The Way I Look at Wellness - Many Ways To Live

I've always been curious.

I'm a reader. I have a degree in English, which probably has something to do with that. I like learning about things, following an interesting idea, and seeing where it leads.

I also spent many years working with computer systems. That probably influenced me more than I realized at the time. I tend to look at how things fit together and how a change in one part of a system can affect something somewhere else.

Eventually, those two parts of my life found their way into the way I think about wellness.

Ayurveda gave me a framework for looking at the whole person. Yoga gave me another way to understand the relationship between the body, breath, mind, and attention. And the more I learned, the more interested I became in the connections between all of those things.

For me, that is where wellness gets interesting.

We can talk about food, for example, but food doesn't exist in isolation. How you eat can be affected by your schedule, your stress, your digestion, your sleep, your environment, and a dozen other things.

The same is true of almost everything else.

Sometimes the thing we notice first isn't necessarily the thing that needs our attention first.

I Don't Think There Is One Perfect Way to Live

Our circumstances change. Our bodies change. Our responsibilities change. What worked for us a few years ago may not be what we need now.

I've seen this in my own life, and I've seen it in the people I work with.

That is why I don't particularly like rigid wellness rules. They can be useful in some circumstances, but they don't account for the fact that we are living, changing human beings.

Instead, I like to ask a different question:

What does this person need, in this situation, at this point in their life?

That question is at the heart of what I call Dynamic Balance.

Balance isn't something we achieve once and then check off the list. It requires some attention because life keeps changing.

Sometimes the adjustment is small. Sometimes it isn't.

The important thing is being able to notice that something has changed and have enough understanding to make a reasonable adjustment.

I Like to Look at More Than One Source

Ayurveda is a major part of how I understand wellness, and I continue to study it because there is so much depth there.

I also read outside of Ayurveda.

When something interests me, I want to know what else has been written or discovered about it. Sometimes that means reading current research. Sometimes it means looking at another traditional perspective. Sometimes it simply means learning more about something I don't know much about.

I don't consider myself an expert in all of those subjects. I'm not.

I'm just interested in learning, and I think there is value in being willing to look at a question from more than one direction.

So What Does This Have to Do With Webinar Wednesday?

This is really what I want Webinar Wednesday to be.

Each week, we'll take a subject and spend some time exploring it. Ayurveda will often be part of the conversation, but I don't want these sessions to feel like a series of lectures where I hand you a list of things you are supposed to do.

I want us to understand the idea first.

Then we can talk about what it might look like in everyday life and whether it might actually be useful.

Sometimes you'll hear something and think, "That explains a lot."

Sometimes you'll disagree.

Sometimes you'll want to go read more about it.

All of that is fine with me.

I'm hoping Webinar Wednesday becomes a place where we can be curious about wellness without feeling like we have to have all the answers.

That's a much more interesting way to learn, at least to me.

And it's a good place to start.