Holistic Health is Mental Health
This article is written by Sky Corbett-Methot, a Holistic Nutritionist and 500-hour Hatha yoga and meditation instructor.
Picture by Tabitha Turner @tabithabrooke
Hi y’all, I’m new around here and I wanted to introduce myself, I am Sky. Don’t worry I won’t bore you too much with the details of my convoluted, somewhat complicated, multi-faceted life journey. However, if you are interested in my story it was released on July 6th on Yoga to Cope’s podcast!
On here, I’ll give you the “Sparks Notes” or as us Canadians like to say the “Cole’s Notes” version of what has to lead me here: to wellness, yoga, mental health and the like.
I went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas where there I was a member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving team. In the realm of high-performance sport comes a lot of physical, mental, and emotional stress. This era of my life, was my first serious exposure to mental “un”health or rather mental illness. I was medically disqualified from sport and turned to yoga to help with my pain management and mental reprieve.
Simultaneously, those closest to me were becoming consumed by their own invisible demons. I pursued a bachelor’s in anthropology and psychology in an effort to better understand the world and my loved one’s around me.
Once I graduated, I moved to Southern Florida where I began working in a psychiatric clinic. Daily, I was treating patients who were on the edge of death. Sometimes I was able to witness their incredible journey of coming back from that edge. However, I would be lying if I said that this work did not take its own toll on me. I left that practice and started a new job that had me traveling across the US five days a week. Sounds amazing, right? Yes it was, especially for the wanderlust infused adventurer like me! During this inconsistent time, my one constant was my yoga practice, as I was able to carry it with me everywhere.
Occupational glam aside, working 80+ hour weeks caught up with me. My own mental and physical health deteriorated, I was moody, fatigued, experiencing anxiety, and developed a migraine disorder. Unsurprisingly this lead to my burnout. I then reflected upon my university experience and my 4 years working in the mental health field and noticed a common thread. It became clear to me how lack of sleep, lack of exercise, and lack of adequate food intake was correlated to mental and physical illness.
Well BOOM, there you have it, the trifecta or rather the “Skyfecta” as I like to call it, was born. I decided that I wanted to practice balance and also teach balance so that individual’s could live their best life.
I switched gears and moved to Bali for 2 months to embark on a fully immersive 500-hour yoga teacher training at Zuna Yoga. I left with a love for teaching in a topic (yoga and meditation) that I could easily converse about for days. Just ask my partner who has listened patiently to my many excited conversations around this topic… I also left with a few soul friends. You actually know one, she is the founder of Yoga to Cope, the beautiful Kala MacDonald!
During this time I also enrolled at the Institute of Holistic Nutrition to train to become a Certified Nutritional Practitioner. As a holistic nutritionist, I explore all these pillars: movement, mindfulness and nourishment, as it truly is a WHOLE-istic approach to health and healing. As a wellness practitioner and yogi, I look at the beautiful individual in front of me, learn their wellness goals and assess the root cause of their ailments. With this insight I am then able to create a health protocol unique to them.
Holistic Health is understanding that the mind, the body, and the spirit are all interconnected. If one pillar is out of whack, the rest of the system will malfunction. Pain, ailment and disorder is your body giving you a clue to a misalignment within your life and within yourself. If you don’t believe me just yet, that is okay, l don’t blame you. It took me experiencing it first hand to understand this mind/body connection.
So lets go a little deeper to demonstrate how holistic health IS mental health. Have you ever heard of the neurotransmitter (a chemical that sends messages) called serotonin? This “cool chemical” regulates our appetite, our mood as well as our digestion. Roughly 90% of serotonin is made in the gut. WHAT! So if the gut has such a role in creating a chemical that regulates how we feel in our mind, it only makes sense to connect that the gut and brain are related. This exemplifies how the physical body and the mind are interrelated, for our whole self to feel healthy, we must recognize this in our healing and wellness journey.
That is where I come in. These blog posts will provide access to information that will allow you to better know your whole self. The aim here is to connect these pillars to show how nutrition, meditation (stress management) and yoga (movement) can empower you to fuel your mind and your body to work best for you.
Together, lets tackle this thing called life. Why? Well, because life is beautiful, if you let it be.
Buckle up folks its going to be a bumpy ride!