Most of us define our health by a good functioning of the body and by the absence of the disease. But this is just the beginning. Find out at what you have to aspire to when you say “I want to be healthy” and the things you must do to achieve this.
Health is a concept which has more levels than we might imagine at the first sight. I say this because, for example having a healthy body but having feelings of angriness and resents all the time is in the same time useless and little durable: the emotional problems will soon be felt in the body as well through the process called by the doctors somatic behavior – which means the body will express through symptoms what the person cannot express through words or gestures: a cry for help, the need to be loved and accepted the way he/she is, the desire to protect the personal space, the aspiration to grow, to evolve, etc.
In the rows that follow, we provide you with a definition of the total health, in the body, mind, soul, and spirit. We season it with some practical recommendations and … here is the perfect recipe of health!
The health of the body means the absence of any physical disease and a wellness general state in the body. The ways we achieve or keep such a state are:
- the fulfillment of our needs of enough rest, adequate food, proper hydration, etc;
- the willingly access of the relaxation state which allows the body renew its energetic resources;
- the performance of respiration exercises that provide the body with a good oxygenation;
- the involvement into physical exercises that maintain the tonus and eliminate the possible fat redundancy;
- the conduct from time to time of the detoxifying cures that sustain the body in eliminating the accumulated toxic residues: fasts, the use of the citric diets which purify the lymphatic system, fruit diets, or diets based on cereals.
The mental health presumes a rational way of thinking which allows the adaptation to life (instead of attitudes like victimization, catastrophic behavior, despotic and absolutist demands which block an answer), discrimination, intelligence, flexibility, creativity, as well as discipline when it is needed – shortly, the mobilization of mental resources at the appropriate time, at the appropriate place, and through the most adequate strategy.
How do we achieve or keep such a state?
You can keep your mental youth and freshness when you are permanently preoccupied by your personal development, when you keep your mind open to learn from what happens to you, when you don’t let the dust glaze on your mental schemes, but you try courageously and with new approaches in whatever you do, when you know how to laugh at yourself without becoming self-destructive. Meditation and awareness of all the things you do, as well as paying a live attention to everything that surrounds you are also efficient methods.
The emotional health means having the capacity to experiment mainly positive feelings, while the negative experiences – when they appear – remain in functional limits. For example, you can’t be happy at a funeral, but you can keep a level of your sadness which wouldn’t put you down, but allow you to move on.
To be emotionally healthy also means assuming your own feelings and not considering that they are due to the others, but to the way you interpret what is happening to you. Also, when you know how to administrate your feelings and use them to put yourself on the move, you fit the portrait of an emotionally healthy person.
How do we achieve or keep this state?
You should look for emotional education programs. Learn to know your emotions and to accept them as they are (they make us human) and express them at the right time, with the right person. Do not accumulate things which weren’t said and states which weren’t expressed.
The spiritual health refers to the way in which each person relates with God, with the faith that there is Something beyond us, and in the way each persons feels his/her belonging to the Cosmos.
A person who is spiritually healthy excludes fanaticism, does not impose his/her inner truth to the others, respects the religious beliefs in their diversity, and most of all puts on the first place of his behavior good, constructive values: love, friendship, goodness, humbleness, acceptance, compassion.
How do we achieve or keep such a state?
You should read encyclopedias of religions and identify the common elements of the different thinking currents. You should define your own vision about the world and respect the others’ vision as well. Nobody holds the absolute truth; we are all looking for it. And, last but not least, live your values, not just talk about them.