Holistic, Intentional Living.

My journey into holistic living didn't really begin with wellness.

It began with wanting to discover this life, this planet and what felt true for myself.

I was born in Nepal, where so much of everyday life was naturally connected to the land. Rice came from our fields. Bananas came from our trees. Vegetables made their way into meals cooked from whole ingredients. Garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, onions, herbs and spices weren't things we thought of as “wellness.” They were simply part of how we ate and lived.

My grandmother had a little shop at the bottom of her home, something common where we lived. Food, family, community and everyday life seemed to exist together.

Then life took me very far from that.

My childhood moved between Nepal and Los Angeles before my family eventually immigrated to Canada when I was seven. I even flew internationally alone as a very young child, which I sometimes think may have been the beginning of my relationship with travel and this curiosity to see the world for myself.

Canada became home, but I grew up in the city, surrounded by buildings and concrete, with most of the green around me limited to parks.

At 20, I moved again, this time to the United States.

It wasn't until living in North Carolina that I started realizing how much I had missed being surrounded by nature. There was something about the trees, land and green space that felt familiar. Like a part of me had been missing it without realizing it.

Meanwhile, I had entered corporate life, and my mom was finding her own way back to the land.

It Started With Honey

After moving to Minnesota, my mom wanted real honey.

Honey was something we knew from Nepal, not simply as something sweet, but as an ingredient that had always been valued in our food and traditional home remedies.

So naturally, my mom didn't just buy honey.

She started keeping bees.

Eventually there was honey, land and a farm. Watching her build that life reminded me of where we came from and, in some ways, of her own mother before her.

And slowly, she started pulling me back too.

First it was honey. Then ginger, turmeric, cumin, garlic and herbs. Ingredients and remedies that had once been such simple, everyday parts of our lives began finding their way back into mine.

If I called my mom about something, there was usually an ingredient, food or traditional practice she wanted me to try.

Then that curiosity started extending into other parts of my life, including how I cared for my skin. I started paying more attention to ingredients, oils and what I was putting both in and on my body.

One thing led to another.

And I started realizing that many of the things I was now seeing presented to me as “holistic wellness” weren't entirely new to me.

In some ways, I wasn't discovering them.

I was remembering them.

Coming Back to the Whole

At the same time, I was traveling, taking photographs and becoming increasingly curious about how people around the world lived, ate, healed, gathered and cared for themselves.

Travel made me question things.

My culture made me question things.

My mom definitely made me question things.

And the more I learned, the more interested I became in holistic healing and Ayurveda, a system of living and healing with roots in the same part of the world I came from.

The word holistic matters to me because it looks at the whole.

Mind. Body. Soul.

Our food, our environment, our relationships, our communities and the way we spend our days are all part of the life we're creating.

Healing, to me, isn't only about what we do when something is wrong.

It's also about how we live every day.

What Intentional Living Means to Me

Intentional living means becoming conscious of the life I'm actually living.

Where does my food come from? What am I putting into my body and onto my skin? How much time am I spending outside? Am I moving my body? Who am I surrounding myself with? What am I consuming mentally? And where am I giving my energy?

Sometimes it looks incredibly simple.

Cooking a meal with whole ingredients. Using garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin and herbs. Sitting outside long enough to feel the sun. Moving our bodies. Resting when we need rest.

It's gathering around a table and making time for family and community.

It's traveling somewhere and being curious enough to learn from the people who actually live there instead of simply passing through.

It's reconnecting with nature while also reconnecting with ourselves.

That doesn't mean rejecting modern life or believing everything old is automatically better.

We still live in the society we're in.

For me, the journey is learning how to live within this world without becoming completely disconnected from our minds, bodies, souls, communities, roots and the earth beneath us.

The more I explore, the more I realize that so much of this journey isn't about discovering something new.

It's about coming back to what we already knew.

I'm still learning, experimenting and reconnecting too.

And that's the point.

To reconnect with our minds, bodies and souls.

To reconnect with each other.

To reconnect with the earth.

And maybe, along the way, come back to a few things we already knew.