Building a Wellness BUBBLE In Real Life
Over the course of a few years and under various circumstances, I had the opportunity to go on 3 separate wellness retreats in an attempt to heal my tired brain and body. It had been a hard few winters for my brain health. The kind that make you feel like you’re nowhere and that it will never end. The gray days and the excessiveness of the holidays are always a bit of a balancing act for someone with a mood disorder with a side of mild OCD. The opportunities to micromanage and over-schedule are abundant, the to-do lists are never-ending, and in the past, like most women, I would over-commit, over-decorate, over-buy and in general, collapse into a pile of overwhelm and tears by January 2. Before adopting lifestyle medicine to manage my brain health, it was a rare January that found me well-rested, happy and ready to take on the new year. As in most years past, I was in desperate need of a reset.
When I arrived at each experience, I expected a luxurious, though manufactured-and-temporary, wellness experience that would patch me up before sending me back to my regularly over-scheduled life. Mornings at Canyon Ranch, a wellness retreat in Arizona, began with a cup of matcha, a group stretch class and a detox session in the sauna. At Miraval, they began with a sunrise hike followed by a green smoothie and a garden tour. At Suryalila, a yoga retreat in the south of Spain, days started with a Vinyasa flow class and a decadent, vegetarian breakfast. Each day I ate clean, un-processed, nutrient-dense foods and avoided caffeine and alcohol. I did miles of gentle walking in nature, limiting phone usage, and watched no TV. I prioritized my sleep, practiced breathwork, and mind-dumped into my journal. They were each short stays of 4-7 days, but in each instance, I felt my brain begin to heal.
Wellness While On Retreat
Back at home, I had built an amazing health care team, and together we had kept me healthy and out of crisis for 7 years. But I repeatedly went back to the lifestyle I’d always led as soon as an episode was over, relying on medication to do most of the heavy lifting. Drinking excessively, eating takeout, remaining sedentary, disregarding my sleep hygiene, over-scheduling my time. When I got home from my final retreat of the year, I had a visit with my Functional Medicine Primary Care Provider. I told her about my experiences and how amazing I felt, musing that I wished we could walk around in a functional medicine bubble all the time. She leaned forward, looked me dead in my eyes and said, “What’s stopping us?” Yes, spending a week at a high-end wellness retreat isn’t exactly practical or accessible. But what if we could make simple and accessible the acts of paying attention to the food we eat, how we’re moving our bodies, the quality of our sleep, the toxic load we’re carrying around and how regulated we keep our nervous systems?
And so I got to work. I studied habit change and found accountability partners. I went through the health coaching program at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and began building my own wellness vision. I experimented with different ways of eating and found ways to incorporate the approach in my daily life. I hired a personal trainer and began lifting weights twice a week. I found a yoga studio I love. I began visiting the sauna in the office of my functional medicine provider to detox regularly. I developed morning and evening routines that supported my nervous system and helped me get quality sleep. Slowly, over time, I built my wellness bubble in real life.
Wellness Bubble in Real Life
It's very simple, really – how we treat our bodies matters. But the daily execution is what’s hard. We leave our Dr’s and therapists’ offices with solid recommendations, but struggle to develop the habit change needed to make healthy lifestyle shifts. I believe it’s possible to move the needle on mental health with lifestyle medicine. If we have the knowledge, tools and, perhaps most importantly, the accountability partners.
I pivoted from my 20-year career in the traditional healthcare system and founded Jen Mbanu Wellness with a mission to guide women into a new mental health paradigm, where they use lifestyle medicine to better manage the brain health issues that keep them up at night. I envision a world where women living with chronic brain conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, Bipolar Disorder and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors reclaim their health, regulate their nervous systems, and build beautiful lives they love!
So what would an IRL Wellness Bubble look like?
Create a Wellness Vision for your life, defining your goals and visualizing the beautiful life you’d love to lead
Recruit a Qualified and Supportive healthcare team that is the right fit for you and your goals
Build new habits and make sustainable shifts in the way you eat, move, sleep, detox and manage stress
Implement your healthcare providers’ advice to make lifestyle changes with the help of a health coach and accountability partner.
