Taking a year to recharge
As many of you know, I am currently taking a sabbatical year away from my practice in Vancouver, BC. Why? For so many reasons, but first and foremost is to practice what I teach patients everyday – self care.
We can get so busy in the day to day grind of city living, and for the past three years, I’ve encouraged each of my patients to create more time for themselves. To have them start taking care of themselves before taking care of others. Well time has come for me to do the same. I don’t typically recommend my patients take a year off from their jobs, I usually start with having them take 5-10 minutes (or more) of their day to do something they love.
By giving myself a year to travel, recharge and spend more time in nature I know it will allow me to better serve my patients. When working the typical office week, I have very little time for creativity and program development.
I have some pretty big dreams on how to better help people lead more fulfilled lives, and I need to create the time and space for this to happen outside the normal work life. Outside of my personal goals, one of my goals is to create a program for my patients to offer them more support while creating the big lifestyle changes necessary to get their health back on track. Most patients see me on average once a month, and most of the time a lot more support is needed in between visits to keep them motivated and inspired. I would also say that there are some universal health habits (diet, sleep, exercise) that could benefit each and every one of my patients, no matter what their individual health needs are. If they can get onboard with optimizing these on their own with the support of a health program, I can spend more time with them in person focused on their individual health needs.
So with these big dreams in mind, I’m hitting the pause button to experiment on myself on all the ways we can improve our lifestyle to better serve our dreams and goals! Time so start further researching and experimenting with the best ways to create sustainable lifestyle habits that help us with our health and happiness.
Best in Health,
Dr. Kaleigh