#pillars of health #wellnessmatters #homeschooling
What are the eight pillars of holistic health and wellness? They are known as: physical, emotional, spiritual, social, intellectual, nutritional, environmental, and financial. These sound great but what do they have to do with homeschooling? Let's take a look?
Holistic health and wellness is the focus on the whole body to achieve good health. Well, homeschooling deals with the entire well being of our child so these pillars match up exactly with what us homeschooling parents are trying to accomplish. In addition, it is important for the family to utilize these pillars on a daily basis.
Being at home, there is an advantage to applying all of the pillars in some way each day. Everyday we are attempting to exercise good eating habits, keep our bodies fit, utilize social skills, engaging our intellect, managing our finances, finding inner peace, and trying to remain calm and under control. Who knew we were actively using the pillars of health and wellness?
Now, here is the cool part. We get to take it up a step further and implement these pillars on purpose into your homeschooling and parenting day. How?
Physical: Make sure your family is resting, using proper time management, getting exercise, and remember that good sleep begins when you have shut down television and social media at least 30-45 minutes prior to your bedtime so that your eyes and mind can relax and our body can properly rejuvenate. Remember our bodies naturally heal themselves, sort our emotions, help us grow and build our immune systems back up to fight another day. Super cool!
Emotional/Spiritual: Journaling is my favorite way to maintain my emotions, but a lot of children do not enjoy it as much. Talking as a family, going for a walk together, and even ride together could help everyone cool down. Declaring a game night won't hurt. When I worked in child development, I loved using FLIP It! While it is advertised for younger children, I definitely use it with my family and others. Sometimes people just need to know that you care about their emotions.
Spiritually, the first thing that comes to my mind is to read the Bible, pray, meditate on the Word, and sing. These are all good places to start. I will also include taking time to just be still, do deep breathing, and allow your body to let the oxygen flow properly through your body bringing your mind into focus and peace.
Intellectual/Nutritional/Environmental: While these three are separate, I'd like to show how they function together by sharing my personal experiences as a homeschooling mom. Because we were so into nature and being outside, we honored the environments that we are in with the exception of our amazing children keeping their rooms clean. Ha!
We take care of the environment by cleaning it, planting things that will nurture both the earth and our bodies. Caring for the earth is synonymous with feeding our bodies. What we fill the earth and our bodies with determines the longevity of each entity. Feeding our minds has the same concept. I would pour books into my children's library so that they would know what they needed and sometimes be entertained by words that could feed their brains, tickle their minds, and give them the knowledge they need to be successful.
Keep your land, homes, minds, and bodies free of clutter and debri that will destroy us before we get an opportunity to fulfill our purposes in life. Work together to find ways to be mindful of yourselves, others, and the planet we live on.
Social: Whoohooo! Here is the fun part. We get to build relationships with those around us and those who pull us outside of our comfort zones. You don't know who is around you until you open up. Even though we have been pretty confined, there are still ways to build healthy relationships. This includes attending online conferences, seminars, our children getting on virtual meetups with their friends and finding creative ways to interact outside of just social media. Get creative. Meet new people and love on the people around you. If there was ever a time when love was needed, that time is now.
Financial: Why leave finances for last? For some, this can be a touchy or breezy subject. Either you have great finances or you do not. This alone can be stressful and brings a lot of strife and confusion into the homes. This can throw off the balance of the other seven pillars discussed. It is important to set a budget, limit yourself to what you can afford without living above your means and manage debts appropriately.
While eight pillars of holistic health and wellness seem like a lot, I believe I've showed how it can be done on a daily basis with without driving us insane. There is also an occupational portion of holistic health and wellness but I believe that can be addressed through life coaching. There's a lot to that portion. However, if you have questions about that, please email me so that we can talk further.
Be blessed,
~Ty