYA HOTELS & RESORTS “Caffeine ingested is just a powerful as caffeine topically applied. The caffeine in coffee has an anti-inflammatory effect that, when added to skin care products or used as a body scrub, will tighten and tone skin, reduce dark circles, minimize fine lines, and even reduce the appearance of cellulite.” PlayaResorts.com
Sienna’s Skin Renewal Body Scrub Combine ½-cup group coffee, ¼-cup cold pressed coconut oil, and 1 drop of your favorite essential oil. Oily skin desires exfoliation and hydration, and by combining the granular coffee and coconut oil, this scrub helps remove dry skin and replenish it. The essential oil will provide you with an aromatherapy benefit.
FLOWER POWER PHIL HAMMOND - DESIGNER FLORIST, DORCHESTER COLLECTION’S THE DORCHESTER, LONDON “Peace lilies are great plants to have in your bedroom as they cleanse the air,” explains Phil, who is a firm believer in living a balanced life and taking time for self-care. “They produce lots of oxygen, which aids a restorative night’s sleep. Their beauty creates happiness too, making them a great addition to any home.” He’s also a big fan of fresh herbs in the kitchen as they’re easy to grow, have wonderful aromas, and offer more health benefits than dried herbs, he adds.
DorchesterCollection.com/en/london/the-dorchester/
STAY ACTIVE WAINANI ARNOLD - FOUNDER OF HONOLULU’S WAINANI WELLNESS CENTER Wainani was recently tapped by Hawaiian Airlines to help with their in-flight wellness video series. In her segment, she demonstrates how to combat the effects of sitting for extended periods of time.
Before you sit: Take advantage of the space you have to move—march in place, do some heel raises and standing twists, etc.
While you are seated: Move every 20 minutes for 10 minutes. When seated, clinch/release waist and glutes, sit tall and straight, raise arms overhead, rotate feet in circles, etc. Walk around and do standing twists while headed to the bathroom.
When you’re up: Return your body to a fully functioning mode, walk with long strides, and swing your arms and legs like a pendulum.
HawaiianAirlines.com • WainaniWellness.com
GET VOCAL LAURA COBURN - CERTIFIED AYURVEDA HEALTH COUNSELOR AND DIRECTOR OF SERENITY AT INNS OF AURORA Positivity Mantras: “To inspire positivity, I start with the root cause of not being positive. When I am not feeling particularly positive, it is likely that I’m focused on what is wrong, and I’m often looking for evidence that supports my negative viewpoint. To shift this focus, I might ask myself ‘Where is my gaze?’ From there I can begin to create a statement I can present in my mind and repeat over and over to shift my perspective.
“It is important to acknowledge that negativity exists but that you are choosing to look toward the positive. That way you don’t get caught in denial, which would sound like, ‘I only see the positive.’ A good mantra to promote positivity is ‘Positivity begets positivity.’”
InnsofAurora.com
BRING THE SPA VIBES HOME RICHARD TRINIDAD - SPA DIRECTOR AT THE VINOY RENAISSANCE ST. PETERSBURG RESORT AND GOLF CLUB • Unclutter your space and open your curtains to capture the feeling of abundance and peace. • Wear light-colored clothing to bring calmness and joy. • Use all the lotions and body oils you’ve collected over the years to moisturize dry hands and feet. • If available, add a plant with wide leaves near your home’s entrance. It can redirect energy and clear a space. • Light a candle for at least an hour in the morning and afternoon. A lit candle is good for meditation and lifts all your senses. • Clean often and add a couple of drops of essential oil to your mop bucket. My favorite for the floor is eucalyptus, as it enhances the air we breathe. • Brew tea. Ginger, lime, and turmeric make a strong immune-boosting combination.
Strengthen Your Mind Body Connection From Home &
By Jennifer Walsh
Keeping a routine and an ability to be mindful in a time of uncertainty is definitely a practice, and in recent months not an easy one to navigate. That’s why it’s more important than ever to find ways to keep your body and mind in alignment with activities that can be done right in your home (even if that home is 500 square feet!).
Thankfully, many of our favorite studios quickly amped up their online offerings as social distancing tried to threaten our collective fitness. Most of them are online or app-based at the moment, but since the world has moved indoors for the time being, many are trying to make their programming available on your TV as well.
