Taking a Wellness Break in Hawaii for a Fresh Start

wellness break orchids

What better place to take a wellness break than Hawaii? Am I right? For ten years now, The Big Island of Hawaii has been my second home. I escape the bitter cold in Toronto every winter for a chance to bask in the sun, be near the ocean, and live even simpler than I do while in Canada.

Hawaii has two sides; the resort life and the local life. While I’m here, I live the local life. I stay with family in what could be called a rural community. It’s almost the equivalent of the small town I live in near Toronto, Canada. Except maybe a little rougher around the edges. 

We live as sustainably as possible. We use rainwater, limit our electricity use, and eat simple, healthy meals with real whole foods. 

It’s heaven to me and the perfect place for a wellness break.

What does a wellness break look like?

Well, anything. It can be a few days, a few weeks, or years if that’s your thing (sabbatical would be more the word for taking years off). For this wellness break, I’m taking 17 days on the Big Island of Hawaii. A wellness break can either be guided or self-guided and allows you to step away from your daily life. 

Wellness breaks can be anything really. It can involve cleanses, detoxes or allow you time for deep inner work. The type of inner work where you do a lot of thinking on what you want your life to look like, or maybe deep work on a personal or professional project. 

There are so many distractions in our everyday lives; it’s nice to be able to step back from the usual emails, texts, social media mania (scrolling?), and any other busyness you’ve allowed into your life.

A wellness break should be rejuvenating and restorative. It should light you up and leave you feeling refreshed. However you choose to recharge is entirely up to you. 

Why am I doing a wellness break?

If you’ve ever been burnt out, exhausted, depressed, addicted to coffee to keep you awake, and eating all the bad foods, you’d know that a reset or break from the normal routine is just what the body and mind needs. 

Last November, I started a wellness challenge. While it’s been going well, I needed a change of scenery as a final piece of the puzzle to get back to my best self. It’s always hard making significant changes in life. When I divorced — I transformed my life — I lost 30 pounds, improved my diet, eliminated bad habits and created healthier mindsets. It was a lot of physical and mental work — the deep stuff.

Losing a job puts you through a lot of the same emotions as divorce does. This, of course, means that bad habits come creeping back in; I gained weight, am dealing with depression, and my well-being took a back burner to my need for comfort.

I think that every once in a while, we reach our limit. We can only give so much of ourselves before it’s time to take a step back. We have to give ourselves space to be in our lives, find our true selves again, and dream. When we forget to dream, we lose our curiosity for life, and our creativity dries up.

I have some big projects this year that are going to require a lot of energy and focus. And that means stepping back to recharge so I can continue to offer healing, inspiration and all my creative energy. I have to recharge myself so that I can continue to give to others. 

wellness break orchids Michelle

What I’ll be doing on my wellness break

1. Being outside.

I thrive in nature. Being outside gives me time to ground myself and reconnect with my intuition. Nature walks, swimming in the ocean and listening to the birds bring me overall peace, calm and happiness. 

I love everything this beautiful world has to offer. It’s time for a healthy dose of mindfulness and to enjoy birds singing, gentle tropical rain, and sitting in stillness with it all. And the stars! I’m always amazed by the night sky here and all the stars I can see compared to the mainland. I could stare at the night sky for hours.

2. Wellbeing.

I’ll be taking time to look inward and unearth some of my limiting beliefs that are still lingering, attending to my health, my body and my mind. I’ll be devoting time to improving my yoga practice, doing some breath work, and maybe taking a few naps. 😉

I may even do some gardening! Does anyone else find pulling weeds therapeutic? 😀

3. Deep work, journaling and asking big questions, instead of endlessly scrolling or busying myself with thoughtless tasks.

This looks like a digital detox for me. I’ve spent too much time scrolling and comparing, reading other blogs and comparing, and then more scrolling and comparing. When you get locked into a negative routine like that, you have to take the culprit out of the equation. 

At the same time, you have to look deeply inward to understand exactly why you’ve developed these types of habits and mindsets. I find that journaling my thoughts and feelings daily in the form of Morning Pages, helps me to unearth exactly what’s going on deep down. 

Some of the big questions I need to answer are:

  • Where do I see myself at the end of 2019?
  • How do I want to feel this year?
  • What will help me align life?
  • How can I embrace my 2019 intentions fully?
  • Where is there resistance in my life and how can I work through it?

Want to take your own wellness break?

You can design your own!

No rule book says you have to pay thousands to go on a yoga or detox retreat. You can easily create one on your own. 

A wellness break doesn’t have to be luxurious or fancy to be restorative and calming. And there’s certainly no need to travel halfway across the world for a break like I did. You can take one in your home or close to home if that suits you best.

Here are a few ideas that I use to design my own wellness break:

  1. Be intentional about what you want from your wellness break. Are you looking to improve your diet or maybe create some new mindsets? Take some time to be deeply intentional about exactly what you want from your break.
  2. Create a vision for what you want to do, feel and experience. What activities help you to recharge? What’s restorative to your body and mind?
  3. Set a date and follow through. We all tend to push off self-care and recharging our batteries. Be sure to set a date, put it in your calendar, and follow through. Don’t let your own fears talk you out of a much-deserved wellness break.

When you’ll see me next…

I’ll be staying away from the blog for the next two weeks. My regular Monday posts will resume on February 18th. In the meantime, you can browse the wellness and personal growth archives to keep you going. And I’ll pop into Instagram every once in a while.

Finally, I’ll be sending quick updates each week, packed with little inspirations and simple living tips. If you’re not on the list, subscribe below!

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Comments +

  1. Jean says:

    Sounds lovely! My idea of the perfect vacation is what could be called a wellness break. Must include massages and pool time! When I need a mini wellness break, going for a massage or facial, going out for afternoon tea, or spending hours in a library or bookstore do the trick. I never need a detox or cleanse as I never stray from my healthy way of eating. I eat only between the hours of 10am and 6pm, eat organic whole foods primarily, and never have more than 6 teaspoons of sugar in a day (never, ever, for any reason, no matter the occasion). Sugar is the only thing I count. I don’t count calories, carbs or fat grams or anything. (And, yes, pulling weeds is very therapeutic!)

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