Living vibrantly

All That Really Matters is Your Health — Don’t Wait to Get Sick to Remember That

Dancing Elephants Book Project: Health and Wellness — Group 2

For the last nine days, I have scrolled through Medium daily, reading plenty but writing little.

I have had nothing to say, yet every single day there are brand new articles and stories being published on every topic under the sun. How does everyone do it?

And then I remembered — that was me the week before, and the week before that. Oh, and the week before that.

I always had something to share. And I will do again.

The last nine days, I have been exceptionally quiet; nearly silent, with nothing much to say. No energy to be creative with the written word, for all of my energy was being used elsewhere…

To get better after catching Covid and feeling the worst I have in years.

When you’re ill, nothing matters more than getting better

Most of the time, I feel like I am running around like a headless chicken. I don’t mean to. It’s just that life is busy and there’s always a lot to get done.

Which is why it’s so ironic that I could find myself easily with so much time to lie in bed, sleep, watch Netflix and read.

How can I so easily go from having a mile-long to-do list to having the freedom to do very little?

The answer is that it’s all a matter of perspective. I am a doozer and I seem to not be able to help myself from being a doozer.

There’s always work to be done, organising, gardening, cleaning and tidying, laundry, shopping — you name it, it’s on my list. It’s how I create a life that works — everything depends on the fine balancing that I create between home, work and family time.

But, when you get sick, that’s when you realise that none of it really matters as much as being well again does.

Everything is meaningless when you don’t have your health

I know I am lucky to be — mostly — physically healthy, able and strong. Not everyone has that.

But I have also known what it is like to not be physically healthy and strong.

As a child, I was used to getting sick a lot. I was one of those children who suffered from repeated ear infections; I caught malaria at the age of eight, and I gave myself bronchitis at the age of nine from wandering around in flooded fields in late October.

Oh, I wore wellington boots — of course, I did. It was just that the flood water reached about a foot above my wellington boots. And filled those wellington boots.

There were quite a few of us kids who were wandering around these fields, but, perhaps due to having a weak constitution already, I was the only one who became ill. Therefore, I was made an example of in our village school.

(It wasn’t the only occasion, let me tell you, but that may have had more to do with being the wild child of the village.)

That bout of bronchitis helped to secure nasty, chesty coughs every winter during my teen years. I learned to despise winters because I always fell ill. And then, just as I thought I was getting through it all, I went and experienced the worst round of bronchitis ever after a week of travelling on the back of a motorbike in the dusty heat of Tamil Nadu, India, in late April.

As I entered motherhood in my twenties, I faced the hardest battle of all for someone with a weak constitution: the battle to remain strong and healthy enough to take care of myself and my children, both in utero and in the world.

It wasn’t easy. Sometimes, it was downright miserable, failing repeatedly and feeling like a poor excuse for a human, with little to no energy to just perform the basics in life.

The worst thing was that I beat myself up and pushed myself through it.

But I wasn’t really living.

I was never honouring my real need to nurture myself. I judged myself as a failure for many years until, one day, I finally came to my senses and realised that I could, simply, put my own vibrant wellbeing first.

Initially, I looked in all the wrong places

I spent several years feeling as depleted every single day as I have felt for the past nine days. That really wasn’t fun. It took years of understanding how to strengthen myself, how to have energy for life, and how to strengthen my constitution.

For a long time, I tried to make a difference through diet alone. I read one nutrition book after another and read blogs on plant-based living, raw food diets, blood type diets — you name it, I had looked into it. But diet didn’t hold all the answers.

Yoga didn’t help, especially when I didn’t have the physical strength to benefit from it. And physical exercise was much the same, often making me feel worse for doing it rather than better.

Eventually, I realised that lifestyle, emotional stability, and attitude were the key players in making the difference that I required. Only then could any dietary principles or physical exercise have any desired effect.

Over the course of some years, I am happy to say that I did resolve my health weaknesses and have lived a very robust and healthy existence, with enough physical and mental energy to feel the joy of living pretty much every day.

Here are a few principles that I chose to live by to reach this level of resilience and vibrancy:

• Understand that we are vibration. No matter whether you think that’s new-age speak or not, we are made up entirely of energy. Energy is what keeps our cells pulsating with health, protects us against pathogens, makes our hearts beat, our blood flow, our brains tick over, and our joy in abundance.
• Value good, clean, alkaline water. There is an ongoing debate about whether or not an alkalising diet is as beneficial as many natural health advocates claim and I am not here to make any specific claims about that. But there have been found to be many benefits to both filtering strong chemicals out of our tap water and keeping it alkaline, including higher levels of essential minerals. Starting with using an alkalising water filter, you can quickly create a more wholesome internal environment for greater well-being.
• High-quality proteins and fresh fruits and vegetables. There are a million diets out there that can send anyone looking for the “right way” to eat completely loopy. I encourage you to forget all prescribed diets and simply remember that high-quality, natural proteins and fresh produce are enough to set the path to high energy living and vibrant health. Whether you choose to eat meat, dairy, or plant-based, there are good quality proteins that you can choose.
• Laugh as much as possible. Honestly, if you don’t laugh in life, you are compromising your health already. Laughter helps to release tension, reduce stress hormones, increase immune cells, trigger “feel-good” endorphins, and increase blood flow.
• Meditate regularly. Studies have demonstrated that the practice of mindful meditation can keep our brains more youthful, increase our memory and focus, and help us to be happier and calmer people in general.
• Vigorous exercise in clean air. Cardiorespiratory fitness has been found to have many physical and emotional benefits, including regulating both blood pressure and blood sugar, increasing lung and heart health, and improving sleep. It is recommended by The Mayo Clinic to get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise per week.

Gratefully, for me, sickness is just a blip

The last nine days have been a reminder of how much it sucks to feel ill. But I know I am lucky.

Mostly, I know what good health and high energy feel like, and for that I am grateful. Today, I am even feeling around 50% of my way back there.

But, for others, this may not be the case. It may be that poor energy levels and chronic pain are regular features of life. And sadly, we cannot control everything that our bodies endure. However, we can each take some steps towards creating the best life we have available, under the circumstances.

Years back, feeling the best I could feel was my mission every day. I had to be gentle with myself until I had achieved that. For the last nine days, I have been reminded of what that feels like and have put life aside to rest, recuperate, and regain my strength.

Nothing matters as much as feeling healthy, energised, and vibrant every single day.

Thanks for reading! If you aren’t yet a Medium member and would love to have unlimited access to read the work of all your favourite writers, please consider joining through my referral link.

Check out Tamil’s beautiful piece on the importance of happiness for a healthy life:

And more from me: