My husband and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary this year, and I am happy to say I would do it all over again. I would choose him over and over again through the ups and downs, the growth, celebrations, and pains.
We just got back from a wonderful trip to Aruba. We were without kids, and we really re-connected. Through our day-to-day life together, we didn’t even know we needed that re-connection. Life happens, and we move through it. What happened on our trip is that we could slow down and really SEE each other again.
In his element (scuba diving together for the first time in 20 years!), with who I married, I can say I fell in love with my husband all over again. Don’t misunderstand. I hadn’t fallen out of love. Our relationship was good. But now I feel a deeper love for him, as he does for me. Sometimes we need to remove ourselves from the day-to-day to really and truly see each other.
3 tips to keep your husband healthy
Today I am writing to share three tips to keep your husband healthy. If you love yours as much as I love mine, you probably want to keep him with you as long as you can. I don’t know about you, but for the next 20-plus years with my husband, I want him to thrive, not just survive.
Oh, to just pick three things… however, the three I think are most important are mind, body, and spirit. A common statement, but truly important.
1. A healthy mind
It’s important to surround yourself with positivity. We have had people around us that we have fired as friends. Don’t ignore the situations around you, and acknowledge when things get tough. And when they do, just spend some time sitting there with the hard stuff — these, too, shall pass.
We are a solution-based family. Call it optimism or whatever you like, but I believe there are gifts in every one of life’s situations, even the hard ones. Not all gifts are wrapped in pretty little bows, I like to say. It keeps us moving up and forward in our lives and not stuck in negative cycles.
Do you know how to change your life? Change. Your. Life. Simple. My husband supports himself by listening to podcasts on mental and physical health, nutrition, and sleep health (he has struggled with sleep most of his life). We know the importance of sleep as that is the time our body repairs. If we don’t sleep, the aging process speeds up. He has chosen to listen to meditation music or guidance specific to sleep, to turn off his electronics 1-2 hrs before bedtime, and he knows specific foods and the times he eats that decrease his chance of getting a restful sleep.
The more he practices, the better it gets. I say practice because life happens, and he is human, so sometimes he falls off his routine. I always see him get back on, though. That says something about his mindset and also his dedication to his well-being. You see, even if I wanted him to thrive and be healthy unless he was a willing participant, it would not happen — end of story. Being proactive is a huge piece.
2. A healthy body
The body is important. We need to move our bodies for health. My husband has built a beautiful gym in our house in a space downstairs. Our kids and I use it as well. It is a family commitment. My husband travels for work, so he has created a travel workout program and an at-home workout program. Weights, high reps, and lower weight are what he feels work for his age (he’s 50), and his body is enjoying it.
The thing is, I found a secret/not-so-secret weapon for us. We have used it for the last three years and are now more excited about our future potential. I hear the regular “I hate getting older. I’m sore. I don’t sleep as well. But what can you do? I’m just getting older.” Remember how I said we are solution-based?
Both my husband and I were on high-end nutraceuticals to prevent the damage of aging (inflammation, degeneration, etc.), so we thought, we’ve got this. We truly believe that given the right tools, our body can do what it is born to do — heal itself. As an animal bodyworker, I have seen the amazing things the body can do.
When we started going to bed achy or feeling like a nap was needed in the late afternoon, I began to resist this. I thought, “No way, I am not signing up for this. There has got to be more out there for us to live optimally.”
Three years ago, I found it through the avenue of my horse. She severely, and when I say severely, I mean life-and-death-and-quality-of-life, severely injured her leg.
I found a wearable stem cell technology that taps into the body’s potential to activate its own stem cells to repair at the level it did when we were in our twenties. This was one of those gifts not wrapped in a pretty little bow, but what a gift it was!
Now this is not magical (it kind of is), nor do you just sit on the couch and expect amazing things. However, the results are there when you feed and move your body and use this technology. My husband’s aches have gone, his repair from exercise has increased and takes a shorter amount of time, and his energy and sleep have improved substantially. This is unlike people his age. We now age younger and love it.
What does that translate to? He spends more time with our children, whether dirt biking or board games, and less time napping on the couch. We have acreage, which is a job in itself, so after a day of tending to that, we still have the energy to go paddleboarding on our little lake by our house or go for a date night in town — and we aren’t just sitting on the couch because we are spent. This technology is waking up our bodies and activating what we have inside. Our potential for the next 20-plus years together has genuinely shifted to much more possibility.
3. A healthy spirit
Now there has to be a spiritual component to health, as well. We hear many different ways people bring in spirituality. However, spirituality for someone has to be right for them, and it’s deeply personal, as long as someone believes there is something bigger than them that has their back. We need someone or something to lean on when life gets too hard to bear on our own—a god of our understanding.
Some may agree, and some may disagree, but having a sense of gratitude in our lives allows us to send more love into the world. What part of this world doesn’t need love right now or at anytime?
I sometimes watch my husband forget he is taken care of (it is also a practice to remember this). I watch him bear the weight of such stress on his shoulders, and this is where I witness him feeling alone. He gets quiet, isolates, and makes poor food choices, numbing with social media, etc. And what happens? His sleep gets worse. Remember, we are human, and this whole life is a practice.
But when he shifts from that into the gratitude of what he has been given, remembering it is all taken care of, it doesn’t need to be entirely in his hands, and so far, we are sitting at 100% in what we have survived, that’s when the lightness comes back. He’s open to going with the flow, and the desire to move his body and care for himself returns.
Conclusion
I get to witness all of this and be a part of it. We have a wonderful partnership with its many ups and downs. It’s a give and take — 80/20, 60/40, sometimes 90/10 — and it switches with every situation in our path. I cannot want my husband’s health more than he does, but I can share what works for him, how we work together, and how we support each other in wellness. I can share what works for us and what has shifted our future potential of aging together into something we never thought possible until now.
For a one-to-one consult, please reach out to me. I would be happy to chat.
written by Tina Colter
About Tina
Tina Colter, with over two decades of experience in treating horses and other animals, is a renowned certified equine therapist specializing in spinal alignment and acupressure massage. Throughout British Columbia, she travels extensively, dedicating her expertise to working closely with horses.
Since obtaining her equine therapy certification in 2003, Tina’s practice has evolved to encompass a broader range of animals, including dogs and other four-legged companions. Committed to continuous growth, she collaborates with fellow specialists to expand her knowledge and provide enhanced support to her clients and their beloved animals.
Tina’s utmost priority is ensuring that owners have a clear understanding of her treatment approach, allowing them to comprehend the process and feel at ease throughout the therapy sessions. Her compassionate and communicative nature fosters a sense of comfort and trust among her clients.
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