17th January – start your day with mindfulness
Start your day with a mindfulness practice This is another one of my favourite daily healthy habits – making myself a little mental oasis of tranquility each morning helps me to be ready face whatever the rest of the day might throw at me. A morning mindfulness practice can fit into any routine. On the few days when I do have the luxury of time I might do a longer practice, but usually its a short 5 or 10minutes – and 10minutes can be just as good as a longer practice. There’s so many options, depending on what I feel might serve me best that day. I might choose to…
16th January – have fun getting active
Get active by doing something fun & different, maybe try something new… When they are thinking about starting exercising, patients often ask me “which exercise is the best for me to do, doctor?”. One answer I often give is “whichever you like doing most !” 😁 Because, if you enjoy what you are doing, you are much more likely to keep on doing it. As a keen runner, I usually love to get out as often as I can. Personally, I avoid gyms and exercising indoors as much as possible – I much prefer being outside in nature whilst I run, for me, it is much more mindful and gives…
- 30 Days of Healthy Living, Lifestyle Medicine, Living Lifestyle Medicine, Mental Health, Relationships & Connectedness, Stress Reduction
15th January – self-compassion
Practice having self-compassion At the moment we are all dealing with so many different pressures and sources of stress. I am hearing every day from my patients about the challenges they are facing: changes to work, working from home, being furloughed, being out-of-work, key-workers being overworked and busier than ever to meet the demands of the pandemic, parents trying to juggle the demands of homeschooling and working at home, people who have been unwell, people with unwell relatives, the list just goes on and on and on… One thing which almost all of my patients say to me when they tell me how difficult they are finding things is “I…
