What If The Hokey Pokey Is What It’s All About?
One advantage to spending so much time at home during the pandemic is that I have reconnected with my love for playing the guitar. I enjoy playing a wide range of music, but children's music is one genre that has remained a constant ever since I began playing guitar in high school. The experience of playing and singing with a group of kids makes it special, and the song that is always the favorite is one we all know and love—the Hokey Pokey.
What makes the Hokey Pokey special is that it's not just something to sing; it is also something we do. We do the Hokey Pokey by first putting our right foot in, then our left foot, and then building to the last verse where we put our whole selves in.
This is the first edition of the Wellness Compass column, a column that will be grounded in our Wellness Compass Model for Well-Being. This model focuses on "whole-person" wellness which includes eight interconnected areas of wellness: Handling Emotions, Healthy Relationships, Spirituality, Rest & Play, Organization, Vocation (Work/School/Service), Stress Resilience, and Care for the Body. In other words, when it comes to wellness, we invite people to "put their whole selves in."
We are also launching a new companion podcast to this column which shares the same name-- the Wellness Compass, to provide an opportunity for additional exploration of each week's topic. On this week's podcast, I play a bit of the Hokey Pokey on my guitar and then use my guitar to illustrate the concept of whole-person wellness. I do this by intentionally making one of the strings on my guitar out of tune. I then play the song with just this one string out of tune, and it is nails-on-a-chalkboard painful to listen to. It's a great way to demonstrate that when one aspect of our well-being is out of tune, it affects the whole of who we are.
Anyone who plays a string instrument knows that they regularly get out of tune, another good metaphor for our lives, which also get out of tune from time to time. Getting out of tune is not a problem in and of itself unless we are not able (or willing) to hear or acknowledge when that happens. This column, along with all of our Wellness Compass resources, can help us hear when our lives are a bit off-key and support us in making the steps we need to re-tune. I have to re-tune my guitar regularly; I find that to be true for my overall well-being as well.
And what's the goal of having an instrument or a life that is in tune? The goal, of course, is to make beautiful music and share that music with others--to sing, to dance, to laugh, to love, to forgive, to heal, and maybe even to do the Hokey Pokey.
I saw a bumper sticker recently that read, "What if the Hokey Pokey is what's all about?" Well, as much as I like having fun with the song, I'm pretty sure it's not what it's all about. But I am pretty sure of this: putting our whole selves in as we continue to tune and re-tune our lives is what it's all about.
So thanks for singing along. Wellness is best experienced in community, so we hope you will visit and like our new Facebook page. You can find it HERE. We welcome your comments and ideas for future topics there. You can also share responses there to the "Making It Personal" questions below.
Making It Personal Questions: (Each week, we will include a few questions to prompt self-reflection. We share them for you to journal perhaps or discuss or reflect upon as you think about how the topic for each week applies personally to your life).
How do you know if or when your well-being is "out of tune?"
Do you have any regular practices that help you keep yourself "in tune?"
Reflect on a recent time when you felt like you put "your whole self in." What can you learn from that experience?