Tamarak Wellness

The journey to improved health and personal wellness can be an exciting one. With the right attitude and the right guide, discovering new practices and adopting new habits to improve your health can be like exploring an adventurous landscape in a foreign land.

Tamarak’s wellness initiative is designed as a practical wellness navigation system. It is established by 4 fundamental quadrants; body, mind, lifestyle and network. It is equipped with a library of effective resources and practical wellness services that can help you find yourself on the wellness path and guide you through the challenges you may face on the road to achieving your health goals and actualizing your wellness ambitions.

"movement is the key to mastery"

The body pillar of the Tamarak health initiative focuses on physical and physiological health. What is the current state of your body? How do you supply and manage your nutritional needs? What is your current understanding of those needs? Do you deliberately practice consuming the nutrients that will build your brain, support your organs and provide strength to your tendons, muscles, and ligaments? Are you eating a diet rich in leafy green vegetables and whole, organic fruits? What does your current exercise/movement regimen look like? Do you intentionally give time to stretching and positively stressing your physical body with increased intensity exercise? Do you get enough natural sunlight each day? How much do you value and protect your sleep?

Life is busy and daily routines often leave these important questions under-addressed. It seems that too often we wait until our body says, “STOP!” before we slow down and consider that if we want an extraordinary body we have to give it extraordinary care. Whether it's about with influenza, a chronic ache in the lower back, a recurring shoulder injury, a migraine headache, or any number of challenging physical ailments, we seem to raise our standards of care for ourselves when we are forced to slow down.

• Visit with your doctor and order a comprehensive health screening. Knowing where you are with regard to blood lipid levels, blood glucose levels and blood pressure provides a good starting point for positive, powerful dietary adjustments.
• Make a plan to go for a walk in the sunlight each day.
• Call a friend and schedule some time for weekly exercise.
• Visit an online resource for whole food cooking tips and plant-based recipes. Include a new vegetable in your diet each week.
• Set a timer to help you get into bed at an hour that allows you to get 7 - 8 hours of sleep each night.
• Make time after your evening meal to plan the following day. Creating a vision for your future begins with envisioning the day ahead!
• Drink 60 - 90oz of water each day and supplement with minerals as recommended by your nutrition expert.

Regardless of your current position on the path to achieving that next level of improved wellness, success is about the climb, and it rarely looks like perfection. Massive success happens 1 degree of positive improvement at a time! Taking the next step toward becoming your very best self is just one intentional movement away!

The touch points for engaging positively with our mental health are ambiguous enough that discounting them and excluding them from regular practice is an easy and even natural thing to do. What does it really mean to be mentally healthy?

Mental health is the daily planting and cultivating of practices that maximize creative potential. It is building and developing the brain and intellect. It is engaging in activities that shape new ideas and experiences and that support the desire to increase understanding and to continually challenge yourself to improve skills in professional pursuits, communication, hobbies and self-care. Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, a world-renowned movement therapist provided the following definition for health, "having the physical and mental capacity and abilities to actively pursue one's dreams". Mental health is a vital element in the formula for success in the lifelong pursuit of achieving your dreams.

Having a series of daily protocols designed to improve your mental health can be just what you need to make sense of all the stress and challenges of life and to find joy in each and every moment, increasing and improving your mental capacity, and in turn, your overall ability to actively pursue your dreams.

What are the defining patterns and practices that align you with your deepest ambitions and desires? What are the principle actions that promote peace and contentment in this crucial area of wellness? We have labored diligently to illuminate the pathways to improving healthy practices in an area of wellness which has such remarkable potential to elevate personal well-being and inspire powerful direction in creating healthy habits and life-elevating behaviors. Exploring your perceptions of the world, the moral and ethical principles that you most value, and your beliefs about the purpose of life is a process of tuning, toning and refining your perspectives as well as your unique ability to contribute to the beauty and progress of your communities, both large and small.

The following resources have been collected as a broad and expansive guide to help you continue your exploration of lifestyle wellness practices. Enjoy the process of designing and mapping out a legacy of learning and becoming, aligned with purpose and meaning.

What does it mean to have healthy relationships? Whether your daily interactions are broad and inclusive or limited to just a few face to face interactions, relationships are important to you. You likely feel a sense of stewardship and responsibility to them. Likewise, you likely feel that they have a responsibility to you. How do you articulate and demonstrate that responsibility? What kind of flexibility and boundaries do you share with them? What does your communication with each look like? What is your expectation from each? Consider each of the roles you play in your life; a son or daughter, a father or mother, a friend, a neighbor, a coworker, an employee or employer, a citizen of your community. What is the connection you feel to each? Do feel loyalty to them? How much energy do you give to nurturing the relationships that are part of your everyday life?

Being a proactive member of social environments both locally as well as in larger demographics, including positive associations with online media platforms can provide a huge boon to the feelings associated with wellbeing. In addition to social inclusion and often aligned with it, choosing to be informed about activities of both local and global governing bodies, including new legislation and legislation reform can add to feelings of self-worth, community inclusion, and informed empowerment that are all vital elements of the wellness formula.