Do we really need another wellness habit?
Wellbeing · Modern life
Drink more water.
Sleep eight hours.
Walk 10,000 steps.
Meditate.Stretch.
Journal.
Take supplements.
Get sunlight.
And, of course, remember to relaaaaaaaaaaaaax.
Wellness can be, well… exhausting.
I say this as someone who genuinely loves wellbeing. I (make attempts to) exercise. I pay attention to sleep. I watch my caffeine intake. I practise breathwork. I believe enormously in taking care of ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with wellness habits. Many of them genuinely help us feel better. But I sometimes wonder when taking care of ourselves became another list of things to get right
There is always another thing we could be doing. Another metric to track. Another morning routine. Another supplement. Another practice that apparently everyone should have started six months ago.
Even relaxing can become something to optimise.
And somewhere in all of this is something we have been doing since the moment we arrived here.
Breathing.
Most of us don't think about our breath very often. We don't need to. Our bodies take care of it for us.
But that is what fascinates me about breathing.
It is always there, yet we rarely notice it.
Until someone asks us to pay attention to it.
Take a moment now.
Don't change your breathing. Just notice it.
Where do you feel it?
Is it fast or slow? Shallow or deep?
Are you breathing through your nose or your mouth?
You don't have to do anything with that information.
You don't need to breathe better. You don't need to count anything. You don't need to turn it into another practice to get right.
Just noticing is enough.
That is what I find most interesting about the breath.
It doesn't necessarily ask us to add something else to our lives.
It can simply bring our attention back to what is already happening.
And in a world that constantly gives us another thing to improve, track or optimise, maybe wellbeing doesn't always need to begin with doing more.
One breath would be a pretty simple place to start.