Wednesday, April 14, 2010

What is Wellness? Wellness is a multi-dimensional state of balance including emotional, environmental, physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of an individual.The key is to develop balance within each dimension, resulting in balance between all dimensions. Simply put, wellness is balance.

The importance of developing balance between all dimensions of wellness is expressed clearly using "the wheel" metaphor. As the wheel is comprised of many spokes, it only takes one spoke out of tune to throw the wheel out of alignment. As individuals and members of one universal organism, we must realize wellness to live the fullest potential of quality and longevity of life.

The purpose of offering a wellness program is to facilitate supportive environments to help each individual realize total well-being.
We will accomplish this by offering educational, inspirational, and experiential opportunities to explore and develop balance within and between all dimensions of well-being.

The spokes:
1) People are disconnected from people. We must learn and develop skillful, compassionate social interaction in all relations. If this is not addressed as a key factor in our individual well-being we will experience toxic relationships within families, cities, states, and nations.

2) People are disconnected from nature. We must come to understand our place as human species in nature, what effect we have on nature, and how we can live in balance with/as nature. We are of nature, if we fail to see this inherent truth of our being we become toxic to nature, which means we become toxic to ourselves.

3) People are disconnected from their physical body. We must come back to functional movement as a natural physical state, we must understand what nutrition is, and we must see how stress (mental/emotional, chemical, physical) effects the body. Look around you and you will see the results of neglecting physical wellness, obesity, heart disease, cancer, chronic back, neck, and joint injury, etc.

4) People are disconnected from their minds. Are we our minds? are we limited to our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc. Do we have control over our thoughts, feelings, perceptions? Are we using our minds in a way that creates harmony and balance in our lived present (Now) experience. Another way to say this, an even more accurate way is to say "when we are truly connected to our minds, we are connected to our hearts". Life is love, love is life, if we do not find and develop a connection with our minds/hearts we will pay the ultimate price, we will not experience true love.

The path to well-being starts now.

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