A simple Occupational Therapy inspired monthly prescription of activities intended to support wellbeing that you are invited to spend as little, or as often as you like on.

It’s August and as many of you will be aware most of France stops to take their yearly holiday, you’ll find everyone heading to their favourite destinations, the lakes, rivers, mountains and of course the beach.

Whilst not all of us have the luxury of getting a way from it all, we are going to take a little break from ourselves and our endless to do lists to explore doing as little as possible over the next month. Let’s give ourselves the space to be bored. I’m thinking along the lines of my school summer holidays, where time felt like an eternity and I’d be bothering my parents with the ‘I’m so bored’, receiving perhaps the response of ‘the bathroom needs a clean’ or maybe ‘go and play with the traffic’…….just me?

Doing nothing.

Putting to one side what we can and resting, as the poem by WH Davies suggests, to stop and stare. This will bring about an opportunity to observe our daily lives, including the time pressures we place upon ourselves, be it physical, mental or emotional. This could be the 10,000 steps, the meeting up with friends, the books on your bedside table haunting you, the unnecessary, self-set deadlines. Try not to do so many things.

We are starving for stillness and silence in our culture, there is noise and chaos everywhere. The world is not going to slow down and get less noisy simply because you want it to. You have to commit to taking time to taking a break, not only to promote relaxation, taking time to still your days of their busyness bring quietness to your routines, give your nervous system a chance to regain balance.

Here is are the details of this months activity based prescription to help us along the way to improved mental wellbeing and an increase in creativity through stepping away from the to do lists, screens and dropping into doing nothing and observing what comes up..

1. Move all self-set deadlines to the beginning of September

Have a look through your diary and move anything you can to next month. I have written a list and added a note to my diary for September. Most of the things have been on the list for months, four more weeks will do no harm. I have put away the things I have left out as visual prompts, put the pile of sewing I’ve accumulated over the months to do and not done, resigned myself to leaving my scattered website to sit for another month, cleared my desk and set limits around when I will be working.

2. Switching off - Use your telephone as a telephone.

Our smart phones are very clever, but sadly they reduce cognitive capacity by constantly drawing out attention to them, taking a break can be a valuable opportunity to recharge. We all know this but most of us do very little about it, they are mini computers that accompany us all of the time, so this month you are invited to use your phone as a phone, calls and text messages. Here are some ways of doing this could be done:

delete apps such as email and social media
remove the data function so it limits you to it being a simple telephone
dig out that old mobile phone, remove your sim and use your smart phone as computer time

3. Sit quietly each day for 5 minutes.

I am going to encourage you to simply sit and do nothing. Not even drinking a cup of tea. You don’t need to be sat in any particular way or place. Observe yourself as an impartial witness, where does your mind wander to? Once your five minutes is up (I recommend using a timer) perhaps note down what came up in a journal and leave it, you don’t need to work anything out, we’ll explore this in September.

So that’s your Wellbeing Invitation, remember as with all invites, you can say no or perhaps just try out one item. They’re simple but not easy and perhaps even a little uncomfortable. I think a lot will come up for us on this one, I’ll be back at the end of the month with a review and all the supporting evidence, to prepare us for that back to school feeling of September where we’ll explore what came up and move forward into preparing ourselves for the transitions into autumn.

Do let me know how you get on and if you have anything you’d like to share about your experience or if you’d like to explore in more depth anything that arises for you can book a session with me via josephine@thewellbeingatellier.com.

I’ll not be on social media this month and I encourage you to take a break too if you are able. I’ll be checking emails on Mondays and Fridays if you need anything, have any questions or suggestions.

Have a wonderful August.

Warmly,

Josephine

ps…. here is how I got on