Wellness in an Unwell World
For a while now, wellness has felt complicated.
As someone who has a Middle Eastern background, the current news cycle feels very close to home. Headlines aren’t just places, they are parts of my identity connected to real memories; hot summers visiting family, my grandma and grandpa’s neighborhood, the park I’d go to with my cousins, the local corner store.
Many in the community describe feeling a certain heaviness which lingers like a cloud. Even when the heaviness ceases, there is a perpetual undercurrent of worry. About family, how things will go, and how quickly everything can change.
Amid it all, I find myself wondering: How can I meaningfully practice wellness when the world is so uncertain? Specifically for my work, how do I continue promoting wellness events and content when it so many people around the world are not?
Carrying everything at once is very overwhelming, but at the same time, disconnection, avoidance, and numbing things out are unproductive coping strategies long-term. It’s important to remind yourself that taking care of yourself is not a betrayal of what’s happening, but instead what allows you to stay present enough to continue to care and feel without shutting down. Thus, the goal becomes a balance of meaningfully engaging with current events while remaining mindful of personal wellbeing.
My individual wellness habits have shifted to focus on intentional moments of self-regulation and grounding, which help me to continue to support my body. For example, I recently tried a cold plunge/sauna experience at Ritual, and while I was initially skeptical, I do think the practice helped me bring my body out of a state of constant worry. Specifically, fighting through the instinctual fight or flight response upon getting into the cold plunge pool was an eye-opening experience which reminded me that ultimately I have more control than I think over my reaction to stress.
These are some of the other wellness activities I’ve been trying to lean into during this time:
Regulating the nervous system through practices that bring the body out of that constant stress response (like heat exposure, cold therapy, breathwork, or even a sound bath)
Limiting passive consumption has been huge. Social media is an endless barrage of opinions, events, etc. and while it’s a useful tool for raising awareness, there’s a difference between staying informed and being drowned by consumption. Creating boundaries with news and social media helps prevent emotional overload.
In similar vein to the last point, it’s important to create. Writing, journaling, making art, or any form of expression helps process emotions rather than letting them accumulate.
Somatic release through therapies like yoga or a massage can help release that stored stress physically.
Restoring the body through things like proper nutrition, hydration, and targeted therapies (like IV vitamin support, when appropriate) can help rebuild what chronic stress depletes
Wellness is an overused term which can feel very abstract, but that means that it can also take personal definitions which may shift in response to life events. Right now, wellness for me is a way to keep present. And just as my understanding of wellness continues to evolve, I hold onto the hope that the world will evolve too, as it always does. That these days are not permanent and this heaviness won’t last forever. That, in time, things will soften.
-Anita M.
