6 Things That Prove Jane Austen Was the Wellness Guru of Her Time

If you’re a fan of both period dramas and wellness, then the recently published “The Jane Austen Diet” by Bryan Kozlowski will be as illuminating as the sun rising over Elizabeth and Darcy’s first kiss.

And for anyone who has long been a fan of Jane Austen’s books and/or the dozens of beloved film adaptations that have been made of them over the decades, this seeming leap of logic between timeless health advice and a 19th century author shouldn’t be all that surprising.

Though Austen has been more often (some say inaccurately) cast as a romantic novelist, she was actually more of a didactic novelist (read: pop culture critic) —and may very well have been just as influential a wellness guru in Regency England as Gwyneth Paltrow (who plays the titular character in the most famous adaptation of “Emma”) and her GOOP empire are today.

Taking the word diet from the original Latindiaeta, or “way of life,” “The Jane Austen Diet” shows in both literary and scholarly detail how the love and life and fortunes of Austen’s characters rise and fall along with their healthy lifestyles choices (or lack thereof)—and how soundly those wellness tips now resonate with the best and most current science.

Over a virtual high tea one fine, recent Friday afternoon, I chatted with CIA-trained chef turned author Bryan Kozlowski to find out just how he made the connections between Austen’s wealth of wellness advice (in her novels, personal letters, and journals) and the peer-reviewed science we now know holds the keys to lasting, sustainable and “incandescently healthy” lifestyles.

“My gateway drug was the BBC’s ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ but the lingering attachment was Austen’s mysterious, motivational quality that draws all of us in—that kept me going throughout the years, and that’s how the book idea came about,”Kozlowskisaid.

“As a didactic novelist, Austen was like a motivational speaker, she purposefully wove so many lifestyle hints and tips and inspirational clues into her novels. She made a lot of counter-culture points in her novels about how to live better. You can focus on her morality or her values or her advice about love, but she’s also very strongly showing us a healthier alternative to life in general, which is clearly so important to her that it can’t possibly be a fluke.”

后时刻currently-bestselling逢lness books and well-loved volumes of Austen ended up on his bedside table, Kozlowski had the a-ha moment that Austen’s whole-life approach to wellness (using a philosophy of moderation and “sense and sensibility”) was a much more stress-free and more easily maintainable way to achieve a true “picture of health.”

“关键是在整个奥斯丁厕所ks at health: It’s not about one thing, it was truly holistic for her,” Kozlowski says. “It’s all about bringing all pieces of your lifestyle together and the etymology of the word health as ‘whole’. That’s why Austen is such an exquisite gatherer of so many lifestyle strategies that are all equally important, including your mind. For Austen to talk about mental health in ‘Mansfield Park’ was incredibly groundbreaking for her time.”

I’ve spent the last month living solely by the motto WWJD: What Would Jane Do? Much like Kozlowski, who spent a full year and a half researching and comparing all the latest peer-reviewed research studies (but on a far smaller scale), I compared what I read and experienced to the most popular wellness advice and trends of the last few years.

Here are six way Jane Austen was a wellness guru 200 years ahead of her time.

Two things that Austen, ancient Indian medicine, and modern functional philosophies share in common are the importance of getting morning sun and doing some light exercise—like walking your dogs—beforebreakfast in the morning.

Many of Austen’s characters, including Jane Fairfax in “Emma” and Anne in “Persuasion,” insist on their morning walks, and a two-hour gap between waking and eating was the Regency era norm—what we might now call “intermittent fasting.” Gardeners have always known that the sun exposure and air quality first thing in the morning are the most beneficial for plants, and scientists now know that it’s no different for humans—especially as it relates to regulating our hormonal balances.

Taking in the morning light and sounds of nature for the first 20 minutes of your day, whether actually outdoors or by a light-filled window, is also something currently对于一个健康的thyroi规定dby popular functional medicine physicians like Dr. Amy Myers.

Utilizing the Bedtime tool built right into my iPhone, I set my clock to wake me at 7 a.m. each weekday morning with birdsong (which has been shown to boost mood and reduce fatigue) and set it to remind me to go to bed (and turn off all my tech) at 10 p.m. each night—something identically advised to me at a recentAyurvedicworkshop I attended, which tested mydoshaasPitta.

When I wake, I immediately draw the blinds to let all the morning light in (for both me and mysnake plant, Janet) and before I do anything else, I head out to the yard with my dogs and drink a full glass of water while taking in the sunlight and listening to my neighborhood waking up for a few minutes before even thinking about coffee or breakfast.

When it’s time to go to sleep, I make sure the bedroom is completely dark. With only the addition of some CBD oil at bedtime, rising and turning in by the WWJD guidelines means I haven’t slept this well in over a decade. My circadian rhythms are definitely responding, as projected by Kozlowski’s book.

As Kozlowski writes, “The calculation comes easy to Austen characters [that] morning + outdoors = feel good, because they lived in a world that respected a truth most of us have forgotten.” Likewise, it would also have been completely foreign to anyone in Regency England to work late into the night after “the evening closing-in,” or really to try to do anything after dark, or counter to living and resting by nature’s natural rhythms—including only hosting parties during the full moon, when balls celebrated the extended light by dancing well into the night and then carrying guests home in the safety of its glow.

Kozlowski notes that the American Cancer Society now lists working too frequently at night as a suspected and frequent carcinogen—and as I covered in our piece aboutsleeping better during the winter months, a new Chinese study even shows thatsleep deprivation may cause substantial damage to our DNA.

Quiet evenings at home full of conversation and possibly singing or playing piano by the fire have been replaced by binge-watching our favorite shows—and “the average home at night now beams with the equivalent of 400 to 1,000 Regency era candles from our TVs or computer monitors alone,” interrupting our melatonin production with perpetual blue light and cueing our bodies to wake up, not wind down.

Removing tech from my evening routine has been huge: the nights when I do indulge in scrolling through Instagram before bed or watching a show on my iPad, I sleep restlessly and wake exhausted.

If all the FitBits, FuelBands, and pedometers existed in the Regency era, they would have shown that Austen and her healthful protagonists easily and swiftly meet their daily step count—choosing to walk for the air both morning and evening, and choosing to travel by foot instead of by horse or carriage whenever possible.

And, as Kozlowski notes, moving more throughout the day is now regarded as markedly healthier than spending an exhausting hour at the gym after a full day of sitting. “Everything happens on a walk in Jane’s novels.” He estimates that, say, in “Pride and Prejudice,” the Bennet sisters walk at least six to eight miles per week just by going back and forth from their home at Longbourn to the village of Meryton.

The pedometer-lover’s goal of 10,000 steps is the equivalent of walking five miles per day, which may sound like a lot but consider this: the American Heart Association has found thatwalking for exercise has the lowest dropout rateof any physical activity—and a landmark 1999 study by Duke University found that30 minutes of walking was just as effective as antidepressants, and more effective than medication over the long term.

Over the last month, I definitely found myself walking as much as possible—generally with my dogs (who resemble both the Bennet family and Mr. Knightley’s beloved lurchers in silhouette and energy level). WWJD inspired me to go carless more, even in Texas.

Austen, and her characters, knew that there was something inherently healthy about getting fresh air—or, as Kozlowski writes, “You might even call it Austenworld’s recreational drug of choice…Austen practically tattoos I HEART NATURE over all her heroines’ chests.”

From the Japanese tradition of “forest bathing” (Shirin-yoku) to rejuvenate the body and mind to the WWII-era campaign to get housewives to take outdoor “air baths” to the Scandinavian practice of napping outdoors (even in winter, starting in childhood), cultures the world over have prioritized connection to nature for optimal health—somedoctors in 2019 are even now prescribing it.

Camping or hiking is some of the only times where we may emulate what it was actually like to enjoy the outdoors in the Regency era, far from the light pollution and electrical currents of modern living—making it ever more important.

As the author quoted from “Your Brain on Nature,” researchers discovered that nature is such a powerful restorative that even looking at nature scenes on a screen can fire up the dopamine reward system in our brains, increasing feelings of wellness, positive thoughts, and a greater drive to form emotional connections with others. “No wonder love is in the air in Austenworld!”

WWJD has meant a lot more hikes and kayaking trips this month for me, and I definitely notice that I feel more rooted and connected to my community—confirmed by the scientific philosophy ofbiophilia,或者认为我们的身体(n的一部分ature) need frequent, physical contacts with nature in order to thrive, or so both Austen and Kozlowski astutely observed.

And now I feel even more kinship with Dame Judi Dench, who is not only afamous tree-huggerbut has often appeared in Austen adaptations, most recently as Lady Catherine de Bourg in “Pride and Prejudice.”

Perhaps one of the most interesting and shocking pieces of wellness advice to come from Austen is her repeated focus on the importance of what we now would call cryotherapy or taking aPolar Bear Plunge. “A little sea-bathing would set me up forever,” said Mrs. Bennet.

Apparently, heading to the seaside for a dip in the ocean, even in winter, was a popular Regency era health practice, called bathing—and we know now through recent studies that thermoregulation (either getting your body to try to stay warm in icy baths/air or to stay cool in hot baths/weather) isone of your body’s biggest calorie-burning tools.

Modern cryotherapy(in therapeutic chambers at a spa or treatment center) was recommended to me by my physical therapist and my functional medicine doctor, but I found it to be too extreme. But I have found much delight and anti-inflammatory relief in regularly taking off my socks and shoes on hikes and dipping my repeatedly-injured ankles and knees into the frigid freshwater streams of nearby creeks.

Kozlowski said that heading to the beach near his home in Florida for a dip in the ocean year-round has been one of the most life-changing pieces of wellness advice he’s taken from Austen. “You want to do it farther away from bedtime, though, because it really revs you up!”

In a modern age where more and more of us are succumbing to the ailments that result from slouching at our computers all day and bending to our smartphones the rest of the time, we could definitely learn something from the importance Austen placed on good posture. In Regency England, it was actually a cultural rule that “the backs of chairs and the backs of human bodies are perpetually kept asunder”—even when riding in horse-drawn carriages.

In his book, Kozlowski points to an anecdote about the posture lessons given to Emma Thompson by period coach Jane Gibson on the set of “Sense and Sensibility,” and how they forced Thompson to realize just how physically strong the women she and her colleagues were portraying had to be under those corsets and delicate muslin gowns—the sheer strength involved to sit, stand, and walk tall and gracefully throughout an entire day is no small feat.

“What’s more, science continues to discover that good posture sends out powerful and primal body signals, not only making uslookhealthier, smarter, stronger, and happier, but making usfeelthat way, too,” Kozlowski found.

Dear reader, if you’ve made it thus far and still are not convinced, then let me leave you with this: as Lord David Cecil wrote, “People who do not like Jane Austen are the sort of people who do not like sunshine.”

I, for one, bask in it as often as possible—and then some more.