Blue Zone your life
As an integrative health coach, I know all too well how the small and very simple changes to our lives, can have the biggest impact on how we feel. Many of my clients come to me in sympathetic arousal, (fight or flight) convinced that they need some elitist silent retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas for a month, drinking only from crystal infused waters and sleeping in sheets woven by elves to fix them. Ok, I went a bit far with the elves, but you understand. Consumerism will sell us the lie that in order to fix something that feels big in our lives, like high stress levels, poor sleep and stolen focus, we have to make a gesture that’s as big as the problem itself to change it. Yes, good habits take at least six months to form and take shape in our subconscious, but the irony is, the smallest shifts can have the biggest, boldest, life altering impact on the way that we feel both physically and emotionally, and that includes the clothes we choose to wear to go about our days in.
We know all too well by now that life doesn’t really care if we don’t want to take the scenic route to our dreams or desired destination, it has a way of steering us off track, sometimes the parameters will move so much, we’ll have no choice but to surrender and move with them. Attachment to a different outcome will only leave us with a big old expectation hangover. Take the Pandemic as an example, resistance would only make any problem feel bigger, we had no choice but to surrender.
An exercise I use with clients a lot is to help them look to the world’s Blue Zones, the places on the planet home to the oldest, and healthiest people in the world. Ironically, these aren’t locations where you’d find people slamming it in the gym doing high intensity work outs or running marathons along the beach at breakneck speed, followed by a green juice and a bikini clad selfie. They’re the places that emphasise family and community, home cooking as opposed to fancy restaurants, meditation, naps, time to reflect and re-charge, making time for connection, laughter and exercise that they enjoy as opposed to punishment on their bodies. They embrace joy in life’s simplicities, time in nature, slowing down, active communication. They simplify to amplify.
This ethos is pumped through the veins of Cape Cove, making it a brand I live by, and live in! Clothes don’t just speak about you to other people, they also speak to you too, which is why the threads I throw on each day are so important to me. It’s been proven that the colour, style, fit and comfort of our clothes has a direct impact on our emotional state and confidence levels. I love my choices to reflect a life inspired by Blue Zones. A life that integrates embracing the elements, time in nature, whilst still looking relatively presentable for meetings, time with loved ones, sharing meals together and my Yoga practice. Finding feminine apparel that would fit this brief has never been easy until now. I would find myself in oversized sweatshirts and coats more suited to men for anything relatively outdoorsy, then frantically changing into something more whimsical and feminine for a meeting, and then throwing on some leggings to teach clients. Finding clothes that I’d feel good in, that were made sustainably and would last would be a challenge in and of itself. Cape Cove’s designs are translatable, durable and downright beautiful. I’ve never felt more like me in them, and the frantic outfit changes to embrace my ‘Blue Zone’ mentality, and albeit slightly hybrid lifestyle is now a thing of the past.
Genetics only apply to 20% of longevity, so there’s no excuse not to embrace the habits of Blue Zoners right now, and know that your wardrobe isn’t frivolous, it can hold a myriad of channels to heightened lifestyle benefits, that’s where Cape Cove has saved me.
By: Rosie Underwood