What is Whole Person Wellness

This article is part of a series explaining in detail a complete model of whole person wellness,tailored to those living in and embracing a typically western philosophy of wellness.   If you’ve come across this article before reading my introductory piece The Six Components of Whole Person Wellness, I encourage you to refer back to this article as a starting point for the definition of whole person wellness, and an introduction to its six components.

We begin this series of articles with your health:

• Health
• Career
• Relationships
• Personal Growth & Development
• Finance
• Enjoyment

Whole Person Wellness – Your Health

Typically, when we think about wellness, those of us living in the west immediately shift to thoughts about our physical body.  We equate wellness with whether or not we are physically feeling well.  I may believe that I am well when I lack injury, when I am free of disease, and when I am physically able to perform the tasks that are demanded of me for my particular lifestyle.  Perhaps I’ll go a step further and consider myself well if I’ve passed my doctors physical and my cholesterol tests come back as normal. 

If you’ve read my introductory article, you’ve already been introduced to a model of wellness that is much bigger than our physical bodies.  In fact, our health (only one of six components of wellness) itself is not only compromised of the physical components of wellness – it’s much bigger.  Health is a broad term that over the years we’ve come to understand is made up of the individual and related categories of physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional well being.  

Your Physical Health

In the west, we’re pretty much all familiar with the elements that make up our physical health.  Despite the fact that we all know that balanced well portioned nutrition, appropriate exercise, low to moderate stress, and adequate sleep typically lead us to enjoy a prosperous state of physical health, the majority of us fail to live a lifestyle that would be considered physically healthy.  Now, as you can imagine, this article could write at volumes on what constitutes a healthy diet, the forms of exercise, managing stress and healthful sleep, but that is not the intent of this writing.  The intent is to introduce you to the key areas of physical health such that you can consider for yourself if you’ve got opportunities for improvement.

Questions for Self Inquiry: 

• On a scale of 1-10, how would I rate my overall physical health? 
• Am I treating my body well in terms of nutrition, exercise, sleep and managing stress? 
• How could I improve my physical health? 
• What am I willing to do now?
• How will I get started?

Your Psychological and Emotional Health

The field of psychology has blossomed into the preferred form of professional help for those seeking advice and healing with respect to personal trauma, emotional turmoil, and mental pain.  I differentiate psychological health from emotional health because psychology, while it often deals with emotions, is really geared towards understanding why a person feels and thinks the way they do and how that translates into behavior.  The science of psychology is based on understanding how the mind works and correcting any ‘problems’ that may exist in the persons psyche. 

Broadly speaking, emotional health on the other hand, deals with a mental state of consciousness, which can abruptly switch from bad to good even without an underlying change in the psychological characteristics of the individual.  Emotions can be the result of the person’s underlying psychology, but are really the result of what that person is experiencing in the moment. 

To provide an example, a person of sound psychological health (ie: behaves and thinks ‘normally’ – what is normal is a completely different discussion), can have good or bad days or even experience depression – something that might equate to poor emotional health.  On the contrary, someone with deep rooted psychological problems (perhaps one could imagine this might be the state of psyche for a serial killer) may be considered to be emotionally stable and healthy if they are happy living out life the way that they are. 

Emotional and psychological health are every bit as important and quite often is highly integrated with our state of physical health.  The emotions of anger, rage, happiness, love, the act of laughter, and even smiling have all been demonstrated to have physiological effects on our bodies.  Since our psychological well-being often leads to our emotional health, no one looking for a comprehensive model of health can ignore these utterly important elements of whole person wellness.

Questions for Self Inquiry: 

• In the past month what emotions have dominated my time? 
• Are there any ‘problems’ that I am dealing with that I feel are overwhelming my psyche and are causing me to act and behave differently than I’d like?
• Do I ask questions such as ‘why do I…’ , more frequently than ‘how can I…’?
• If I were to ask a friend to ask me how they’d judge my emotional well-being, what would they say?
• On a scale of 1-10, how would I personally rate my psychological and emotional health (do each separately)?
• If I did not score high on this scale, what uplifting act could I do to improve my daily emotional health?
• If I did not score high on the same scale, what might be an appropriate way to improve my overall psychological health?

Your Spiritual Health

Many people – particularly in the west, equate spiritual health with going to the religious establishment of their choice.  Spirituality, however is not the same thing as religion.  Spirituality can be dominated and influenced by the belief system of a religion, but by definition spirituality is your connection with the world outside your physical body.  Spiritual practices involve prayer, meditation, giving, sharing, and being one with the universe.  Spirituality is personal, in essence its the expression of who we are above and beyond our physical body.  Some people define spirit as the incorporeal part of humans – the soul.  Our spirituality is the acknowledgement and expression of that part of our being.

Given the fickle definition of spirituality and the varied methods of expression, spiritual health is the most difficult aspect of health to define in easily written language.  The best way I can describe spiritual health is as follows:

Spiritual health is the extent to which an individual’s personal belief system regarding spirituality is exhibited in the life that they are leading.  A ‘healthier’ spiritual health would be demonstrated by the extent to which you are living and acting in accordance with your personal belief system. 

To put this in terms of example, a person that is Roman Catholic, may measure their spiritual health by how often they go to church, their adherence to the 10 commandments, and the extent to which they practice the teachings of Jesus in their life.  On the other hand, an atheist would be living a spiritually healthy life by avoiding church and living within their belief system, if that environment gave them significant discomfort.  A spiritually minded person that were open to all trains of thought might best serve their spiritual health by reading and observing the philosophies of people from within many belief systems.  As you can see, spiritual health is unique to you.  The only way to live a spiritually ‘unhealthy’ life is to live in disaccord to your own personal beliefs. 

Questions for Self Inquiry: 

• What is my spiritual belief system?
• Do I act in accordance with my belief system?
• Do I often feel that something is missing in terms of my spirituality?
• How would I rate my spiritual health on a scale of 1-10?
• What can I continue to do, or what should I do differently to maintain or improve my spiritual health?

In Closing

I’d like to re-iterate that health is bigger than just the physical body.  Health encompasses the body, mind and spirit.  If we’re looking to improve our physical health, its a good idea to do a quick inventory of all four of these aspects of health as exercising may not be enough or even the proper area to focus on if we are trying to improve our physical wellness. 

In the next article we’ll read about a completely different component of wellness - ‘Career’.  In the meantime, use this article as a catalyst to look and see what areas you can begin to take action on within your own life. 

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Be Well

Related Articles:

• The Six Components of Whole Person Wellness
• The Fallacy of - ‘I Just Want to be Normal’

Written by Doug Nau, The Wellness Coach, i-grow.net