What is Student Wellness and How to begin your wellness journey?
Listen to the article now
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
From the beginning of the panic that has been presented by the Coronavirus pandemic, a lot has been written and taught about the importance of wellbeing; and it’s with good reason.
The further you age, the more it becomes clearer with each gym, yoga, or therapy session that nothing else is as important as maintaining a steady bill of all-around health.
Wellness, then, is the daily practice of making judgments and taking action towards a healthy and satisfying life.
Wellness goes beyond mental health
A great benefit of human health is that it does not carry a universally accepted definition. People have intuitive and thus different perceptions of wellness. This dynamic allows for a deeper exploration of the different branches of health – over and above your mental health.
Your wellness as a student also incorporates emotional stability, sleeping and thinking patterns, paying attention to nutrition, the ability to love and accept love easily, creativity, embracing change with grace, well-managed finances, and the consistent experience of calmness and balanced spirituality.
How regular exercise leads to solid health
Steady health and wellness might be less important to focus on when you’re young and athletic. However, it becomes critical as you continue to age; regular exercise and balanced nutrition go a long way in helping prevent an array of illnesses and act as an antidote for poor health habits.
Working out consistently may also help:
- Improve the quality of your sleep.
- Help keep your thinking, learning and judgment skills strong as you age. Exercise is famous for stimulating the body to release proteins and other chemicals that improve the structure and performance of your brain.
- Strengthen your muscles and bones. Activities that stretch and build muscles can help increase and maintain your strength.
- Reduce the risk of heart disease. Exercise strengthens the heart and improves blood flow; regular exercise can lower your blood pressure levels.
- Help control your weight. Along with diet, exercise plays an essential role in maintaining weight and preventing obesity.
Think about this for a moment: do you pay attention to wellbeing after a major health incident, OR, do you carry a consistent focus on your health?
From our related article on the topic, we established that taking a proactive approach to health is a much better play.
How to exercise
Reading this article all this way is the first step on your journey to an improved body, mind, and spirit.
The 5-minute workout film (visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLLScgWQcHc ) is a basic representation of a workout because before you can pursue fitness, there needs to be consistency; fitness is much a mental game as it is physical. You need to teach the mind to make a switch, to ditch old/negative habits, and adopt healthy patterns.
After a few weeks of following the home workout, the body will indicate that it’s ready to take on more reps. That is the moment you will begin to have a more focused relationship with consistent exercise, meditation, and fitness.
To that end, please take the following pointers into consideration:
Throw out the now-or-never approach
The practice of gradually adding minimal amounts of pressure to your exercises will have a great effect on your mental, emotional and spiritual health in the long run.
Be gentler with yourself
The most important rule as you improve your relationship with your health: never be harsh with yourself about your body, your current fitness level (it’s a reality that can always be changed), or your lack of self-discipline during some weeks.
It is important to learn to see previous mistakes and unhealthy habits as teachable moments, not moments to throw in the proverbial towel.
Other helpful guidelines:
- Monitor your expectations well.
- Interrogate the underlying reasons why you want to be healthy and fit.
- Expecting explosive results in a short space of time will only lead to frustration.
- Never focus obsessively on results, rather focus on nailing down consistency. Everything else will follow at the back of that.