“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
We hear the saying time and time again about the older generation’s inability to keep up with the times. Though I’m sure that, at 25, I’m far from what most people would call “old,” I did feel how finding new hobbies was something I no longer can do—at my age.
Growing up at a time when “childish“ hobbies had to either become lucrative enough to make a living, or to be dropped altogether, I’ve experienced a shift in mindset where trying out new hobbies is concerned. Sip and paint sessions, pottery classes, writing workshops—all creative endeavors a lot of us probably didn’t get the chance to develop past our school years, have been advertised on social media (at least in my algorithm) in the last couple of post-pandemic years.
Maybe it was thanks to the pandemic that, in light of so many scary health issues and the seemingly endless amount of time we all suddenly had, the shift to prioritizing work-life balance and wellness became inevitable. When we realized how life could be fulfilling beyond the corporate ladder and the “grindset” mindset, more businesses and organizations began catering to the growing demand for holistic living services.
Which brings me to gusto, a newly launched wellness and lifestyle brand with a mission to redefine holistic living. I got to know more about the brand from Nicole Thorp. Gusto goes beyond simply purchasing the wellness lifestyle. According to Thorp, gusto was conceived to be collaborative and community-centered, something often missing in other wellness brands. While wellness and lifestyle brands usually insist that you purchase a number of products they offer as a means to buy into the lifestyle (otherwise, are you even really living holistically?), gusto gave its recent Holistic Summit attendees a single-ticket purchase to all the summit’s movement classes, workshops, and seminars. It also provided a well-curated market space for small businesses.
Given the network of connections she made working in events and PR for brands, Thorp wanted not just to collaborate with entities but also to highlight in the Summit the people and brands that the gusto team felt needed to reach a wider audience.
Entering the event last November 2 at SMX Aura Convention Center, I found myself in the midst of small businesses that ranged from fitness wear, beauty brands, to yoga and massage services, all carefully curated. If shopping wasn’t on your to-do list, there were movement workshops and seminars to join.
I joined the graphite portraiture class by Jethro Medina of ArtFix. Growing up, I was limited to after-school and weekend activities. Now, this was the first proper art class I ever attended.
Now I am by no means an artist but, with all the free time I had during the pandemic, I decided to begin my art journey the most accessible way I could: YouTube tutorials. Though it was quite fun in the beginning getting to understand art fundamentals, I began to slow down post-pandemic because 1. with the world opening up, my priorities slowly shifted to completing my studies and finding jobs; and 2. Because I felt stuck. Looking back now, I realized how solitary of a journey being a self-taught amateur artist was (note that I do use the term artist very loosely here). I felt so stuck because I had only my own eyes and knowledge to teach me, and though YouTube tutorials were godsend, they could only do so .
As soon as I saw the session at the gusto Holistic Summit, I had to get over my fears and anxiety, and took the graphite portraiture class.
There were three rows of tables and I was seated next to three people per table. When I caught sight of the subject—a head sculpture with interesting structures placed all around the piece— I was even more terrified. How in the world would I be able to capture the likeness of a piece in a room full of people? I was used to sitting in front of my desk or table in a coffee shop all by myself just sketching half-finished pieces, in peaceful solitude. But this would be a whole different experience altogether. But I trudged on nonetheless, took a seat on the first row right next to where the teacher would demonstrate his work (Sir Jethro Medina suggested that beginner artists sat right in front of the teacher). I listened intently to every instruction throughout the three hours.
By the end of it, I was more or less quite proud of the piece, and what I’d learned in that class. Though this might be far from what we think of as “holistic living,” something I genuinely appreciated in the class were the life lessons I surprisingly still carry to this day—like how art, like many other things in life, is a much slower process. According to Sir Medina, most of his own personal “shorter” pieces would take many days to create, that every part of art and life can be approached with a certain level of deliberateness or intentionality, and that there’s a lot we can learn about life when you just… sit quietly and observe. You learn to appreciate a lot of the simpler and finer things in life when, in this modern haze of consumerism and selfies (just to be able to say we did it), you could sit quietly, just observe and appreciate things you wouldn’t have otherwise seen or known about.
But what does art have to do with holistic living? Well, art is known to boost mental health. Even if I didn’t fully overcome my anxiety, I built the confidence just by putting my mind on a small project like this. I told myself, “Yeah! It did help with my mental health.”
Holistic living, as gusto promotes it, goes beyond physical health—into our spiritual and mental health. It is important to maintain balance in all aspects of life. We live only once, and what better lifestyle to subscribe to than the one that allows us to live fully and experience everything that life has to offer?
Funny to think that these realizations came from a single art class, but call me a writer who romanticizes even the mere act of picking coffee—hey, where’s the fun in life if we don’t live our lives like a movie?
