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February 9, 2024
ByAna Rivas

Health Wellness: Nurturing Body and Soul

Health wellness display the image of a starry night in a swirl and the words wellness nurturing body and soul

Introduction

In pursuing a fulfilling life and the desire to attain health wellness, you may be looking for a wellness center nearby, and you’d be surprised to find where that is, as in your home and within you.

When talking about wellness, the topic extends beyond mere physical health; it encompasses the harmony of body, mind, and soul. Understanding and cultivating wellness in all these facets can significantly enhance one’s quality of life.

Defining wellness can get somewhat complicated for many of us who are used to going to see a doctor and leaving the office with a prescription for medicine. Some of us have found that interaction a bit dry. We are more interested in a holistic approach and, in ancient medicine, a wellness formula that may include spiritual healing.

This post is only an overview of what I have learned in many years of trying to practice healthy habits. With ongoing learning, I want to share what little I know with my readers.

Understanding Health Wellness

Health wellness is, in my thinking, a holistic approach to living where one strives for physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It’s about making conscious decisions towards a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

Wellness is not just the absence of illness but the proactive maintenance and improvement of overall health. It is imperative to understand and accept that many illnesses are borne out of emotional stress coupled with bad food. There is just no easy way to put it, most food consumed by working individuals has been pre-packaged and includes an abundance of preservatives, additives, coloring, and other ingredients that don’t address what each cell in our body needs. Some of us have become sensitive to these food additives, and our body rejects them in the form of allergic reactions.

The following subtopics, physical health, emotional health, and spiritual health, are each extensive areas that require a lot more than the summary I am providing in this post. I did not add the Mental Health subtopic because I believe both emotional and mental health are the same in the context of this blog.

I discuss mental health being linked to your emotional health in wellness. I am not a doctor and will not separate in this post the challenging topic of mental health. That’s something far more complex for this blog. I expect I will be writing more on each subject in the future.

But I do believe that to achieve health wellness, we need to look at our health in a holistic way. I believe that our diet impacts our emotions and that impacts mental health, but that’s not all. I’ve read somewhere that allergies are one main disruptor of mental health, emotional health is affected by anything that happens around you, your food, your living environment, the people you communicate with, the people that’s around you, even the conditions of people you care about affect us emotionally and potentially mentally. So, I’m saying it’s all linked but it must be treated separately until the connections are repaired.

Physical Health: The Foundation of Health Wellness

Physical health serves as the foundation of wellness. It involves various aspects of health wellness such as nutrition, exercise, sleep, and preventive healthcare. A balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins nourishes the body and fuels it with the energy required for daily tasks. Regular physical activity, whether walking, yoga, or sports, strengthens the body, improves cardiovascular health, and boosts mood. Adequate sleep and regular health check-ups are crucial for maintaining and monitoring health.

Notice that each of the requirements, food, exercise, and mental optimization, are pieces of what the body needs as a whole to be healthy; one without the other will be unbalanced, limiting the body’s ability to pass and maintain a healthy check.

Mental Health and Overall Health Wellness

One of the most significant problems we have seen in the past 50 years is the rapidly declining mental health of individuals. In health wellness, mental health is not believed to be a simple disorder cured with medicines, there is a reason for the imbalance. Much of it stems from our environment from the moment we are individuals. Some of us can consider this to be at conception, and some will feel more comfortable saying our journey started at birth.

The reality is that we start absorbing stress and fear from the moment we are in the womb, which translates later in life into fears of abandonment, mistrust, insecurity, and overall lack of something. I am not a mushy person, but I recently learned why I crave company and hugs so much. I realized my mother had a tough pregnancy with me. It was not at all her fault, but I absorbed her feelings and whatever turmoil she lived through.

I also learned that we might actually inherit our ancestor’s fears, which I recently heard in a podcast interview with Dr. Mariel Buqué as generational or transgenerational trauma. Her book “Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma” is described as a “groundbreaking guide to transforming intergenerational pain into intergenerational abundance”. Studies demonstrate that the causes of transgenerational trauma are domestic violence, oppression, war, natural disasters, genocide, and slavery. (Quinn, 2023)

Although experts separate emotional and mental health, they are linked together. In my view, one causes the other, inevitably.

Emotional Health: The Key to Inner Peace

Highly important in our wellness journey is emotional health. It involves managing and understanding emotions, stress, and mental health. Developing healthy emotional habits, such as expressing feelings in constructive ways, cultivating resilience, and practicing gratitude, can significantly improve one’s outlook on life and total health wellness.

In my opinion, much more than improving one’s outlook in life, it can help reverse the transgenerational trauma. Our feelings and hope so they won’t transfer to our children. Seeking support during tough times, whether from friends, family, or professionals, is vital in maintaining emotional well-being, and it must be done. Ask for help when you need it. It is not only you but the people around you and your future children and grandchildren who suffer. We need to be more open to addressing emotional and mental health issues today.

Spiritual Health: The Soul’s Sanctuary

Often overlooked, spiritual health is the cornerstone of inner peace and happiness. It relates to our sense of purpose, beliefs, and connection with the universe. Spiritual wellness doesn’t necessarily involve religion; it can come from nature, meditation, prayer, or any activity that fosters a sense of belonging and serenity. Nurturing the soul involves listening to our innermost feelings and finding harmony within ourselves and the external world.

Most people will associate spiritual health directly with religion. Still, the reality is that spiritual health is the peace within each individual, where we can quietly sit and listen or converse within ourselves, bridging the quiet gap that grounds people. Those who do not practice these simple exercises find themselves influenced by all other conversations outside themselves, meaning they are listening to the media, to people, to songs, and absorbing it all without realizing that it may not be exactly who they need to be, that it does not fulfill your soul or spirit entirely, leaving you unsatisfied.

Closing Thoughts on Health Wellness

Achieving good health and wellness is a journey, not a destination. It requires commitment, balance, and integration of practices that nurture the body, mind, and soul. I will have seven Practical Steps towards holistic wellness in a post following this one.

By understanding and embracing the interconnectedness of these elements, we can pave the way to a more fulfilling, healthy, and joyful life.

My last words for the post on health wellness are: try to improve each day holistically by exercising, meditating, eating healthy, and following up on your intuition when you think something needs attention in your body and mind. I am affiliated with Amazon, where I found the book for Dr. Mariel Buqué and other books related to healing transgenerational trauma. I am attaching the link to this blog if you wish to make a purchase, I do receive a commission from those sales, and I thank you in advance if you choose to buy.

Sources:

Quinn, Deborah. (27 July 2023).Generational Trauma: 13+ Effective Ways to Break the Cycle. Sandstone Care, Blog, Resources, Trauma. Clinically Reviewed by Sarah Fletcher, LPC, LAC.