Health Wellness – What Really is That?  

Here we are in the month of February.  Did you survive January?  What is harder than in past years?  Did you want to hit the reset button?

I’ve been reading a lot of posts on social media about people struggling to get their mental health and health wellness on track.  January must be the hardest month.

At our offices, Inga B. Andriessen, smart as she is, saw a need to start a Wellness Day.  Each week in January we had discussions on various aspects of Health Wellness.   There are a number of Wellness topics and we touched on mindfulness, movement and happiness.  Each week we had a challenge.  Now, we are all competitive and we took it very serious. 

During our discussions, we learned a lot of about each other.  Some of us really have a hard time staying still and being mindful.  For example, mediation and even yoga trying to stilling the mind was hard for me.  Yet, some of us really enjoy the quietness of meditation and yoga. 

Movement was easy for me as I have a pretty regular workout schedule.  We challenged and cheered each other to get moving and starting small was great.  The feeling we got when we moved more, and saw the confetti we threw at each other was encouraging. 

Happiness you would think would be easy, or perhaps hard.  I think once we started to talk about what makes us happy and the hobbies we have outside of work, we realized we were maybe happier than we thought we were. 

While I won’t divulge some of our deepest secrets, I will share that I have recently taken up piano.  I’ve always wanted to play and the happiness that I found there balances out sadness for the things that I can no longer do. 

Take a moment to reflect and see where you could use some improvement when it comes to your Health Wellness.  Even just trying it once may surprise you.

Christine Allan, Law Clerk