Using Creative Pathways to Holistic Well-Being

Finding YOUR path to holistic well-being is going to be as individual and unique as you are. Do you consider all the ways in which you can move towards vitality and balance in mind, body and spirit?

Creativity is soul food for me! It comes in many forms and from different avenues but I become more whole as I immerse myself in whatever is presented. 

One of my hobbies is gardening and that feeds aspects of my holistic self in different ways. There is the actual planning, planting and growing of foods and herbs that delivers a sense of looking forward and hopeful to future events. Hands in the dirt grounds me, watering, feeding and caring for the plants as they grow allows expression of that nurturing side of me, and finally picking and eating or preserving what has grown feeds my body with some of the best nutrition. ​

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​My great grandfather had a large acreage on Galiano Island and he farmed a portion of it. Spending a good part of my summers there, I remember sitting and watching him dig potatoes, or pick apples as he talked about grafting that particular tree to produce 3 different kinds of apples. Or the plum tree near the well grafted to grow yellow and purple plums. Also a hobby herbalist, he took me into the meadows with him to pick fresh herbs. I remember the scent of yarrow and wild berries growing. I don’t think he realised how he was inspiring and feeding his great granddaughter with a passion for gardening and nature.

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​Gardening fuels another hobby that satisfies my holistic wholeness and that is cooking. At the beginning of July I took an early morning opportunity to pick herbs in the garden, and also discovered a long forgotten and neglected apple tree in the very back part of the property, with apples ready to pick

​70s dance music was the theme for the day with fans blowing to keep the kitchen cool. As I danced around the kitchen, the freshly picked herbs were made into pestos and herbal butters or were hung to dry for later use. Apples became applesauce for family members and their little ones. (My 3 year old great niece apparently will eat her weight in apple sauce!). To some this may sound mundane. But the combination of music, dance and creating with my hands, fosters a sense of well-being for me, in mind, body and soul.

​I have a number of other hobbies such as paper crafting, scrapbooking and quilting, hiking and nature wanderings… that are creative paths to my feeling holistically healthy. Putting fabric or paper designs together to create something, or observing the cycles of nature through the seasons, and acknowledging the amazingness that nature provides.

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I think that it depends on what a person discovers to feed their soul. Those activities that make your soul go ahhhh… and you feel that ahhhh throughout your being. I think it also means that once discovered, you explore and immerse yourself in what feeds your soul, on a regular basis. Just another, and really pleasurable way to approach holistic health on all levels.

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