Karen Leys works as an wholistic Health Therapist.  She has been both professionally using and professionally studying wholistic health, personal & spiritual development & wellbeing for the past 20 years. Visit Karen's new website www.Beyond-The-Body.com

This page is called – Positive Health & Well-being, but what does this really mean?

Positive Health would seem to be simple enough – possibly a state of health that is not detrimental, being in good health, being free from illness.  But how do you view health?  If like me in the past you consider health to be physical, this is not the full picture.  Over the years I have come to realise my good  & positive health includes all aspects of me, which is why I chose to study health and wellness from a wholistic perspective. 

Wholistic

Wholistic in it simplest terms means – The Whole, consideration of the whole when assessing a condition, symptom, issue or problem presenting itself as stress or ill health.  In its fullest sense at this time, wholistic includes the physical body, our emotional response conditions, our psychological makeup and also our spiritual health (development).

Many people connect the spiritual nature/aspect of ourselves with religion, for me this is not strictly so. My experience and understanding of spirituality has become the manifestation of qualities that create a way of life.  Qualities of compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, peace, non-judgement.  This is my individual experience and is not a suggestion that any other practice of religion is wrong or of less value.

For me to be in true positive health I look at all these aspects, observing the balance or imbalance in each and work to create a more harmonious experience.

Well-being

Well-being is a word that is used more and more frequently when speaking of health, but what is it & how is it defined? Here is a definition I came across when looking a little deeper and trying to really find out what we are talking about.

- Well-being ‘a contented state of being happy, healthy and prosperous’ for me this means that a sense of well-being exists when all aspects of an individual are in a state of happiness, health and prosperity! Wow what a challenge that sounds!!!

In September of 2004 the New Economics Foundations released the Well-being Manifesto calling on the government to focus on human well-being before economic growth.  In it they revealed that quality of life in the UK had peaked in 1976!  This was even though the UK’s GPD (gross domestic products – including consumer spending, government investment, etc.) has almost doubled in the last 30 years our happiness levels have stayed the same as in 1976.

see www.neweconomics.org/gen/news_wellbeingmanifesto.aspx 

In another report produced May 2006 by market researchers Gfk NOP, it was found the number of people who said they were ‘very happy’ has fallen from 52% in 1957 to a worrying 36% today!  

How can we create our own happiness, health & well-being?

In our hectic, full on lives, work, family, home etc. I am sure many of you are thinking HOW!!!  How can I feel happy and prosperous with all the, responsibilities, worries & stresses of everyday life?  Maybe you feel happy in one or some aspects of your life but extremely unhappy in another, which may then affect other aspects of your life. And does prosperity to you mean having enough money?  I may explore our experience of prosperity in connection to health in a future article, but for now I would like to suggest to you that our state of mind about prosperity can affect our all round health.

From the moment I began to work on my life wholistically, I allowed myself to be an active participant in the creation of my health and well-being, I put myself in a place where I was making conscious choices.  Choice is an aspect of taking responsibilities for the outcomes in my life.  As my understanding and practice of this approach to health developed I also found my intuition ‘gut feeling’ was strengthening.  This intuition offered me the opportunity to be aware of creating positive or not so positive health and well-being – but I still had to choose in each moment whether I really wanted to take on this responsibility.  Life had seemed easier before, leaving it all to chance. They say ignorance is bliss and yes this was making me very aware of how easy it seemed just to drift along, it took a lot of stamina and persistence to keep going.  I could and often did drift easily into my unconscious patterns of behaviour, apathy, blame etc. but in these times I would remind myself of the long term effect this drifting would have.

As a “victim of circumstance” things happened to me, as an active participant, what happened to me became my responsibility.  I chose if I was going to make time to… eat well, rest well, exercise well, think well, act well, and put myself into situations that brought me peace or created stress.  What did I want to do with my time? I could choose, but with choice came change and resistance from myself, and those in my life. 

At first my external conditions did not change, what was changing was me in these existing conditions.  I still had poor health, a destructive and stressful relationship, 2 young children to care for – but in choosing to become active in my life my external conditions slowly began to alter, to the place in my life today where my health is very good, my relationships are supportive and caring and my life is full of opportunity not obstacles. 

We live in a very fast paced world, everything at hand, fast food, fast communication (the internet), just look at the exercise and diet DVD’s that are bombarding us, all claiming to help you loose weight, change shape in 1 week/2 weeks etc. what I experience has resulted from this, is a culture of wanting everything NOW!!  There feels to be a lack of patience all around. The greatest results for any long-term change, occur when we allow ourselves TIME to see these begin to show up in our life. Allow yourself the time to slow down & take a breath, this does not mean we don’t begin immediately to BE the changes we want to see.  Our life and health today is the product of our actions in the past, so what we do today will become our life and health of our tomorrows. Just imagine if you decided you wanted to grow a plant from seed, you had the idea, chose to start the process for this seed and then gave up because it didn’t become the plant quick enough!

Plant your seed for change towards positive health, water it, feed it, nurture it and allow yourself time to begin to see the resulting growth. This is the result of your choice to change.

So if you are going to make a commitment to yourself to choose a new behaviour towards positive health and well-being, remember

Ø      please be patient,

Ø      please be consistent,    but most importantly………..

Ø      please, please, please be gentle with yourself.   

Until next time

Karen

If you have any topics you would like me to explore please submit them. I would love to assist you in the things you feel are important in your journey towards good health and life. 

PERSONAL CARE  DISCLAIMER: Content on this page is for reference purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for advice given by a physician, pharmacist, or other licensed health-care professional. You should not use this information for self-diagnosis or for treating a health problem or disease. Always seek the advise of a medical professional before undertaking any lifestyle change.   Jan 2007