I’ve explored health, wellness, and fitness as a career for six years now. Each year has been a journey, allowing me to explore the extremes of these fields and refine my approach to educating clients and distant listeners whom I’ve never even met. I’ve tried many approaches—various diets, types of exercise, herbs, and supplements. What I have consistently found to be true is that there are fundamental elements of wellbeing that we can implement to feel good while experiencing life in our bodies.
Here are what I believe to be the 8 Foundations of Wellness (in no particular order):
Mindful Awareness
Movement
Stillness
Sleep
Play
Community
Nutrition
Self-Responsibility
Each foundation allows us to check in with ourselves, set our own baseline for how we are experiencing life, and determine whether or not we like our current reality. These foundations serve as a guide to help us find our unique rhythm within a certain range. I’ve found that too much or too little of any of these can send us into a spiral. Knowing my own ratio of each has been crucial for me, and this ratio can change on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. This might sound chaotic, but it’s not. It’s not scripted. I’m not journaling every morning, checking off a to-do list for each one. They have simply become my life. It’s almost as if I don’t have to think about each one individually anymore because of how integrated they are. This is possible for you too.
In the health and wellness world, it’s easy to get fixated on checking off lists and ticking boxes to make sure we’ve done it “right.” However, we often become obsessive and too much in our minds. This is where the balance of mindful awareness comes in. The purpose of mindful awareness is to allow us conscious choice. It is not to be in our thoughts all day long, analyzing and focusing on logic 24/7. Mindful awareness allows us to bring the unconscious to the conscious. When we’re unconscious, we’re running on automatic. Consciousness allows us to have choice, and choice gives us a lot of freedom. It allows us to choose differently, change our beliefs, and create a new reality. Without mindful awareness, it’s like we’re walking around with earplugs, a blindfold, and a nose clip, unable to guide ourselves. With it, we open our own door to an abundance of possibilities.
Movement is another foundation that is near and dear to my heart. From an early age, I discovered types of movement I loved and felt passionate about—dance, gymnastics, and cheer. I still incorporate fundamentals of each into my own and my clients' movement programs, such as flexibility, mobility, balance, calisthenics, and acrobatics.
There are many types of movement or exercise, and many ways we can enjoy the process of movement and explore what our bodies are capable of. In my six years of personal training and movement coaching, I’ve learned that what clients want most is to feel confident and competent. Nowadays, there’s so much information on social media and the internet, we’re bombarded with “do this” and “do that” and false promises of specific movements or types of exercise that will spot-treat or take away our deepest insecurities. This is not the way, and it doesn’t work. What does work is cultivating your own confidence and skill in movements you enjoy. The foundation of movement shouldn’t be miserable. If you don’t like HIIT (like me), then don’t do it. Find something you do like.
Learning the basics and fundamentals of movement patterns, how to build on them, and releasing fear around movement is the key to building this foundation. It is empowering when we know how to move and how we like to move. The best type of movement, in my professional opinion, is well-rounded. It honors the primal self within us and has the capacity to be built upon and challenged.
When you tell yourself that you “don’t know where to start,” you are already disempowered and disadvantaged. This is not a reason not to start. Movement is natural, primal, and a way for us to calibrate and regulate our nervous system and energetic body. It needs us, and we need it.
If you need guidance and want to explore these foundations and shift your own energy and life, you can book a consultation with me or apply to work with me for movement and/or health coaching. Space is limited, and you must be ready for change.
I will expand on these foundations more soon.
In health,
Abigail