Environmental wellness refers to your “goodness of fit” with your surrounding environment. Essentially, where you spend your time matters. For example, consider how you feel in the emergency room compared to watching the sunset from your favorite spot. Obviously, we do the best we can to avoid the ER, but it’s an easy comparison to highlight my point. We include environment in our VK Wellness Model because it can be a huge source of wellness for many people, and often a very accessible one (especially on the West Coast of BC!).

To understand this a little more, chose three places you visit often (at least 2 times a week), this can include home and work. Write them down if it’s helpful. Take a minute to think about each of these places and notice how you feel in each of them, again right it down. It’s very likely that each of them brought about different feelings, even if you could not articulate them.

What is powerful about this is if we can understand which environments are a “good fit” we can positively impact our overall wellness by spending more time in them, or as little time as possible if it’s a bad fit. We can even dig a little deeper and start to understand what about the environment makes it a good fit and bring these aspects of personal environmental wellness to whatever environment you are spending time in.

Wondering what environments are a good fit for you? Answer the following questions and you may get a little inspiration.

• What sounds bring you joy?
• What colours help you focus or relax?
• Where do you feel “at home”?
• What smells do you enjoy?
• Carpet, tile, or hardwood?
• If you could spend your time anywhere, where would it be?
• What makes a space desirable to you?
• Do you like Pinterest? Jump on these and start pinning pictures of places or décor that bring you joy.

You get the idea. If you think this is worth a try, consider one of your answers and see if you can incorporate these preferences into a space, where you spend a lot of time, like work, your car, or a room in your home. This can be a simple way to change your current wellness experience. For myself, I know quiet places that are filled with elements of nature bring me a sense of calm. And anywhere with strong smells makes me want to run! You really can make a difference to your personal wellness by doing simple things like this. What is extra cool is that when you learn to love the space you are in you take better care of it. This includes the larger impact of appreciating the natural world we are surrounded by. I don’t have space to dive into this aspect of Environmental Wellness here but will talk about it sometime in the future.

May you be well,

Kara Fogwell