Words of Wellness with Shelly
Do you get confused by all of the information that is available regarding ways to improve your health and wellness? Do you often become frustrated or overwhelmed with decisions on how to be your healthiest? We all know and understand how important our health and wellness is to the vitality of our lives, however navigating the wealth of health and wellness information available can often feel overwhelming. Understanding the significance of our well-being in leading fulfilling lives is crucial, yet determining what steps to take that are essential for our health can often be confusing.
Welcome everyone to "Words of Wellness"! In this podcast, hosted by Shelly Jefferis, M.A., a seasoned health and wellness professional with over 35 years in the industry, all of your questions will be answered and clarity will be provided through personal stories, education, tips and inspiration. Throughout her profession, Shelly has always had the heart and desire to help others feel their best and live their best lives through her supportive and compassionate approach. Through engaging solo and guest episodes, several topics will be addressed, questions will be answered and clarity will be provided in an effort to lead you to a healthier, more energetic life. With a master’s degree in kinesiology, extensive experience as an educator, speaker, coach, and entrepreneur, Shelly brings a wealth of knowledge and a genuine passion for empowering others to feel their best. By featuring industry experts and relatable individuals, the podcast promises personal stories, practical advice, and inspiration. She is excited to come to you weekly sharing all she has experienced, learned and discovered through the years. Whether you're seeking to elevate your well-being, gain practical insights for personal health, or simply be inspired to live a high quality vibrant life, this is the podcast is for YOU! Be sure to tune in weekly and join us along our "Words of Wellness" journey and embark on a path toward a healthier and more fulfilling quality of life full of happiness, energy and joy!
Words of Wellness with Shelly
Shelly's Shares: Practical Sleep Habits For Energy And Longevity - Part Two of a 4-Part Series
Want more energy tomorrow and healthier years ahead? Start with the habit that powers everything else: sleep. Shelly guides us through a clear, compassionate roadmap for better rest—one that respects real life while delivering real results. We connect sleep to longevity, mood, focus, and cellular repair, then map simple steps you can apply tonight without overhauling your entire routine.
Shelly breaks down what a calming evening looks like: dimming lights to cue melatonin, moving your last meal earlier to support digestion, and choosing a personal wind-down ritual like reading, a warm bath, or gentle stretching. You’ll learn why consistent bed and wake times strengthen your circadian rhythm and how a few minutes of morning sunlight can reset your internal clock, improve alertness, and make falling asleep easier the next night.
Life doesn’t pause for perfect sleep. Shelly addresses common barriers that many of us may experience: young kids, stress, peri- and post-menopause and she shares when you might need to seek medical support for issues like sleep apnea and how to start small and habit stack over time. By choosing one change and repeating it daily, you build a routine that supports energy, clarity, and long-term health.
If this resonates, share the episode with a friend who could use better sleep, subscribe for the next part in the longevity series, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find us. Then tell us: which single habit will you try tonight?
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A few of Shelly's favorite clean products:
High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix
Clean-crafted wine, free from chemicals & pesticides:
https://scoutandcellar.com/?u=healthyhappyhours
Cayla Gray- Non-toxic cologne & perfume: https://caylagray.com/wellnesswithshellyj (10% discount)
JuJu Non-toxic candles & air fresheners:
https://goodjujucandles.com/?ref=mrtgnygh
Coupon code for 10% off: ShellyJefferis
Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.
Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
In Health,
Shelly
My goal is to give you all just some simple steps that you can take and apply to your own life immediately that will help you. And so this is part two of our four-part series, and I am talking today about sleep. Do you get confused by all of the information that bombards us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or shouldn't be eating? How to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone. I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journey so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. And we are sharing the different areas of longevity. And this is a topic that I've actually been sharing about for quite some time, but I haven't always made the specific reference to longevity, the term. And I'm definitely doing that now because it's very important to make the association with what we are doing, how we are living our lives, and what we are doing to prepare ourselves for future years to live our best lives, feeling our best, being our healthiest, and having a quality of life that's full of vitality. So, you know, living into what could be 80s, 90s, even a 100. And how amazing would that be if we're feeling good? And that's the whole point behind sharing about longevity, behind educating you all about longevity. And I want to share something real quickly. I don't know that many people, and as a matter of fact, I might just know one who is in their hundreds. And there is a gentleman that I know and I met years ago because of my dad being a musician, and my dad performed in Ray Anthony's band many years ago, and he just turned 104 years old. So I think it's pretty amazing. Like it's exciting for me to say, oh my gosh, I know someone who is not only in their 100s, but he's 104. And it's really, really amazing. So I wanted to kind of just share that because I think that that's exciting. I know that that obviously is not the norm. However, the point being, what can we do today to live our best lives today and into the future? And who knows where that will take us? If we are taking care of ourselves, if we are taking the proper steps that we should be taking, I don't like to use the word should, but the you know, action steps, I guess I could say, to lead us into a life of vitality and longevity. Uh, it sounds great to me, and that's what I strive for every day. And I hope to encourage you all to do the same. So last week I spoke about movement and exercise. And I'm going to keep these episodes brief and I'm going to keep the information brief because I think that when we do that and when I can share that with you, it's not quite as overwhelming. And when you can have little like nuggets to take away with and just small pieces of information to apply to your everyday life, it makes it doable, it makes it more simple. And with that, it makes it so we're going to actually take the action and take the steps. Because if we hear about something that's too complicated is going to take a lot of time, chances are we might not do that thing that's going to help us, right? So my goal is to give you all just some simple steps that you can take and apply to your own life immediately that will help you. And so this is part two of our four-part series, and I am talking today about sleep. And I have spoken on this topic numerous times. And like I said, I'm going to keep this brief. Sleep is critical to so many different functions of our lives. You know, I can just speak from experience, and I'm sure there's many of you out there who can relate that when you don't get the proper sleep or you don't have a good night's sleep, it affects how we feel physically, it affects our emotions, it affects our brain, it affects how we are mentally. I mean, there's so many things that are related to our sleep or lack of sleep. And so I want to share that it's so critical to start to take steps, if you aren't yet, start to take some simple steps to help you with your sleep routine. Now, there's going to be other factors. There's going to be, if you have young children, you know, your sleep is definitely interrupted. If you perhaps are going through, for my moms or women out there, if you're going through menopause or pre-menopause or even post-menopause, there can be some disruption in your sleep because of that. So there are different things that we can do to help alleviate some of these challenges. If we have children, no, we just we will go through those years. I promise, if you're in that stage, you will get through. I promise. But for the average person, some things that we can do to help our sleep routine. First of all, start to prepare for sleep. What does that mean? Well, it could be different for all of us, but things like starting to turn down the lights, kind of dim the lights. Maybe taking a bath is helpful for you. Maybe it's reading. I think I've shared this before, but my husband will come upstairs and he has a routine where he'll come upstairs and read for a good 30 minutes to an hour before he goes to sleep. Anything that's going to help you relax to prepare for sleep. And again, we want to start this process, not like five minutes before we're climbing into bed, right? We want to start this process an hour, two hours, even three hours, limiting our screen time, limiting, you know, a heavy meal at night. If we can eat our meal, our last meal of the day, you know, not too late and not too close to bedtime, that's that's a big deal. We want to be able to have our our last meal of the day, be able to digest the food as best that we can before we go to sleep. I don't know about all of you, but when you go to you know when you try and go to sleep with a with a full stomach, it just doesn't go well and it's very disruptive. And it's it's not going to lend itself to a deep, solid sleep that we all need. So start the routine and the process an hour to three hours before you're actually getting into bed. And the other thing is to get in the habit, and again, nothing is ever perfect. I want to make sure I always will say it's never a perfect scenario all of the time. But for the majority of the time, if you can get in the habit of going to sleep and waking up at the same time, that's going to really serve our circadian rhythms, and it's going to also again help with our sleep pattern and the quality of our sleep. So getting in that routine, going to bed around the same time each night, waking up around the same time is going to be very, very beneficial. And when you wake up in the morning, I know a benefit that's