My health is a ecosystem!

"I am not self made

I am family made

I am friend made

I am community made

I'm made up of everything and everyone that made me exist outside just myself"

- strqmul iskwist

Can you see the smallest babushka on the very right of the picture below? That’s me (& you if you were to do this exercise!). It’s the smallest system of systems within an ever widening set of systems. We learn in biology that we are made up of cells that together make tissues which together make organs which together make organ systems and together make our organism! That’s a lot of together, right? And that’s the key.

My health is an ecosystem. Every morning when I wake up I ask, how do I feel today? Then I move wider and ask the same if my family and my home, my fauna and flora. Going outside to get the day in motion my ecosystem widens to my extended family and a nice early morning text with sunrise in their town, my friends asking us around to dinner or better still inviting themselves over, to my neighbours, my work friends… in ever increasing circles. And this is the priority I should give to my own health, for myself, for them.

My life mission is to be available to do the things that being alive will allow me, as much as it allows me, for as long as I can. It’s my definition of health. I want to live, wear and eat an energetic lifestyle, so much so that it’s brimming over me into those around me so we can then share healthy some more to those around us again. It’s easy to forget we live in a ecosystem that thrives on reciprocity, that instead our view of wellness is limited to taking care of our individual ‘bodies’. But luckily that’s where health begins: within each of us.

Go forth with your own healthiness checklist and share it with your ever widening circles to fill your ecosystem with vibrancy and abundance!