Understanding Wellbeing: What Really Impacts It
The Breath That Wouldn't Go Deeper
I was in Bali, mid-breathwork, when I hit something I couldn't get past.
I couldn't take the full breath. It felt like I was reaching for something that just wasn't there. Like the breath physically couldn't go any deeper, no matter how hard I tried. I also noticed that underneath that, there was a soreness in my hips I hadn't paid much attention to before. It suddenly felt loud and so uncomfortable.
My body was telling me something my mind hadn't caught up to yet: my nervous system had been in fight-or-flight for so long, it had simply become normal. Not a crisis. A baseline. I hadn't noticed it as a problem until my body physically couldn't do something anymore.
That moment cracked something open. Over the days that followed, I had to face things head-on acknowledge what was surfacing instead of moving past it, breathe into it instead of shying away. Needs I'd quietly put to one side. Things I'd never fully processed. It wasn't comfortable but it was honest, in a way I hadn't let myself be in a long time.
Wellbeing isn't a formula
If you'd asked me before that moment what wellbeing meant, I probably would have given you a fairly standard answer: sleep, exercise, balance, the usual list. I understand now that wellbeing isn't a checklist you complete. It's acknowledging whether you're safe enough in your own body to actually feel what's there.
What I've come to believe most strongly since: wellbeing looks different for everyone. There's no single prescription, no one-size-fits-all formula, no five-step plan that works the same way for every person. What impacts your wellbeing is impacted by everything and, in a way, nothing in particular. It's entirely personal.
It took me a long time to learn what I actually need. Light in the morning. Movement. Proximity to nature. These weren't things I read in a book and adopted I learned them by living without them and noticing, slowly, what was missing.
The internal and the external, talking to each other
The breathwork in Bali showed me something internal my nervous system, holding tension I hadn't acknowledged but there was another piece I only understood later, through a completely different experience: relocating from the UK to Denmark.
In my old life, light, movement, and nature weren't things I had to think about. They were just there absorbed into the background of a life I'd built without ever having to name what was holding it up. When I moved, that invisibility disappeared. Suddenly I had to find light in a Danish winter. I had to build new rhythms of movement from scratch. I had to locate nature I'd once taken completely for granted.
None of that felt dramatic on the surface. Small things, really but that's exactly the point sometimes the small things you'd never had to account for before have the most dramatic effect on your wellbeing, precisely because they're unknown. You didn't allocate energy to them in the past, because you never had to. You're experiencing the need for the first time, often without realising that's what's happening.
That's when I understood: wellbeing is the ongoing conversation between the internal and the external. It's not just what's happening in your nervous system, and it's not just what's happening around you it's how the two are speaking to each other, all the time, whether you're listening or not.
What this means, practically
I'm not going to give you a list of five things to fix your wellbeing, because I don't think that's honest. What I'd offer instead is this:
Notice what you've stopped noticing. The things that quietly hold you up. Light, movement, connection, rest are often invisible until something removes them. You don't have to wait for a crisis or a relocation to ask what those things are for you.
Let your body tell you before your mind agrees. Tension, tiredness, restlessness these aren't inconveniences to push past. They're information. This information is often something we make excuses for and it often take a while to acknowledge the reality. How can you start building the connection between mind and body?
Stop reaching for someone else's formula. What grounds me light, movement, nature might mean nothing to you. The work isn't finding the answer. It's finding your answer, and it starts with paying attention.
Wellbeing, for me, isn't found in doing more. It's found in finally listening to what's already asking to be heard.