Alisha Drinkwater is a Senior Environmental Biologist with the GOC with 20+ years of experience creating, developing and implementing tangible changes in the way environmentally mandated Departments mitigate for environmental stressors in aquatic environments and sensitive ecosystems. She has been recognized by her peers, her senior managers and the Provincial Environment Ministry for her contributions ensuring environmental resilience and sustainability. She is also a mental health advocate championing setting a #ThriveTrajectory and #ModernLifestyle with fulfilled living through her website www.LuluWCLifestyle.com. She is also an Ambassador of the Op-Ed Project (www.theopedproject.org) – Changing who writes history.
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Hello, Wonderful Human!
Welcome to #ALettertoHope Blog.
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With Bell Canada's Let's Talk Day January 25th, 2023, a reminder to pull in our comforts in times of Distress, Struggle and Suffering to kick-start our innate soothing mechanisms.
More than 1 in 2 people (source) are struggling with their mental health are not getting the support and help they need, some not recognizing their mental health needs, many only just starting their journey to find the right balance.
About 1 in 3 Canadians (source) will be affected by a mental illness during their lifetime.
Mental illness can develop in anyone, at any time. Susceptibility and other factors associated with mental illness, including:
Family history
Stressful life events (Big or little t trauma)
Negative early life experiences
Socio-economic status (those with access and wealth suffer less)
Compounding and cumulating stressors.
Let's create positive change! Become someone's supporting fabric and they intern become yours.
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If you or someone you know is in distress, please connect with your networks, support structures or helplines in your area.
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Can something as simple as adding comfort be a KEY to our SURVIVAL, & our well-being?
Simply, yes.
Comfort is an essential component of well-being for individuals and populations that have social elements incorporated in their foundations (e.g., Humans and other mammals, birds, +). Comfort nurtures feelings of belonging, where development can thrive.
Our lives should be sustained with many comforts - having many built in reflections, as reminders for intentional living, nurtured and supported.
Comforts maintain well-being through phases and periods of struggle, especially supporting over periods of extended stress. Without supports to ensure the balance of the many facets to our well-being, we run the risk of subconsciously being led to nourishment elsewhere, which if left un-recognized can be quite depleting.
Renowned American Psychologist Harry Harlow conducted classic animal behaviour experiments that have application for many of us today as we begin to increasingly yearn for global well-being, let alone how to build up our own wellness.
Harlow demonstrated the innate need for comfort through laboratory experimentation with rhesus monkeys where deprivations were applied and deviations in 'normal' behavioural responses were noted. Comfort chosen over sustained food resources. The results of his work still apply to modern psychology today.
It is in our nature and evolutionary way of being that comfort speaks to us in an innate, imprecise way.
Using our biology to our advantage, simple shifts of elements in our daily lives towards comfort, & ease.
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Invest in a cozy blanket!
Winter of 2020, in the thick of COVID-19 pandemic, a cozy sherpa blanket changed my perspective on comfort levels. Metaphorical clutter had built its way up all around. Other people's wants nudged away at the space that was occupied by MY comforts. Over time, shared comforts replaced my comfort reminders of "life is good". Intention had to pull comforts back in, first including the thick, wool-like sherpa blanket, a visceral enhancement to my well-being. Pulling in the physical comfort of this cozy blanket and holding it close, a tangible up-tick in wellness.
As life speeds up, comforts are often the first thing to go...incrementally...overtime...
Life stressors can compound leading to dark places or cumulate weighing us down, depleting and confusing. Intentionally pulling-in comfort can help get us through to the other side of struggle. Once on the other side, we can consider comforts previously lost, discarded or conceded along the way and re-evaluate if they are needed. They may also hold a key to restoring nourishment to areas long tucked away in need of tender contemplation, or processing.
As we build a life surrounding us that supports and nourishes, we can begin to cultivate longer term visions of our bigger lives. We can make better choices for our well-being and for the well-being of the environment and those around us. We are in a position to set a #ThriveTrajectory towards a #ModernLifestyle.
