When You Need to Take a Break
Healing happens when we pay attention with intention to what our body needs most. Every body needs the time for proper recovery.
Welcome back! Today, I’m going to walk us through some of the many ways we can take a mindfulness break and why it matters.
⭐ Welcome back to ZigZag Nutrition ⭐
This is my newsletter that I started almost 3 years ago now (wow) to give us a chance to explore all things health and wellness with the freedom to learn the true fundamentals of health and healing.Substack offers us that chance in the age of unimaginable censorship across most modern media.
I’ve been writing for over a decade now and have always had an inkling of a call to try to encourage, educate, empower, and inspire others. You can expect all of that here.
explores complex topics across holistic health, integrative & functional medicine, offering insights about our broken healthcare system, natural & alternative health, health optimization, nutritional psychiatry, and data-driven tools to inform and elicit change behavior like never before. (and more).Some of my community’s favorite posts related to today’s story are linked below if you want to take a look around after reading through today’s story.
Let’s Dive In!
When you need to take a break, choose wisely. Find out what nourishes your mind, body, and spirit.
We all need breaks from workplace hustle, bustle, and stress. We all need breaks from our many screens and time feeling “on.”
Taking intentional activity breaks throughout the day can improve mood and energy, enhance creativity, create calm, and protect against stress. Relaxation breaks can support cognitive performance.
Can you practice just 5 minutes of mindfulness each day?
Some examples include:
Going for a nature walk.
Meditating.
Doing yoga.
Focusing on breathwork.
Listening to nature sounds.
Spending time outdoors or with views of nature.
Trying tai chi.
Spend time journaling.
Listening to binaural beats.
Or spend time in prayer, embracing your spirituality.
Maybe you need something less quiet and would prefer a walk in the park to listen to the birds or take a stroll by the water.
Whatever you choose, take this time for you, to recharge, reconnect, recalibrate, and nourish yourself from the inside out.
Also, I’ve been talking to more and more people about headaches and migraines lately. One secret potentially underlying cause can be connected to our vision and straining the very tiny muscles and blood vessels in the eyes. When we live life with screens all day everyday, it is very challenging for our eyes to stay well.
Our eyes have never seen so many things so fast and so close in all of human history. Our genetic memory and biological design are unequivocally mismatched compared to the tasks we ask ourselves to accomplish on a daily basis.
Sit still. Don’t move.
Stay indoors.
Never go outdoors.
Do not involve yourself with nature.
Drink contaminated water.
Breathe dusty air.
Never expose yourself to the elements.
Avoid sunshine at all costs, but stare at a screen all day instead.
All of these expectations are biologically incongruent with what our bodies and brains need and crave. A couple simple techniques you can use to help reduce screen time and eye strain for your health is to practice The Pomodoro Method. This technique is a time management method based on 25-minute stretches of focused work broken by five-minute breaks. Longer breaks, typically 15 to 30 minutes, are taken after four consecutive work intervals. Each work interval is called a pomodoro.
Additionally, you can take that break time to practice breathwork and reset your nervous system. I also like to recommend people to train their optical vision by looking at an object 2 feet away, then find an object 10 feet away, and then focus your vision on an object 20 feet away and beyond (if you can).
I like to use this tip to support eye health and reduce eye strain for those of us who use screens on a daily basis for work and recreation. If you have a window nearby, you can also look out as far as you can see and just breeeeathe. Allowing our eyes to look into farther distances helps to calm the nervous system and has the potential to send the brain signals of safety, security, and tranquility.
Our opportunity for real health requires not just our participation but our full and earnest ownership over our health. After all, this is our life for the making and our health for the taking. In all that you do and all that you experience, remember you don’t have to suffer. You don’t need to give up. There’s always more you can do to improve your health and wellbeing.
If we are products of our environment, then we need better systems to support our environment…
If you need help in your journey, you know where to find me.
Best, Jonathan
ZigZag Nutrition represents the pursuit we share as we strive to live this life as best as we can, learning and growing, flexing and adapting along the way to better align ourselves to the most nutritious life and lifestyle that meets our needs and nourishes our body, mind, and spirit - together.