What if the most important change in your wellness journey is not another treatment, supplement, or routine—but a change in perspective?

In Episode 11 of Facing Dementia, Laurin Wittig and I reverse the microphones. This time Laurin returns to her role as interviewer and asks me to explore an idea that has been growing throughout our conversations: can the very practices we adopt to be well become another source of pressure?

Are We Living Well—or Constantly Trying to Fix Ourselves?

When illness, family history, or uncertainty enters our lives, seeking information and care is understandable. Medical assessment and treatment are essential when needed. Yet there is a difference between addressing illness and allowing the possibility of illness to organize every moment of our lives.

We can become so busy measuring, preventing, correcting, and monitoring that we forget to ask what we want our days to feel like. A walk becomes a step count. Food becomes a chore. Rest becomes another performance. Even meditation can become something we feel guilty about missing.

A practice may have value, but our relationship with it matters too. If every missed activity becomes a personal failure, what happens to our sense of vitality?

Perspective Sits at the Seat of Change

Our previous conversation with Laurin revealed the importance of a new viewpoint. She had grown tired of choosing activities only because they were supposedly “good for my brain.” When she began choosing movement and creative challenges that she genuinely enjoyed, she found herself looking forward to pickleball, line dancing, music, and writing.

Episode 11 takes that discovery further. What if the question is not simply “How do I prevent something from going wrong?” but “What am I moving toward, and what kind of life do I want to experience?”

A shift in perspective does not deny symptoms or dismiss healthcare. It creates room for care and vitality to coexist. We can seek appropriate medical support while also cultivating meaning, connection, movement, curiosity, and joy.

From Healing Illness to Cultivating Wellness

Healing and wellness are related, but they are not identical goals. Healing may involve responding to injury, distress, or disease. A proactive wellness perspective also asks how we can nourish our lives today, whether we are living with a diagnosis, supporting someone else, or feeling well.

BioEnergetic Wellness is a person-led approach that invites us to notice our responses, clarify our intentions, explore supportive activities, and adapt as circumstances change. Rather than promising to prevent or cure illness, it offers a way to participate more consciously in our own wellbeing.

The BioEnergetic Wellness Formula: A Living Framework

In the episode, Laurin invites me to explain how the BioEnergetic Wellness Formula might help when our wellness routine has become another source of stress.

Goal: What meaningful future am I moving toward? Perhaps it is not simply avoiding dementia, but living a vibrant, connected and engaged life.

Intention: How do I want to approach that future—with curiosity, compassion, courage, or joy?

Awareness: What am I noticing in my body, emotions, energy, thoughts, and relationships? Which activities nourish me, and which feel forced?

Activation: What small exploration can I choose today? Movement, music, time outdoors, rest, tea, art, or a meaningful conversation may each offer something different.

Community: Who supports my discoveries and helps me recognize possibilities beyond my own viewpoint?

Intuition: What am I learning through these experiences, and how can that understanding guide my next choice?

These elements are interconnected, not a checklist to complete perfectly. The Formula is intended to support discovery and adaptation—not add another layer of expectations.

Awareness Is Not Surveillance

Laurin raises questions many listeners may share. If we listen to ourselves, how do we distinguish intuition from avoidance? What if we simply do not feel like moving?

One difficult afternoon does not tell the whole story. We can look for patterns, consider our circumstances, notice what changes after an activity, and remain open to support when we need it. Awareness invites curiosity; surveillance looks for a pass or fail.

The Joy Calendar from our earlier episode is a lovely example. Rather than treating joy as another assignment, we can notice which experiences we anticipate, what restores us afterward, what surprises us, and what we might want to explore next.

Reframe One Day, Beginning Today

Try choosing one activity you currently think of as something you “should” do. Without judging yourself or abandoning something important to your health, ask: How do I feel before it? What happens while I participate? What do I notice afterward? Is there another way to approach it that feels more meaningful?

Perhaps walking becomes an opportunity to visit a friend or listen to birdsong. Perhaps movement becomes dancing to a favourite song. Perhaps a cup of tea becomes a moment to set an intention for how you wish to engage with the day.

The point is not to turn every responsibility into pleasure. It is to recognize that our viewpoint influences our experience—and that new viewpoints can open choices we had not previously considered.

Join Our Episode 11 Conversation

In Facing Dementia Episode 11, When Wellness Becomes Pressure: Are We Trying Too Hard to Be Well?, Laurin interviews me about the difference between living well and continually managing the possibility of illness. We explore BioEnergetic Wellness, awareness, intuition, the Joy Calendar, and the freedom to choose vitality rather than perfection.

Visit Greenwell Center for Holistic Health to explore our BioEnergetic Wellness resources, movement and music programs, Tai Chi experiences, and the Top 8 Stress Releasers. As you move into tomorrow, consider one question: Am I organizing my day around what I fear—or around the life I want to create?

If you want to engage with these ideas in a way that they become a way of living for you, consider some of the program being offered at the Greenwell Center. The Movement and Music programs have been recorded and are ready for your exploration at your own pace.

The first series works with the BioEnergetic Wellness Formula as well as the Unwinding Trauma Building Resiliency program, so that each week you are leaving old patterns behind as you frame your future self for energy and vitality.

The second series includes all the supplemental materials in our new publication: Artfilled Wellness: Frequency in Motion – Volume 1 Spiritual Essence of the Spine. Each week the class explores a series of movement patterns that link the spine, emotions, muscles, and movement, while influencing the effort by intuitive music and the intuitive art sensed by Marian Egan. These on demand courses can be repeated and reviewed as many times as needed.

Our current live program is Tai Chi Skill Building. With the components described above we have added two incredible harpists. Donna Hutchison and Brenda Cox help us find the ease of movement through their magical music. You can find this course in the shop!