Mission 360 This web and app-based program, available at Mission-360.com, the App Store, and Google Play, boasts fitness, yoga, and meditation content from 50 studios, from F45 boot camps to CycleFit, Ballet Beach Body, and Vanessa Van Noy yoga. More is coming, so streaming their offerings on your TV will soon be a cinch. A 10-day subscription is free with the code ownyourmission. Standard pricing is $19/month after a 10-day free trial period. Mission-360.com
mindbodygreen This site is chock-full of great information for better connections, centering ourselves, and practicing with purpose. Some classes are even free, such as Kelsey Patel’s Reiki Healing, which is a nice surprise, including five classes from its extensive library of well-being master classes. “Community classes” are also delivered on Instagram, which offer everything from quarantine cooking with registered dieticians and doctors, acupressure you can do at home, Pilates workouts, meditation practices, and more.
Their editorial team has also stepped up its coverage with content focused on helping manage the coronavirus pandemic, from DIY face masks, psychologists’ tips for dealing with stress and anxiousness, even ways to cook with canned beans. Prices range from $20-$500. mindbodygreen.com/practices
Pure Barre Missing your local studio, or want to try a class from Pure Barre teachers in your area? Find a list of all Pure Barre locations at PureBarre.com/location-search and bring the community into your home. Experience live classes and events with your favorite instructors and members. Many studios are even rolling out their own one-week trials, which usually begin at $15 (pricing may vary). PureBarre.com
Inscape
This popular meditation app has shifted its focus to digital services to ensure their mindfulness-motivated community always has access the tools they need to meditate and relax. Their popular presence on Instagram
Live enables users to pause and meditate together. Offerings are continuously being added and updated to accommodate what’s most popular and most requested.
Stay tuned for additional studio-like classes and those geared toward stress reduction. App pricing is $9.99/ month or $58.99/year. An Inscaper Membership starts at $40/month for 2 sessions, which includes app access. Inscape.life/pages/app
Kripalu Kripalu Connect is a new video subscription membership from Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, aimed at helping you stay grounded, present, and anchored to your inner wisdom all from the comfort of home. It also offers the best of Kripalu programming directly to your computer, tablet, or mobile device, and includes unlimited video yoga classes, meditations, and faculty talks for $20/month. Kripalu.org
LIVING TODAY WITH AN EYE ON THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD By Dr. Julie Davelman hile we are living in unprecedented times, and six months ago no one could have predicted any of this, our day-to-day lives feel a lot like the movie “Groundhog Day.” Naturally, people wonder “when and how will this end?” Even though there is no crystal ball to give us guidance, there are concepts we can apply from things we do know that will prepare us for life after the pandemic. Although the ideas discussed below should be helpful to everyone, it is important to remember that everyone’s reaction to the current crisis is different because people vary in their level of resilience. As with any other traumatic event, some people walk away unaffected while others may need assistance with carrying on. The important thing is to be honest with yourself about this continuum and acknowledge where you fall on it. There is no right or wrong way to cope, but if you are struggling, get the help you need since there is no reason to be doing this without support. One of the difficulties that our new “Groundhog Day” life creates is a problem with motivation. It is hard to get work done if today looks just like yesterday and tomorrow is promising to look remarkably similar. But instead of thinking of the work you do today for its own sake, think of it as getting you ready to return to the normal world in a stronger position or at least without a backslide. In preparation for life after the pandemic, we also need to focus on safeguarding our relationships. While many of us may have initially enjoyed the newfound time at home with loved ones, spending all of our time together can become a challenge. Once the novelty has worn off, you may have run out of topics to talk about, which makes you feel like it is hard to connect. And, let’s be honest, we are all stressed, so things that might have gotten overlooked in the past may now spark fights. At the same time, the relationships with people outside your “quarantine circle” may generate different problems. Keeping in touch is now being redefined in both frequency and length. Friends who you used to see every Thursday for happy hour may no longer want to chat every week. On the flip side, others whom you didn’t have regular contact with may be offended that you are not checking on them daily during this difficult time. Similarly, if you liked spending an hour with your mother running errands most days, it does not mean you are willing to spend an hour on the phone discussing what she cooked today. The way to overcome these problems is to be honest with loved ones about your communication needs and ask about theirs. Realistically, you probably won’t be able to strike a perfect balance, but making the effort should make it much easier to restore these relationships as your world returns to normal. W
Keeping your eye on the day after the pandemic will help shift your focus away from the malaise of today and onto what you need to be doing for the future. The best way to do that is to stick to some sort of a routine. Be reasonable… it may not be necessary for you to wake up at 6am for your non-existent commute, but it will be much easier to get back to doing that if you set your daily alarm for 8am as compared to just crawling out of bed at noon most days. The smaller the gap, the easier the adjustment back! If you have inadvertently created this problem for yourself, now is the time to start shifting back to a more reasonable middle ground a little at a time so that you don’t have to take a leap on the day you are allowed to head back to the office. People are also wondering how society, as a whole, will be affected by this experience. Will we all learn to appreciate each other, and in the future prioritize only “the important things?” The answer is that some will, and some won’t. People’s responses will likely be as varied and complex as people themselves. Some really will adopt this life-lesson while others may write this off as a fluke.
