Intuitive Health and Wellness: Following Your "Gut" Instincts

Raising an unvaccinated, "natural" child, I have always relied on my own instincts when it comes to his health, my own health and the health of my family. I have followed my 'gut' and intuition. It has served me well too.

So what is intuitive health and wellness?

I believe it means something different for everyone.

I aim to use a holistic approach to health that includes following my intuition for what is right for my health and the health of my family. You know that old adage of following your ‘gut feeling’. Well it is so true. You are the only one who knows what is right for you. For me, wellness entails being healthy in all areas across nutrition, environment, movement and emotional health.

After all, you can’t have holistic wellness if one part of your life is out of balance.

So how do we achieve this? Here are 4 tips on how to be intuitively healthy and balanced.

1. Connect to Self

I believe we need to truly connect into ourselves, our own intuition. That sixth sense. Instinctively we know what’s right for us but it is easy to be distracted from it. We are constantly bombarded by external sources telling us what to eat and what products to use. It can be hard to shut out all of this noise and listen to our own voices. Yet learning to trust in ourselves is the most important thing we can do for our health. There are many techniques that help you do this but some I find useful are:

~Getting into nature: walk barefoot (ground yourself) or get in the water and experience nature through all senses;

~Using your breath: By becoming aware of your breath and giving it your attention, you are connecting deeper into yourself. This can be a very calming, so good to practice regularly;

~Practicing Mindfulness: Remove technology and just sit with yourself. Pay attention to your thoughts and where your mind wanders. It is some of the best feedback you can get for what is going on with your life, you can then respond to your personal needs and take good care of yourself;

~Engaging in solo activities: Do activities that give you energy or help calm you. Take time out to nurture your sole and do what you love.

Now this is not to say that education around health and wellness is not paramount, because to know what is right for you, you need to be knowledgeable about what the options are. But the question to ask is, what are the right ones for you?

2. Nutrition for your Gut

‘Follow your gut’ has another meaning. In my interpretation it also refers to your gut health. The health of your gut is vitally important to your overall wellbeing. It is involved in so many of our body’s processes, our immune and nervous systems and hormonal function are all dependent on the health of our digestive system. There are so many factors that affect our gut health, poor food choices, alcohol, caffeine, parasites, viruses, chemical exposure and antibiotics to name a few. So how do we repair our gut?

Firstly remove anything from your diet that stresses your gut including processed foods, caffeine, alcohol, gluten and dairy. Then replace these foods with whole, unprocessed, organic food. Also, consider helping to replace the good bacteria in your gut with probiotics supplements and kombucha and then maintain this using prebiotics to feed the good bacteria such as fermented foods and kefir. So use your intuition and choose the foods that make you feel great.

1. Create an Inspiring Environment

You instinctively know what makes you feel great right? And this can be used for your environment too.
What is it about spending time in certain environments that recharges us and makes us feel on top of the world?

Why can’t you always have this feeling?

Well you can by changing the environment at home. It doesn’t have to mean spending a fortune, include colours that make you feel great on your walls, in cushions, in pictures. Get some indoor plants to help purify the air inside. Declutter and get rid of anything that no longer serves you or that you no longer find joy in. This includes the clothes in your wardrobe. Open the blinds and let the light in, it will help to boost your mood instantly. Make your home, or even just a room, your sanctuary, somewhere you love spending time, that makes you feel amazing. This will in turn boost your health and wellness.

4. Get Joy from Movement

We all know that exercise is important to health but why is it we are made to believe that we have to be a gym junkie to get the right type of exercise? Well the truth is, we are all different and different types of exercises suit different people. Having experienced weight loss of 30kg myself, I know that it is not all about exercise, rather more about nutrition. So good news, you can choose the type of movement that excites you. It may be informal such as dancing like no one’s watching and stretching or more formal like yoga or running. Whatever it is, if it excites you, this in turn will mean you will be more likely to keep up the practice and benefit from the effects long term. There are many benefits to moving daily including mood and stress reduction, promoting better sleep, maintaining body weight, maintaining strength and maintaining muscle and joint function. So pick something you love to do and go all out.

Ultimately, if we can care for ourselves by connecting into our heart and following our ‘gut’ instincts and intuition, we can become the healthiest versions of ourselves we can be. So take care of yourself and see how your life changes for the better.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post

Please feel free to leave me a comment or question and I always try to reply to them all as soon as I can.

Hugs

Kylie