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Aspects of Health: What Has Changed?

When I studied wellness in school (in the 1980s/90s), these were the aspects of health:

Spritual + Social + Physical + Mental + Emotional

Now, we’ve expanded them to include a few more:

Spiritual + Social + Physical + Mental+ Emotional + Intellectual + Environmental + Occupational

I’ll simplify:

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Meditation Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Meditation is not one-size-fits-all. If a quiet-your-mind approach doesn’t work, try a mantra-based session, where you repeat a word (e.g., “calm”) or group of words (e.g., “I am calm”) of your choice for several minutes. If a mantra doesn’t resonate, try just listening to nature sounds and focusing on your breath. Do a little research on the different types of meditation.

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Mental Health: We’re All Affected

As we work to lift the mental health stigma, we’re missing the boat. The conversation should be: What can we do to promote a mentally healthy environment for ourselves and others every day?

Mental health is a spectrum; don’t delude yourself, we’re all on it. It ranges from “normal” emotions to “abnormal” emotions…from happy and perky at one end to suicidal thoughts at the other. And most of us aren’t hovering around happy and perky.

We don’t realize how much our daily emotional and mental health affects us. How we feel affects every single thing in our worlds. Just take a snapshot of any scenario from yesterday. What happened? What were your feelings around the event? How did you react? How did you feel physically based on what you thought and did in response? If it was a negative exchange at work, for example, maybe you got a knot in your stomach and couldn’t concentrate on your project for 45 minutes after the encounter.

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My Living Office: A View from Paris

Hello from the Land of Design, aka Paris!

A Living Office is a high-performing workplace that delivers an elevated experience of work for people and helps organizations achieve their strategic goals. Herman Miller

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The Impact of Design on Health and Wellness

What could be better than creating “Human Spaces: Spaces Designed with the Human in Mind?” Creating spaces for humans should not only be of interest to designers but to people who work, who shop, who live, who go to school in these environments. That’s everybody!

I jumped at the chance to write for Human Spaces. Check out their web site and my blog on The Impact of Design on Health and Wellness (repost below).

The Impact of Design on Health and Wellness

While wellness in the individual is multifactorial, signs point to a distinct link between wellness and design. As we improve the built environment with design elements that include better lighting, more fresh air and the use of materials and products that don’t leach toxic chemicals into the air, it would follow that health and well-being of the occupants should improve.

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Meditation Rooms vs. Economic Reality

Yes, it’s ideal to have a space designated as a Meditation Room. But it has to make economic sense for your company. If you don’t have the funds to redesign a room or you simply don’t have the square feet to renovate, then start a trend in your company. Send this note to your team:

Dear All,

I am so proud of all of you and grateful that you’re on my team. I don’t say this enough and want you to know. Also, I’ve been thinking about how hard you work and how much is expected of you…both from me and from others. We all need to take better care of ourselves, and I’m starting now. I want you to do the same. I’m going to take 15 minutes every day to sit quietly in the office or outside and just breathe. I want you to do the same. Call it meditation, call it breathing, call it whatever you like, but please do this each day you come to work. I value all of you both as my team and as humans. I’ll be checking in on your progress. Happy breathing!

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The Power of Outdoor Meditation Spaces

What better way to rejuvenate than to slip into a quiet retreat in fresh air. As the intense connection between human and nature (biophilia) gains momentum, designers are emphasizing the need to bring in more plants, daylight and open air to the workplace. Likewise, as employers now understand the importance of mindfulness and meditation for their most important asset, the employee, companies are adopting meditation as part of a complete wellness plan. Combine the two…nature and meditation….and we have an explosive combo. Retreat. Relax. Revive.

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Wellness-at-Work Lasagna

All companies should have this Wellness Lasagna Mantra on their wall…and live by it (order not important):

International WELL Building Institute 2014 Symposium

In October of 2014, Melinda Easterling attended the WELL 2014 Conference, the “first annual symposium for design, construction, and real estate professionals who want to lead the market and build a movement for wellness real estate – a pioneering concept that marries design and construction with evidence-based technologies to support personal well being and health.”

Part of participating in a conference of this kind is entering on the ground floor of an idea that has found not only its audience but its time. Melinda was showcased in this video along with other leaders who see the value in sharing ideas and talking with like-minded business owners, healthcare experts, builders and visionaries who understand the importance of wellness at work and at home.

A vision of hope…

While I echo the sentiments in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech of equality for all, I, too, have a dream. I have a dream for wellness…a dream for wellness at work, a dream for wellness at home, a dream for wellness in schools.

I have a dream that work is a place where people thrive, where all employees are treated equally, where they are treated as people and not things.

I have a dream for schools where teachers and children are respected equally, where teachers have time to eat lunch and time to take breaks and children can move and laugh and learn at their own pace.

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