The takeaway message in all of this is to be true to yourself. Do what feels right for you and for your family. Capitalize on those things that have become important to you, and most importantly, do not compare yourself to how others are doing it.
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SPOTILIGHT ON: Doreen Laskiewicz
Doreen is the owner of Doreen Laskiewicz Photography llc (doreenphotography.com), based in New Jersey. She is in her third decade as an educator and uses that experience to teach others how to use their cameras for everyday moments. Doreen specializes in portraits, art prints, restorations, and graphic design infused creations for athletes and dancers.
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By Jennifer Walsh ippocrates is known to have said, “Nature itself is the best physician.” Thankfully, people finally understand this statement. Albert Einstein even spoke about the impact of taking a walk outside; his words: “Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.” Nature has often been looked at like a thing outside of us—merely as that place you go. You collect photos of vacations where you spend all of your hours outdoors in nature. We have experienced the greatest migration toward the indoors in our lifetime, and our health has paid the consequences. We have figuratively and quite literally put the wall up between ourselves and the outside world, allowing ourselves to only enjoy the benefits of nature on the weekends or when we go on vacation. Thanks to years of mounting evidence, science and data continue to show us how important nature is to our daily lives. Our relationship to and with nature must change for our overall health and well-being. We are all one ecosystem. The better we understand how interconnected we are with the living world, the more we will want to protect it any way we can. We can create a space of understanding about how important the natural world is for our survival, from the food we eat to the air we breathe and receiving healthy oxygen from the trees. But trees don’t only give us oxygen, they also share something called terpenes. Terpenes are considered to be a multivitamin for our bodies—when they are inhaled, they heal us. Did you know that trees like pine and cedar release an aerosol known as phytoncides? The trees bathe themselves in these aerosols to ward off illness and disease. When we spend time around these trees, we inhale the phytoncides, which activate our own NK cells, also known as our natural killers cells, in turn, helping us ward off illness and disease. These findings come from Dr. Qing Li who is a doctor from the Nippon Medical School from Japan and has studied the effects of the forest on our brains for over 25 years. He is also the man who coined the term Forest Bathing in 1982, which is a mindful meditative practice of walking slowly in the forest. Every time we walk in nature, we are taking a virtual dose of nature medicine! For so long, our brains have been overworked and overstressed—it’s a “too many tabs open at once” type of syndrome. Unfortunately, this increases our stress level and creates human error. When we spend time in nature we tend to release worry and concern and allow our brains to relax and to feel at ease. We activate all of our senses, which we rarely do when we are indoors all day long. In our fast-paced world, the brain is a muscle that is being overused. Time outdoors and a better understanding of how nature impacts our indoor world—with ample light, wood features, specific textures and carpeting, etc.—is key. When we understand the impact of nature in how we spend time outdoors, how we bring more nature indoors (biophilic design), and where our food comes from, we will have a better symbiotic relationship with the true impact that nature has on our daily lives. H Get a Dose of Nature • Walk your dog. • Take your workout outside. • Enjoy a bike ride. • Check out a new hiking path. • Go for a run on the beach, boardwalk, or anywhere that might be different or fun. • Grab the kids and fly a kite. • Start a nature journal with your family. Spot new things and write down what you find on your exploration.
BRETT MATTHEWS PHOTOGRAPHY