really, really important and can be so wonderful for our health. First thing to go outside and get a little bit of sunlight, the first sunlight of the day. That also works within our circadian rhythm and can be so beneficial. And it's such a great way to start the day. And depending on what time you walk outside, it can be so peaceful, also. It can be very quiet and really, really peaceful. And that's to me personally, I always love to start the day out that way. So this is really important. I hope that some of this helps you. Again, just some really basic tips that you can start to apply to your life right away if you're not yet doing so. Because again, when we sleep, it helps to regenerate all of our cells. We need to give our body that rest. We need to give our brain that rest. And if we learn about this and do some a little bit of research, lack of sleep, especially when it's something that goes on for a long period of time, can lend itself to a lot of different illnesses and can cause us to be more prone to getting certain chronic diseases. And I'm not saying that the lack of sleep causes those diseases, but the lack of sleep can certainly contribute to those diseases and different illnesses. So it's so critical. And I can just, I guess, again, speak from personal experience that I know for me personally, I get excited in the morning nowadays. I don't know how many of you out there can relate, but when I wake up in the morning and I realize I haven't had to get up in the night to use the restroom, I'm so excited. It's almost like back in the days with our little ones when they our babies would sleep through the night. It was like, oh, it's like cause for celebration. And I get like that in the mornings and I don't realize it until I get up and I look at the clock and I realize I didn't have to get up in the night. Because I know many of us, I'm sure you can relate to this as well, that once you wake up to go use the restroom and then your mind starts thinking about things, sometimes it makes it really challenging to go back to sleep. And sometimes for me personally, it's not sometimes it can be something that's on our mind and maybe has us a little bit stressed. But other times I'm just thinking about things and I'm kind of like getting excited. I have ideas that come to me sometimes in the middle of the night. And so I have to just remind myself, okay, rest. You need to rest your mind, you need to go back to sleep. So the deep sleep that we need does not always happen. And I completely understand that. But if you can start taking some of these simple steps to help your sleep routine, then it will really help lead you into getting the proper night's sleep that your body and your brain, your mind, your everything you need as a person. You need your sleep. You need your sleep. And if you are a person that struggles with sleep, I hope that you are not feeling discouraged by what I'm sharing. I'm not trying to minimize and make it seem like, oh, it's easy to get plenty of sleep. I'm not trying to do that. What I am trying to do is just offer some simple solutions that most of us can apply and benefit from. Now, if you are experiencing like let's say sleep apnea, for example, that's a whole different scenario. And, you know, we all have different things that affect us and affect us physically and emotionally and mentally, and as a result, affect our sleep. Um, stress is another one, and we're going to be talking about that more and more. But I just wanted to hop on and just share some simple solutions that you can apply today that you can get in the habit of doing once you, you know, maybe just do a couple things. Maybe it's just, I don't know, drinking a hot cup of tea before bed, taking that bath for before bed. Just pick one thing that you find relaxing that you think could help you with your sleep. Just pick that one thing and start doing that. And once that becomes more of a routine and habit, then you can add something else. Um, limiting your screen time, you know, start to think about doing that. So, again, I want to just again keep it simple and I want to remind everyone, and anything and everything that I share, and also anything in your day-to-day life when it comes to your wellness and your longevity and all of the things we do to be our best selves and be our healthiest, take one step at a time. The small steps add up over time. And it's when you can just take a couple things, put those into action, get in the habit of those things, then you can start to habit stack and do other things along with it. And then before you know it, you have made progress. You're gonna a few weeks down the road go, oh my gosh, I'm just sleeping amazing. I'm just kidding. Amazing, maybe it will that will happen. That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? And maybe there's some of you that out there that have no problem sleeping, which is fantastic. But again, it is important for our overall health, wellness, longevity. So I encourage you just to take some simple steps. Think about what you find relaxing, what could help you prepare yourself for sleep and start to implement those things. And I would love to know how things go. Always feel free to reach out to me at Wellness with Shelley J or at Moms Who Flourish, both on Instagram. And in addition to that, for any of you who would like to work with me a little bit more in depth when it comes to your overall wellness and longevity, please reach out to me and let's see if I can support you in any way. And also for our moms who flourish, our mentorship is going to be happening, and that will be a container of just a small group of us moms, and we will meet meet weekly for 12 weeks, and we will cover all of these areas more in depth. We will go over all areas of wellness, longevity, along with our different phases of motherhood that we experience. It'll be a safe container supporting everyone through this journey, and I'm just excited to see who I get to serve in the coming weeks and months. So, again, reach out to me with questions and let's see how I can serve you all. And in the meantime, keep me posted. Let me know how your sleep is. Let me know if you apply some of these principles. And in the meantime, take time for yourself and your overall wellness and have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week, everyone. And again, this is part two of our four-part series on longevity. Part three will be coming to you next week. Have a wonderful week, everyone. See you soon. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed week.