We all have the innate drive to survive and our brains are wired to make our chances of survival as good as possible. Our nervous system will create adaptations based on our experiences to support our chances of survival, but those adaptations can become hypersensitive and turn on when we don’t really need them to. This can then lead to a system that is inflamed and then having to work to survive; it creates a loop within the system. With small steps, we can break that loop and experience more than just a state of surviving.
If we look up the definition of health, we will find that health is “a state of being free from illness”. And that is an amazing place to start, but we can do even better than that. We can live in a mind and body that are thriving rather than just surviving if we learn how to support all of the parts of ourselves.
As humans, we are a holistic system working together much like a symphony. However, when we have an issue or a challenge, we have been trained to look only at that one area or part, forgetting that each part impacts every other part and that we are a connected system.
Wellness is a “state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal”. In other words, to be well, we must make wellness a priority that we work toward. And for an integrated system, we must take care of all of our parts. This means learning how to maintain health of our physical bodies including working, resting, and nourishing the body. It means attending to our nervous system by attuning to how energy flows though us, or could better flow, including our emotions as part of that energy. It means minding our minds and questioning what we think rather than accepting all of our thoughts as fact simply because they are in our heads. These layers of ourselves take hits as we are navigating the stress of daily living and it is these layers that we must start with in the goal of wellness.
The work of supporting these three layers leads us into more vitality from which we can then attend to deeper layers of ourselves. When the physical, emotional, and mental parts of us are strong, we are much more able to tune into our own inner knowing and intuition which guides us to live as our authentic selves and to share our unique gifts with the world. And this is where we experience well-being or more life satisfaction and meaning.
Well-being is something that is possible for every one of us, but it is also a journey that will shift along the way. We must meet ourselves where we are and start with the one small next step. From that step, we can assess for the next step. Because we live in a physical body, that is the container to begin to strengthen first. We can explore free resources, find a friend to be an accountability partner, and ask others what they have done or are doing. The first small step is totally up to us and there is no exact right or wrong. It may be something like walking for a few minutes every day, adding one vegetable in to our diet, or drinking more water.
As humans, we often expect that to make progress, we must take big action and that it will be complicated, but the truth is that small and simple are often the most effective ways to create change.
This next week, I invite you open your awareness to one simple thing you can do to support your system. Reach out with questions or for support on where to start. And as always, I will be practicing right along with you.
Chat again soon,
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