Evening Wellness Routine

Contributor: Cristin Smith
Photographer: Taylor Balding

Maintaining a wellness routine is an ultimate testament to self-care and self-love. It requires diligence and patience, but the outcomes are nothing but beneficial to both body and mind. A good wellness routine will ensure that you relax, calm your mind, support your body, and prepare yourself for essential rest for a better tomorrow. 

Your wellness routine can be a combination of wholesome eating or drinking, soothing movement or an activity that you truly enjoy. Here’s a peek into my evening wellness routine, and it is one that you can follow as well. 

Movement

My wellness routine is a multi-step process that prepares my body for rest and rejuvenation. Most evenings I transition with movement, specifically yoga. As well as being good for the muscles and circulatory system, an evening hatha routine can also calm the body and ease the mind for restful sleep. If you do not have the time, or are too restless for a full yoga sequence, incorporating some deep twists and breathing can help power you down in a way no sleeping pill can. 

Herbal Tea

When I come back from yoga I start preparing my herbal tea. Sipping herbal tea is a wonderful way to end your day as well. It will calm the body, and get you into the mindset of relaxing and transitioning from being active. Traditional Medicinals, the tea company I use offers many different types of medicinal teas with a sustainable business model to boot. 

Coffee Enema

Coffee enemas can also be incorporated into your evening wellness routine. The practice of enemas encourages a cleansing of the digestive tract, ensuring successful digestion and bowl movements. Along with this, enemas can help the body feel more comfortable and regular and reduce bloat. A coffee enema specifically helps relieve constipation and increases antioxidant activity in the body, along with increasing energy levels and helping your body feel like it can run at its full capacity. Coffee enemas are also wonderful for the liver. Your liver is your body’s natural detoxifier, and a regular coffee enema can help the body to release the toxins that build up with day to day functioning. Some of the results associated with detoxifying the liver include clearer skin, better concentration, and a faster metabolism. Giving your liver a little boost of its natural power encourages your body to run better and establish a healthy equilibrium. 

Castor Oil Packs

A wonderful complement to coffee enemas are castor oil packs. While castor oil ingestion is encouraged by many for things like detoxification and to induce labor, it also has other beneficial qualities that you can take advantage of every day. An alternative to ingesting castor oil is the external use through topical application. Laying a castor oil pack and a hot pack on top of specific parts of the body for 45 to 60 minutes can help detox the body, improve circulation, and help mend equilibrium in the body. I use castor oil packs on my abdomen to support my gut and on my neck to support my thyroid. 

Reading

It’s during this time that I get in a little reading. This is all about pleasure reading – I save all work-related reading for daytime hours. Reading not only helps relieve insomnia symptoms by slowing down your racing thoughts related to your own life. Make sure you’re reading from a real book though; the light from an e-reader can keep you up and disrupt your sleep cycle. 

It’s easy to just let our work hours bleed into the evening, utilizing technology to extend our daylight hours to get more done, but when we begin to adjust our daily routine to that of the seasons and what is naturally occurring around us we find our awake state to be much more productive and our lives much more balanced. Take time this Autumn to create your own evening wellness routine. Try some of the practices I use and see if they are beneficial to you.