I lay it down as an educational axiom that in teaching you will come to grief as soon as you forget that your pupils have bodies. [Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Williams and Norgate, 1955, p. 78]
It is always important to look for these reciprocal actions of the mind on the body and of the body on the mind, since they are two parts of the whole with which we are concerned. [Alfred Adler, What Life Could Mean To You, 1931, Hazelden Foundation, 1998, p. 33]
Much of the damage we do to our bodies starts early in life with high stress, poor diet, risky behavior, and lack of exercise. When we are young, we often don’t feel the effects of the way we mistreat our bodies—but those effects show up later in life. And most people don’t realize the problems they are causing themselves in the future. Students should learn how to take much better care of themselves if they want to live a healthy life as adults. [Allan Collins, What’s Worth Teaching?: Rethinking Curriculum in the Age of Technology, Teachers College, 2017, p. 37]
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. … Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. [William James, “Talks to Teachers,” 1892, William James: Writings 1878-1899, Literary Classics of the United States, 1992, pp. 757-758]
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. [Samuel Johnson] quoted by [Lawrence J. Peter, Peter’s Quotations: Ideas For Our Time, Bantam, 1977, p. 132]
The following are some guidelines for general health, covering four important areas: sleep, diet, exercise, and relaxation. Improving any of these categories can have significant effects on your mood, willpower, immune system, brain function, and appearance. Approach them incrementally; aim to make small improvements however you can.
(These guidelines aren’t substitutes for professional medical advice from your doctor. Along with the habits below, it’s important to see your doctor regularly and bring up your questions and concerns with them.)
Sleep:
1. Get 8-10 hours of sleep per night (recommended for teenagers). 7-9 hours for adults.
2. Go to bed and wake up at a regular time. (Set a bed-time alarm if you need it.)
3. Create a relaxing bed-time routine. (Prepare for bed an hour before sleep, dim lights, minimize exposure to screens, avoid stress, write in a journal, list the things you want to accomplish the next day, etc.)
4. Try not to spend time in bed awake. (Train your brain to associate the bed with sleep.)
5. Minimize caffeine intake. (Most people should refrain at least 6 hours before bed.)
6. Think of adequate sleep as an investment in your mental and physical health (not as something that’s lazy or indulgent). It improves your ability to learn, regulate emotions, prevent illness, and much more.
Diet:
(Note, there is no “perfect” diet for everyone, owing to individual differences in genes and lifestyles. The following, however, are a few basic principles that are commonly recommended by experts.)
1. Drink plenty of water throughout the day (8-11 cups [64-88 ounces] daily for teenagers, 9-13 cups [72-104 oz.] for adults), particularly when you wake up.
2. Eat real food.
(Avoid highly processed foods, preservatives, high sugar or sweetener foods, foods with more than five ingredients, hard-to-pronounce ingredients, etc.)
3. Eat mostly plants. (Favor leafy vegetables, colorful (vitamin rich) vegetables, whole grains, legumes, fruits, a variety of plants, fungi, and fermented foods for healthy gut bacteria.)
4. Don’t eat too much. (Chew thoroughly,
taste mindfully,
stop eating before you feel full,
eat at leisurely communal meals, eat at a table, minimize snacking, don’t eat too late at night.)
5. Improve your relationship with food. Eat when you’re hungry instead of when you’re bored or stressed, learn to cook and enjoy the process,
share meals with friends and family, express gratitude for your food, view food as medicine, respect your body and the effect food has on it.
Exercise:
1. Adolescents should get an average of 60 minutes of moderate exercise per day. (e.g. brisk walking, casual sports, biking, house and yard work, etc.) This includes 30 minutes of vigorous exercise at least 3 times per week. (e.g. running, swimming, biking, sports that involve jumping or rapid change in direction, weight lifting, etc.) Exercise routines should include aerobic activity and muscle/bone strengthening activities.
Adults should get a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 days a week, and 30 minutes of vigorous exercise 3 times a week.
A rule of thumb: when doing moderate exercise you can talk, but not sing; when doing vigorous exercise you can’t say more than a few words without pausing for a breath.
2. Using these recommendations, create a daily/weekly routine that works for you. Make your goals realistic, even if they are small—anything to get you into the habit. (e.g. stretching or walking in the morning, calisthenics/body-weight/free-weight exercises you can do at home (there are many good workout videos online
), walking after dinner, etc.)
3. Exercise is an essential human experience, don’t let it feel like a chore. Find activities that allow you to engage with life the way that you want to. Make movement enjoyable, whether it’s how you get from place to place, connect with friends, bond with a loved one, commune with nature, or develop a sense of mastery. Choose exercise goals that will change the way feel about yourself and what you believe you’re capable of.
Exercise is deeply beneficial to your mental health. It can improve your resiliency to stress, connection with other people, sensitivity to joy, and levels of energy, hope, and optimism.
Relaxation:
1. Dedicate some personal time every day to a non-stressful, rejuvenating activity. (e.g. practice an art, craft, or hobby, enjoy nature, listen to calming music, take a hot bath, etc.)
2. Remove needless stress from your life. (e.g. excessive social media use,
procrastination, rehashing stressful situations, etc.) Cultivate tools to better control and leverage stress.
Change the way you view stress.
Some stress is not only unavoidable but beneficial, enhancing performance and resilience in challenging moments. Our attitudes toward stress can significantly impact how it affects our mental and physical health.
3. Practice slow breathing. (softly, through the nose, using the diaphragm, long exhales)
4. Practice mindfulness. This can help you focus, be more fully present, and be more aware of (and less controlled by) your thoughts and feelings.
5. Do relaxing exercise. (e.g. walks with friends, scenic bike rides, yoga, etc.)
6. Express gratitude. This will help you counteract hedonic adaptation (losing happiness from new things over time) and the arrival fallacy (the belief that you will be happy once you get “there”). You can voice gratitude directly to those who deserve it. You can write grateful thoughts in a journal: write just once or twice a week, focus on people, be specific (quality over quantity), note the unexpected or surprising, recall when others have expressed gratitude for you, think about your life without certain things.
Gratitude and mindfulness go hand-in-hand. Because being grateful isn’t just a retrospective exercise, it’s first and foremost a practice of taking mindful moments to enjoy and appreciate the goodness of the people and things in your life.
Footnotes: