Wellness on the Move

01/12/2025

Sunlight and time outdoors can powerfully impact your overall well-being. Circadian rhythms are a natural pattern of mental, physical, and behavioral changes that the body undergoes in 24-hour intervals. In essence, it’s your body’s internal clock that dictates your daily sleep-wake periods. The sun’s light/dark cycle has been proven to have favorable effects on the circadian clock, mood, alertness, and sleep quality (according to the CDC).

Our circadian clock’s natural response to light is staying awake, and its response to darkness is going to sleep. The CDC recommends maximizing light exposure in the daytime to increase your alertness. That’s what makes outdoor activities the perfect start to one’s morning. They get your blood pumping, oxygen flowing, and energy going early in the day. To sleep better at night, you should shut off all sources of light, including cell phones, TVs, tablets, and digital clock radios in your bedroom or place of rest.

Find out more by reading The Link Between Sunlight and Better Sleep: https://www.bluezones.com/2022/11/the-link-between-sunlight-and-better-sleep/

24/10/2025

‘When life breaks you, it is because you are ready to be put back together differently.

Every piece of you that feels shattered is a piece that will find a new place, a new purpose, a new meaning.

Trust that the cracks are where the light gets in. And sometimes, in our brokenness, we find our greatest wholeness.

We find the courage to rebuild, to reimagine, to redefine what it means to be strong.

You are not broken; you are breaking through.’

14/10/2025

Music literally hits the brain’s reward system. It releases dopamine, the same feel-good chemical triggered by food, s*x, and money. Brain scans show that right before and during the most emotional moments in a song, the nucleus accumbens and caudate - core parts of the brain’s reward network - light up. These regions handle both anticipation and pleasure, and they respond even more strongly when a song gives you goosebumps.

EEG studies also reveal bursts of activity in emotional centers like the orbitofrontal cortex and right temporal lobe during frisson, that spine-tingling rush you get from powerful music.

This is why music can lift your mood, reduce stress, and even rewire your brain over time. It’s not just sound, it’s your brain’s built-in way of regulating emotion.

Source: Nature Scientific Reports (2022) - Longitudinal changes in auditory and reward systems following receptive music-based intervention in older adults

14/10/2025

Today marks Allied Health Professions Day. The 2025 theme, Stronger Together, celebrates the power of collaboration in delivering comprehensive, person-centred care.

Remedial massage therapists and myotherapists make a valuable contribution to multidisciplinary healthcare – supporting recovery, mobility, and wellbeing through skilled, evidence-informed practice. Their work enhances outcomes across many areas of health and community care.

Today we recognise and celebrate all professionals who work together to keep Australians healthy and thriving.

14/10/2025

08/10/2025

07/10/2025

Growing up in a remote area, in the days of less travel, we had limited health professionals available.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service provided a monthly clinic in various tiny towns and stations, treating an incredibly wide range of patients and issues. And of course, if something went wrong "call the Flying Doctor" - our family has made welcome use of this throughout our lives!
Currently, I'm
raising funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service this October and I need your help! Any small amount or share of this post are most welcome

Please donate today and support my challenge

I'm going further this October and I need your help! I've registered for Oceans to Outback, a month-long challenge to raise vital funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. I'll be pushing myself to the limit, going a long way and testing my fitness levels, but I'm determined to go further to ensure...

05/10/2025

In Israel, scientists conducted a remarkable study. A single drop of a participant’s blood was placed under a microscope and projected on a screen. What they saw was captivating: bacteria slowly moving around… and macrophages — the “clean-up crew” of the blood — just lying dormant.

The bacteria were wandering freely, as if on a peaceful evening stroll. The macrophages? Fast asleep, ignoring their job entirely.

Then something unexpected happened. The participant was shown a funny movie — and as their mood lifted, the macrophages suddenly “woke up.” One of them rolled over to a nearby bacterium and started devouring it with real enthusiasm.

This wasn’t lunch time. This was science.

🧠 Our mood directly influences our immune cells.

Here’s the twist: the blood sample had been separated from the participant and was in a different room. Somehow, the change in the participant’s emotional state affected the blood at a distance.

When researchers switched to horror film clips, the opposite happened. The bacteria became energized, multiplied rapidly, and even started attacking the macrophages, forcing them to retreat.

👉 The state of our consciousness plays a critical role in maintaining our inner ecosystem.

And it doesn’t stop with us. Since our relatives share our bloodline, our emotional states can influence their immune systems too — even across continents. This is what some call “family immunity.”

A watchmaker once shared a story: whenever his left index finger would start twitching — making his delicate work impossible — he wouldn’t massage it or take supplements. He’d call his mother, thousands of kilometers away, and say:

“Mom, you’re worrying again! Stop it — I can’t work like this!”

Even mild maternal anxiety was enough to affect his physiology.

🌿 The takeaway:
The old saying “It’s my life, I’ll do what I want” is outdated. Our mental state impacts not just our health, but the well-being of those we love.

So, find ways to cultivate joy, laughter, and inner harmony — not just for yourself, but for your entire “immune tribe.”

PS: This reminds us of Norman Cousins, who famously healed from a terminal illness through laughter. His story, told in “Anatomy of an Illness” (1976), showed that positive emotions can activate the body’s healing systems. Turns out, “Laughter is the best medicine” isn’t just a saying — it’s physiology.

01/10/2025

When you learn something, you should be able to teach it to people. You should put the same effort into teaching as into learning. And if you want to teach, you should be humble enough to learn something. Then you can teach. If you try to teach just because you know something, you cannot teach anything. When you are ready to be taught by someone, then, if necessary, you can teach people in the true sense of the word. So. To learn is to teach and to teach is to learn.

~ Shunryu Suzuki, 1905–1971 ~
Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai