Unconventional Wellness Paths that Can Help You Boost Your Mental Health

Unconventional Wellness Paths that Can Help You Boost Your Mental Health

By - August 21, 2025

Alice Robertson alice.robertson@alice-robertson

Everyone’s heard the classic advice: get enough sleep, exercise, and talk to someone you trust. But mental health often thrives on the unexpected—the small, surprising experiments that sneak joy or relief into your day. Approaching self-care creatively can awaken parts of you that routine never touches. These aren’t magic bullets or medical prescriptions; they’re invitations to try the curious and the unusual, to loosen the grip of daily tension and open space for emotional restoration. Below, you’ll find several unconventional ways to improve your mental health, each grounded in a real, actionable practice.

Laugh It Out
Laughter is more than a mood—it’s a chemical shift, a flood of endorphins and muscle relaxation that clears away tension almost immediately. Instead of waiting for a funny movie to land in your queue, experiment with laughing yoga sessions to decompress. These sessions feel a little silly at first: you force gentle chuckles, then louder bursts, and before long, the brain doesn’t know the difference. You’re laughing because you’re laughing. The absurdity of it all becomes part of the medicine, giving you a playful shake out of whatever anxious loop you’ve been spinning in. Many practitioners report a soft euphoria afterward, a mental reset that lingers longer than you expect.

Holistic Calming Supports
In the exploration of natural mental health support, some individuals turn to plant-based or holistic tools. Practices like ashwagandha supplementation and regular acupuncture sessions have long been valued for their calming and restorative effects. Golden Hour Hemp offers THCa diamonds, a refined hemp concentrate that some people pair with these traditional approaches to enhance their self‑care routines. As with any supplement or holistic method, approach with awareness, start gently, and ensure it aligns with your personal wellness plan

Nature Healing
Step outside, not for steps or sunlight quotas, but to disappear into the quiet company of trees. The Japanese practice of immersive forest bathing experiences isn’t a workout or a hike; it’s slow wandering, feeling the bark under your hand, listening to the flick of bird wings overhead. Research continues to suggest that these sensory immersions lower cortisol and improve concentration. The goal isn’t productivity. It’s a dissolving of edges: letting nature seep into you without agenda, without a fitness tracker buzzing on your wrist. Try leaving your phone in the car, or at least on airplane mode, and notice how the forest feels when it doesn’t have to compete with notifications.

Inner Dialogue
Most people have an inner narrator that never shuts up. Harnessing it, rather than fighting it, can offer surprising relief. Speaking to yourself in the mirror or while tidying up isn’t madness—it’s a technique. Lean into gentle self-talk reflections aloud as a daily ritual. Phrase your worries like you’re a trusted friend hearing them for the first time. Remind yourself of progress you’ve already made or reframe fears into manageable tasks. This vocal processing can turn abstract dread into something your brain can handle, almost as if hearing your own voice grants permission to let go.

Cozy Crafting
Your hands know things your mind forgets. Creating something tactile has a grounding effect that screens and text threads will never match. Spend an evening with crafting for stress reduction and calm—think hand stitching, clay shaping, or building a small collage. The repetitive motions and focus on simple steps coax the nervous system into a quieter state. The finished product doesn’t have to be beautiful or useful; the real magic is in the pause, the steady rhythm, and the sense of small completion.

Creative Collage
Not every thought deserves a journal entry, but every fragment of feeling deserves somewhere to land. Junk journaling invites you to rip, glue, scribble, and layer scraps of memory without judgment. Even a single session of expressive junk journaling practice can turn a buzzing head into something visual and finite. The act of translating internal clutter into physical form gives you distance. Pages grow thick, messy, and alive, proof that your mind has made space for something new. If meditation has always felt slippery, this might be your tactile alternative.

Playful Rediscovery
Somewhere along the road to adulthood, we traded spontaneous fun for calendars and task lists. Your nervous system is starving for unstructured play. That can be as simple as setting a timer for fifteen minutes and diving into simple adult play routines ease pressure—throwing a Frisbee alone, improvising silly dances in your living room, or revisiting a favorite childhood game. Movement plus whimsy unhooks the mind from its grind. You can’t ruminate and giggle at the same time.

Artful Boost
For emotions that sit too deep for words, creativity can provide a ladder. Creative expression deepens emotional healing through painting, drumming, movement, or even ripping paper to music. Expressive arts therapy is less about the final piece and more about unlocking corners of the psyche that talk therapy sometimes misses. The sensory engagement, the permission to make marks without rules, often opens a backdoor to relief. Even a 30‑minute session with paints or clay can shake loose feelings that have been clinging like heavy vines.

Mental health doesn’t always improve in predictable, straight‑line ways. Sometimes the breakthroughs arrive in giggles, glue-sticked paper, or a quiet walk among oaks. By experimenting with laughter, touch, play, and expression, you create micro‑portals out of stress and into presence. One day, it’s a forest whispering calm; another, it’s clay under your fingernails. The secret isn’t that any single method works for everyone—it’s that the willingness to try something unconventional reintroduces curiosity to your self‑care. And curiosity, as it turns out, is a powerful antidote to mental stagnation.