I thought it was time I had a go at doing a Facebook Live.
I’m now at the Point Leo surf beach, which is one of my favorite places for my rest and recreation when I want to have a break. I try to work most days of the week, but I think it’s very important to try and moderate that from time to time.
In fact today I’m sort of celebrating six weeks since I fell and broke a couple of ribs and punctured my lung while I was running and I’m happy to say that that’s all pretty well fixed now.
So I just want to take this opportunity to remind you how important it is to look after your own well-being.
We saw during Covid19 lockdown that a lot of people were going for walks at lunch time and after work at the end of the day and I hope people are keeping that up now that things have eased quite a bit.
I’ve got this theory that we’ve all got emotional, mental, spiritual, physical buckets and that we should keep them full, so we call on these resources when we need them. Naturally, we drain them as we go about our day and so it’s important to fill them up again – taking a break like this for me is one of the ways I do that.
At least once a month I like to get out to this particular beach, which is a very, very refreshing. I’ll just show you what it looks like. There’s a lot of seaweed around today so it’s not as attractive as it often is. If you were to go over there and went far enough in that direction, you’d come to Tasmania and then beyond that you’d come to Antarctica, so it’s quite a special place and I’ve grown very attached to it.
I’ll talk about this more in another video, but I’ve been reading a book on forest bathing by a Japanese professor who’s done quite a lot of research into the benefits of what he calls “Forest Bathing”.
Of course, Japan’s much more heavily populated than we are here in in Australia and so it’s harder for people to experience nature and get out, to get out in the bush and nature the way we can here.
He’s done quite a bit of research measuring things such as cortisol levels, heart rate variability, and various other aspects of health to try and quantify the benefits for people if they take the time out to enjoy nature, or as they call it in Japan, to “bathe” in a forest.
This basically means going for a walk in nature, preferably in a forest, and absorbing the sense of the surroundings and the feelings and the smells all the sensations that can be associated with that.
Importantly, he found that it reduces the stress levels as measured by cortisol levels, it improves immunity against illness and disease, and it has a lot of beneficial effects.
I’ll talk about that more at another time, but I try to respect that and make the most of it. On most days I go for a run, so I do at least get out. When I do that, I’m fortunate to live and work in a place near the beach, so it’s a very natural environment with lots of trees.
So, I do get out almost every day to enjoy nature and being outside but still, as I’m working most of the time, it’s good to take that extra break, which I do by coming over here to Point Leo.
I particularly enjoy looking into the distance, which I find very relaxing, especially as your eyes have to really relax if they try to focus on infinity. I find that very soothing.
I also like to just think how timeless this coast is – it’s been like this for millions of years and it will presumably be like this for many more millions of years, so there’s a timelessness about it.
So, when life can get very hectic and you’re caught up in all the all the issues of the moment and all the things you have to do, you want to do, like to do, to come over here and experience this timelessness puts things into a whole new perspective, which I find that very refreshing.
So, I just want to encourage anyone watching to take that time out.
Of course, you might feel that there’s so much to do that perhaps you can’t afford that time, but the more energetic, the more energized, the healthier you are, the better you are going to be able to attend all the other issues that you’re dealing with in your everyday life.
And by keeping your bucket full you’re going to be able to give a lot more to the people around you and to yourself.
So, with that, wishing you all the very best and if this works, I’ll do some more videos.
Thank you.
Note: this is an edited transcript of the video
