Taking care of our mental health is a lifetime journey, and in order to care for our well-being, we must incorporate a holistic approach that considers our whole person, our needs, and our life stage. As we enter this new year, certain wellness trends are here to stay in 2023, so let’s dive into some major wellness tips and tricks that you can incorporate into your healing journey this year.
1. Mental Fitness
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You may be used to the term “physical fitness” but mental fitness has become a buzzword over the last few years. This is due to an important reason: Building resilience and developing mental strength is a critical part of your mental health journey. According to Well + Good's 2023 wellness trends data, “#mentalfitness on TikTok lands at an impressive 58.5 million views—increasing 575 percent from 2021 to 2022.” So what does mental fitness mean? It's all about developing strategies that support and strengthen your mind, body and spirit.
With mental fitness, you reframe your negative thoughts when they arise, practice gratitude, engage in holistic practices like breathwork and meditation, and practice self-attunement to know what your body needs to ensure you don’t succumb to your negative thoughts. Becoming mentally fit is important for your mental health because as we all know, adversity is something that we cannot escape and hard things happen in life whether we like it or not. However, we all have a choice regarding how we bounce back from hardship and engage in healing, and for some of us, it all can start with a shift in mindset.
2. Holistic Workouts
There once was a time when working out meant you needed a gym membership or a fitness trainer, and for some people, having those two things can be very beneficial. However, working out and moving your body is no longer reserved for having access to these two particular resources. Holistic workouts include activities like Pilates, yoga, swimming, daily walking, and more. Yelp data shows searches for stretching and stretching workouts are up 61%. With holistic workouts, people feel more inclined to work out from home or are able to fine-tune their schedule to include a 15-minute yoga stretch compared to a 45-minute gym session.
3. Exercise Recovery & Body Stimulation
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Speaking of being mentally fit, your body remains to be an important vessel and a vehicle for healing. The same way we work to heal our emotional well-being, it's becoming increasingly important to heal our bodies after vigorous workouts or even from sitting at our kitchen tables all day as a result of working from home. There are many kinds of exercise recovery and body stimulation treatments that include full body massages, cryotherapy, cold tubs, saunas, and more. Remember this, trauma and stress get stored in the body. Muscle aches, a stiff neck, and a bad back can mean many things including that you need recovery in these areas through a mind-body treatment.
4. Gut Health
In 2023 we are paying attention to how mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and trauma show up in the body and even in our gut. Gut health will continue to play a critical role in mental health management and sustaining our well-being through food and nutrition. Your diet can help aid the release of certain brain chemicals like serotonin, and dopamine, which are hormones that increase our mood and energy levels. Remember, that food has the power to fuel your body!
5. Environmental Sustainability
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Our mental health is deeply impacted by the health of our environment. People are becoming more in tune with the needs of our environment, climate change, and committing to ethical and sustainable practices that nurture the health of our planet. Some ways people are practicing environmental sustainability are by reducing the use and purchases of plastic, upcycling, going paperless, growing their own food, and more. This can be a hefty change to incorporate into your lifestyle but the goal is to always start small and do what you can with what you have.
Caring for our mental health is a daily practice, and you don’t have to start doing everything on this list at once. You can start by trying one at a time for a month before committing to a new practice. The wellness trend that will never die out is the importance of being gentle with yourself and remembering that healing is not a race or a destination. It's a journey that evolves over a lifetime.
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xoNecole sat down with Luke James to talk about his latest series and all the complexity surrounding it—from the challenges taking on this out-of-the-box role to the show's depiction of the perplexing history of the relationship between Black Americans and police. When describing the opportunity to bring Edmund's character to life, Luke was overjoyed to show the audience yet another level of his masterful acting talents.
"It was like bathing in the sun," he said. "I was like, thank you! Another opportunity for me to be great—for me to expand my territory. I'm just elated to be a part of it and to see myself in a different light, something I didn't think I could do." He continued, "There are parts of you that says, 'Go for it because this is what you do.' But then also that's why it's a challenge because you're like, 'um, I don't know if I'm as free as I need to be to be able to do this.' Little Marvin just created such a safe space for me to be able to do this, and I'm grateful for everything I've been able to do to lead to this."
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Them: The Scare, like the first season, shines a light on the plight of Black Americans in the United States. This time, the story is taking place in the 1990s, at the height of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. While the series presents many underlying themes, one that stands out is Black people and the complicated relationship with the police. "For the audience, I think it sets the tone for the era that we're in and the amount of chaos that's in the air in Los Angeles and around the country from this heinous incident. And I say it just sets the tone of the anxiety and anxiousness that everybody is feeling in their own households."
James has been a longtime advocate against police brutality himself. He has even featured Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old Colorado man who died after being forcibly detained by officers, as his Instagram avatar for the past five years. So, as you can imagine, this script was close to his heart. "Elijah was a soft-loving oddball. Different than anyone but loving and a musical genius. He was just open and wanted to be loved and seen."
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Luke continued, "His life was taken from him. I resonate with his spirit and his words...through all the struggle and the pain he still found it in him to say, 'I love you and I forgive you.' And that's who we are as people—to our own detriment sometimes. He's someone I don't want people to forget. I have yet to remove his face from my world because I have yet to let go of his voice, let go of that being [because] there's so many people we have lost in our history that so often get forgotten."
He concluded, "I think that's the importance of such artwork that moves us to think and talk about it. Yes, it's entertaining. We get to come together and be spooked together. But then we come together and we think, 'Damn, Edmund needed someone to talk to. Edmund needed help... a lot [of] things could have been different. Edmund could have been saved.'
Check out the full interview below.
Luke James Talks Ditching Sex Symbol Status For "Them: The Scare", Elijah McClain, & Morewww.youtube.com
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