As we settle into 2024 I'm sure there are things you want to do differently to improve your health, your fitness results or just your life in general.
There's almost no one I know who wouldn't like to feel a bit more energised. So many of us are chronically tired even if we are getting enough sleep.
If that sounds like you, if you're not naturally, drug-free, bouncing off the walls like a little kid, then this post is for you :)
Over the years I've had many, many mentors. As someone who has had chronic health challenges for years I've been actively searching for and picking up clues to improve my health, energy and vitality as cheaply and easily as possible.
One of the people who has made an incredible difference to my health over the last year is a woman named Carrie Bennett. She calls herself a Quantum Clinician, which simply put means she works with people to support them to solve their health issues the way I doctor would but at a "quantum" level (think: at the level of the cell and then even smaller again!).
So much of what she teaches goes over my head. She's endlessly reading the latest scientific research on all things quantum health-related and then sharing them with her clients, her students and her broader community. In between all the geeky, deep scientific explanations for how and why things do what they do, she's always coming back to the basics. This means lay people like me can understand what the heck to do with all the incredible stuff she's teaching.
Now, I get to share some of those things with you!
Without further ado, here are three simple things I do every day that have made so much (of a positive) difference to my energy levels.
1. I put my bare feet on the earth, often.
This is a pretty easy and safe thing for me to do where I live. If it's easy enough for you to do as well then I highly recommend doing it first thing in the morning and a few times throughout the day as your schedule allows.
Why? Well, we forget that we are electrical beings. And if you live in a house, like me, and sleep in a bed off the ground, as I do, then you're spending more time each day disconnected from the electricity of the earth that is designed to support your body's electrical health.
Don't believe me that you're an electrical being? Well, when someone dies, what happens? Even if their body is still in front of us, we would say they are "gone" or they are "dead" because there's no electricity powering their heart (to move) or their brain (to think) or their lungs (to breathe).
It is incredible how much our modern lifestyle--especially in wealthy countries and in urban environments in countries almost everywhere--disconnect us from this literal life force of the earth's electricity.
So, if you want to feel more energised, take your shoes off and place them on the earth. If it's snowy where you are, obviously this will have to be for a few seconds rather than minutes at a time. And if it's a scorching hot desert where you are, you might have to do this in the early morning before sunrise and the late evening after sunset. You do you. But know that being directly connected--with the bare skin of your feet (or hands)--to the earth regularly is a game changer.
2. I changed my habits when it came to light.
Before we clever humans worked out how to direct electricity from the earth and plug it into buildings to power things like this computer and that TV and all the lights you probably have in your house, we operated our lives guided by the sun.
When it was light, we did stuff. When the sun was setting, we lit a fire and cooked over it while talking about our days and our lives. And when we were tired enough, we went to sleep. Simple.
Now, instead of waking at first light and living in tune with the sunlight, many of us wake up late and stay up far too many hours after sunset aided by the artificial light of our light globes and our devices.
Most of these "artificial" lights are full of blue light. While it looks white to our naked eyes it's blue on the light spectrum and when we're using these human-made things at 10 p.m., our body thinks it's the middle of the day.
See our bodies have what's known as a "body clock". It has a clever system of taking light into the eyes and delivering it to the brain and then the brain tells the hormonal system (aka "endocrine system") which hormones to produce and when. Our level of wakefulness or sleepiness is dictated by which hormones are running around in our bloodstream at any given point in time.
So if you're watching Netflix at 10 p.m., filling your eyes with blue light at the 'wrong' time of day then of course you're going to be tired at sunrise the next day.
The solution? What I've been doing with regard to light are a few things. Firstly, as it starts to get dark inside the house I put on blue light-blocking glasses. (They call them that, but they don't really block the light as much as reduce the amount of blue light that can hit your eyeballs). Then I turn on one big light that's covered with a red see-through cover. (It was the cheapest way to make "red" light). And if Brad needs blue light to do something after sunset, he warns me and I go to another room.
Secondly, I don't stay up super late to watch TV or do things on my computer or phone. Within about an hour of sunset, we're heading to bed and I try not to look at any device without my blue light-blocking glasses until after UVA Rise the next morning.
This brings me to my third light habit change: I make sure I'm awake and outside, looking in the direction of the sun, by UVA Rise each morning. UVA Rise is the point in the day when the sun starts to show the UVA light wavelength (that is, the angle of the sun and earth to one another allows the UVA wavelength to hit the earth in the location I'm standing in). Since we can't see UVA light (it's invisible to the human eye) I rely on an app on my phone called Circadian that, even with the free version, tells me when UVA Rise is every day for my location.
Letting the sunlight into my naked eyes (i.e. no sunglasses, no reading glasses and no windows blocking or filtering the light) lets the signal from the light go to my brain and tells my body what the actual, real time of day is.
So these light habits combined, while they took a little getting used to, have made a huge difference to my energy levels. Ginormous. It's been incredible, actually. And aside from buying the blue light-blocking glasses a few years back, there was very little cost outside of that to make this important change to my life and my health.
3. I take movement breaks throughout the day.
I know know about you but it's soooo easy in my work to stay stuck on the screen, sitting down, doing a lot of mental work but not a lot of physical work. For a long time, I would feel this lethargy and think I needed to "rest more". But the longer I engaged with Carrie's work the more I realised I'm not actually moving my body often enough.
So now I take short breaks throughout the day and move my body. When I've finished one task, like writing a Hive post, or recording a YouTube video, or sending out an email newsletter then I step away from the screen and do some kind of short bout of exercise.
Usually, I'm not trying to exercise enough to sweat but rather just to get my blood flowing better, my joints moving and my heart rate and breathing up just for a short while.
I might do push-ups, or hang on the bar outside. I might do a sun salutation and open up my hips, or I might do some deep squats. I do whatever my body is telling me it wants. I'm looking for the movement to feel nourishing. And, like the extra earthing and the changes in my habits with light, I have noticed a real difference to my energy levels.
I don't need to nap as often as I think I do. I don't reach for sugary things as much as I used to. And my fitness and strength levels have also improved through doing more short stints of exercise. Double win!
So that's it! They are the three simple things I do every day that have made such a difference in my energy levels that I wouldn't be without them. And they're so simple almost anyone, almost anywhere could sneak them into their day ;) Let me know if you do!
And if you want to learn more on this topic, Carrie is co-hosting the first ever Health Transformation Summit in just a couple of weeks from now. It's a free event with a paid upgrade option (that gives you even more goodies). If you want to learn more about this quantum health stuff then this will be a beautiful introduction to the work of a whole host of experts who teach about these topics and more.
You're welcome :P
Some of my posts include affiliate links that help cover the huge amount of time I spend learning new and useful things and then re-teaching these life-changing concepts. If you choose to buy something through one of my links I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you so much for your support. I really appreciate it.