What is your Wellness
Handicap?
Someone asked me the other day when I had started in the
wellness industry. I thought about that
and I laughed. Well, I guess it started
in the 60’s and 70’s growing up in a home with no pop, potato chips, or
processed foods. My mother cooked the old fashion way with
foods that she bought from the perimeter of the grocery store ( processed foods
are in the middle, you know) and she also cooked dinner every day. We ate at 5:30pm sharp which is when my Dad
came home from work and we all ate together!
We visited our grandparents every weekend, we had sitters so my parents
could go out dancing, we had chores to do, and we were dragged to Mass every
Sunday.
My parents valued family, friendships, recreation, and
spiritual growth. Of course, these values
have helped to shape who I am and helped me to strive for balance in my life
but I now realize that the greatest gift that my parents may have given me were
ways to manage and nourish my mental and emotional health which may have
further implications on my physical health than the lack of junk food in our
house.
Wellness used to be defined as the absence of disease. We now know that is not true since many
diseases can be incubating for years in the body before actual symptoms
appear. Many times when we hear the term
“wellness,” we tend to think of it in terms of what we can do for our physical
bodies. We are focused on our weight, exercise,
healthy eating habits, etc. All of these
are certainly important but “total wellness” is really how well our life force
is flowing through ALL of our subtle energy bodies as well as our physical
body. We can’t be physically healthy if
our energy fields are clogged with anger, fear, resentment, guilt, and
grief. I think we can all relate to each
of these emotions and provide vivid personal examples. I know I can!
A book that I recently read and highly recommend is Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping. It
helps to explain the powerful connection between our emotions and our physical
health and there are suggestions and methods for addressing and dealing with
these emotions that affect our health.
In his book, Tipping asserts that up to 80% of cancers are the result of
repressed emotions and that depression always precedes cancer. According to Caroline Myss’s tapes, Why People Don’t Heal, she discusses how
the majority of our life force energy is focused on hurts and experiences of
the past or worry and planning for the future.
This leaves very little life force energy left to focus on the present
which is where all healing occurs.
Sometimes, it takes a major crisis to force us to focus on the “now,”
doesn’t it? Eckert Tolle’s The Power of Now is another wonderful
book to stay focused on the present which helps us to stay healthy and
balanced.
My parents took life one day at a time and taught us to
value each day and to accept life as it is since there was a purpose to
everything even if we did not understand it.
We grew up with a strong sense of family and appreciation for what we
had. Both my parents are gone now but I
value them and what they taught me more now than I ever have. I feel their presence all the time and know
that they are still providing guidance.
Heck, they probably helped me write this article!
