You hear the term wellness all the time but do you know what it means?
What is wellness after a year of Covid? You may have been annoyed by the whole idea before Covid hit. Who had time to think about being well when there was so much going on? Wellness has taken on a whole new meaning in the last year. People have been working from home. Some don’t want to go back to the office even if it’s safe. Wellness for them may well be staying home, or working less. Or cooking more. Wellness is more than one thing, even though it always seems to be about physical health. Does it make you want to turn that page every time you hear the term?
Wellness is trending more now than ever before
Wellness is preached by doctors, and commonly compliments a whole other host of keystone concepts such as health, mindfulness, and nutrition, to name a few. We see it in commercials, read about it on food packaging, and can literally find the word plastered everywhere. It’s important to know that wellness goes beyond just being a hot buzzword or trend, but it also doesn’t need to be overcomplicated.
Wellness is defined by the Webster’s Dictionary as: “The quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal.” So wellness is the practice of making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle. We can get down with that.
Three categories make up wellness: physical, spiritual, and emotional. By fulfilling all three, a person is achieving holistic wellness. Holistic wellness is an approach to being healthy that looks at a person’s health in a whole or fulfilled way: the body, mind, and spirit. Attention to all three is required to stay balanced. This wholeness is even believed by some to create a euphoria because is the ultimate state of living — complete health.
Physical health:
Physical wellness encourages appropriate care of our bodies for proper functioning and ideal health. There are many essentials of physical wellness that all must be tended to for the best achievement, such as proper nutrition, moderate-vigorous physical exercise, and adequate rest. Even taking care of your mental well-being has an effect on keeping your physical wellness in top condition. These actions will allow us to get the most out of daily activities and life without fatigue and stress. This also means living responsibly and recognizing that daily habits and behaviors have a significant impact on our overall quality of life. Eating right, being active, sleeping enough, and having regular health checks are the epitome of good physical wellness. It is also important to avoid destructive behaviors and habits such as smoking/vaping nicotine, using drugs, having unsafe sex, and eating foods that are high in fats and sugars. This will lead to ideal physical wellness and reduce the risk of preventable chronic illnesses.
Spiritual health:
Allow me to preface before I scare some of you away. Spirituality and religion are different. Spirituality focuses on the interior life of an individual, placing the emphasis on the well-being, while religion is typically an organized practice and often legalistic. Whether you are spiritual or religious and achieve spiritual wellness, they both help reach the same goal of finding peace. Spiritual wellness permits us to be in tune with our spiritual sides. This component of holistic wellness helps us find meaning in life events and define our individual purpose. It also provides us with systems of faith, beliefs, values, ethics, principles and morals.
Mental health:
Emotional and mental health go hand in hand. A component of mental health is how well your mind processes and understands information and experiences. Emotional health involves your ability to process and express emotions that arise from what you have learned and experienced often through challenge and change. Someone who is emotionally healthy can allow their emotions to be digestible. Being aware of your emotions and reactions is a great way to stay emotionally healthy. The same is true with expressing your feelings in appropriate ways, thinking before you act, managing stress, and connecting with other will all help you achieve the same.
These three components all complement each other. For example, someone who is practicing good physical habits such as eating right and sleeping well will find it easier to pause before they react to promote good emotional health. And! Because they are spiritually fit, they will find pausing easier as well! It is a very cool cycle and the benefits are never-ending.
Now you can see why wellness is such a hot topic. This whole approach is successful contingent on the relationships between the various components listed above. Singularly they are great, but together they are even better. Physical, spiritual, and mental health wellness all play an important role in achieving an overall healthy well-being and satisfaction of life. Always shoot for a holistic approach, and remember that balance is the keystone to reaching wellness.
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