This is Part I of Focusing on Mental Health. Encouraging people to focus on mental health is a passion of mine, borne out of the untimely loss of my two teenage sons to suicide. I learned from this that even when someone seems fine on the outside you just don’t know what could be happening on the inside. So it is imperative to take a measure of our own mental health as well as those around us, and to pay attention to the details.
So how can we support our mental health? There are a many ways as there are differences in people. Some of my personal favorites are walking in nature – sometimes the boardwalk surrounded by pines or mangroves, sometimes on the beach. Even if I don’t have time for a very long walk I like to place my bare feet on the grass or sand. This grounds us and is very healthy mentally and physically. Since the connection between the physical and the mental is so strong I also make real plant based food and enjoy it with my family. Yoga or stretching, meditating, and breath work are also very important. And at the most basic level, when I am feeling despair, I go to bed, with an effort to support a full and healthy sleep, knowing that after a restful night, somehow everything will seem a bit more bearable and conquerable. After repeating this many times we learn as adults that this is the case. But it is important to instill this in our young people who don’t yet have this experiential maturity. To them (and to us when we were their age) anything could be the literal end of the world. So exemplifying this behavior before them as we make our way through life is really key for them.
I hope you enjoyed Part I. Stay tuned for Part II where we will get a bit more specific.
Notes From Real Life 