The basics of staying healthy *

We all claim we need to lead a balanced life but rarely do we think what does that really mean.

At the very minimum, it means that we need to equally develop and use all 5 of our "layers" or ways of being: the physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual and sexual one.

It means that we need to use all of our talents and abilities because "if you don't use it - you lose it". This applies equally to your biceps, brain and sexual organs but it also means we all need to regularly exercise our ability to feel love, empathy, kindness and engage other talents like generating vision for where we are going, contemplating, processing and completing where we are coming from and what are the lessons we could draw from our journey so far.

As you can easily imagine, most people aren't even aware of these " health needs" let alone the need to practice them.

Exercising all of these different components of health requires time and energy that many (if not most of us) don't readily have. Fortunately, the math is simple so anyone could easily come to the same conclusion: either I make an effort and keep myself in good working order or other people will have to take care of me.

So the first order of the day is to create time to take care of oneself, to exercise all of our muscles, to train and contemplate, maybe start journaling again... We need to sacrifice the easiest things to sacrifice: watching TV or going to the movies, choosing to work overtime, running errands that may bring minimum gain after a lot of effort.

We should consider that our vacations not only increase the pollution and waste on our planet but also deplete our financial resources so we end up having to work more just to cover the cost of something that wasn't necessary in the first place.

Even more importantly, modern vacation is a swirl of activity and stimulation from which most of us need another vacation in order to recover. This is crazy, especially if we're frequently feeling fatigue, loss of vision and/or motivation. The real break should be at home, spending extra hours in bed, thinking or just being in the moment with nothing to achieve.

Start by writing ways to advance your health exercise. Set aside your sleep hours, then set aside time to make food and eat well, to do your daily aaronic exercise (it could be a part of your commute home or combined with some other activity), to exercise your kindness and empathy by doing something specific, to practice love for your intimate partner, to do your vision questing and contemplation of your past.

Then see how much extra time there is for friends and family and other important things that we all want to do but may not have much time to dedicate to it.