Comfort is essential for our survival and well-being. Our comfort matters.
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5 Ease-ful tips for adding Comfort:
COMFORT ideas to pull-in today and every day!
Getting off the hamster wheel
...that is sucking comfort out of your life!
If you have been so busy and so depleted, you may no longer know what brings you comfort in the most basic ways.
5 EASE-ful tips to ADD Comfort into your life!
Today, every-day, any-day.
1.Just Stop Doing, Moving, and Distracting. Slow down to Stillness. Meditate.
The most effective, and ubiquitously accessible tool to restore comfort is connecting to inner self - meditation or slowing down to stillness.
Connecting regularly with inner-self gives our mind, body, emotional self and soul opportunity for harmonizing.
In addition, utilizing therapeutic breathwork with our mediation practice aligns our physical and spiritual innerness, and clarifies our dreams and greater purpose.
There are many forms of therapeutic breathwork and is a safe and accelerated way of shedding our inner baggage in the most relaxed and open state. Its not easy. Therapeutic breathwork is not for the faint of heart, it is for those seeking to alleviate our inner discomforts and allowing ourselves to open to them, accept them, and support them in their processing. Therapeutic breathwork is a gamechanger for those battling anxiety, depression, and even systemic inflammatory issues.
As we navigate our lives, we are exposed to events, situations and circumstances that impact our precious innerness. When we do not know how to process what we encounter, we hold onto the energy of it in our body. Sometimes we never figure out how to deal with what we've faced. With a commitment to self and a yearning to live a more fulfilled and EASEFUL life, we seek out supports and systems for improvement. Charting a new course, with all the uncomfortableness that comes with trying to do things differently from what we have done before. Letting go of trepidation, trusting in something bigger and more expansive than what we have encountered. We open, feel, and witness ALL OUR FEELINGS pass. Like a proverbial dusting away of cosmic debris, breathwork in combination with mediation brings clarity to confusion, brings illumination to the shadows.
2. Sensory Comforts. Adding ease with our 5 senses.
Bring in a sensory tool that can portal you to inner peace - soft fabric, scent of enlivening spices such as cinnamon and cloves, nostalgic music, comforting foods.
Using our senses, pulls us into our bodies and out of our overworking, analytical minds. When we are in our body, in the moment - we create a pause within, a pause of infinite potential and opportunity. Creating intentional opportunities for pause, increases our capacity for more connection to inner self, expansion and thrive potential.
3. Build a NEST.
Pillows, bolsters, mats and blankets!
Ensure your proper and sufficient comfort levels at all times, making adjustments as your body alerts to discomfort.
Just as yoga uses its tools to support positions to expand our abilities, building a nest supporting our passive positions expands our ability to completely let go.
Building a nest for rest or meditation allows maximum relaxation where physically letting go of that which we are holding onto is enhanced. Provide yourself with just the right supports for your body needs to add as much comfort as will support your relaxation.
4. Drinking steeped Tea.
There is an earthy familiarity with steaming tea vapors. Acquainting ourselves to some of the most delicious and time enduring remedies may awaken inner senses within. Your cellular matter evolved in its human iterations alongside this most comforting liquid through millennia. Give it a try!
5. Connection with Nature
At some point in our human childhoods we have been left to explore the outdoors, harmonizing to its natural cadence. A natural vibration that no human can rationalize being separate from. In the busyness of our lives, extra time to spend amongst trees seems on the surface an indulgence, maybe. However, our wild natural spaces are abundant with all kind of earthly delights.
Drive to a special spot and take in the breeze and natural spaces, they are all around!
BONUS TIP:
Connecting with animals!
Do you have space in your life for a companion pet? Fish, bird or fuzzy fur baby? If not, a kitty café, volunteering at an animal shelter, or snuggling with a friends pet is a reasonable alternative. Spending time with an animal (domesticated and tame!) that melts your heart, reminds us of the purity and innocence of a reciprocating, loving relationship.
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