A multi-speaker roundtable exploring definitions of "wellness." Speakers emphasize wellness as a dynamic, real-time alignment of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual/energetic dimensions; an embodied honesty and self-awareness (including acceptance of illness); tending to all parts of one’s life (relationships, work, self-care); connection to nature and belonging; and practical practices like scanning the body and creating safety. The discussion frames wellness as processual (ebb and flow), emergent each moment, and individualized (reverse-engineered from personal goals and needs).
Chapters
How would you define the concept, the definition of wellness? What does it mean to live your life well? How would you define wellness? Definitely thinking about one's place in the world and being comfortable with that is, I think, a really powerful piece of wellness. Maybe it is not wellness itself, maybe it's a derivative of, you know, this next order thing that is wellness. But understanding that we are a piece of nature, that, you know, nature is where we belong, I think is a very comforting thing to understand that would certainly into wellness. Well.
How can we bring awareness and reverence to all the little mundane elements of our life and begin from that platform of sacred relationship to the self to begin to orient towards others in.
That same way.
Wellness is, is understanding that you are being given right this second, a millionth of a second at a time, the opportunity to take all of the energy in the universe to manifest a single physical experience. Wellness is being new every time you have that experience. If you felt bad with the last millionth of a second, well, let go of the things that were making you feel bad that millionth of a second and be new right this millionth of a second.
I think the concept of the being well is an understanding of how you are responding real time to the environment. I mean, real time wellness is not a static thing. It's constantly an ebb and flow. I mean, wellness is an understanding of how the environment is impacting you real time and what you need to do about it in order to correct it and navigate through it.
That's wellness to me. Well, being is the alignment of the physical, the mental, the emotional, the spiritual, spiritual even. You know, where most people don't know the etherical, right. You're the energetic field between the physical and the spiritual and clean living, you know, in every way.
To live your life well, I think you have to understand at your core where you want to go and who you want to be. Because that then is going to be reverse engineered into what wellness is going to mean for you. Wellness, I think, is a combination of understanding your own internal wants, needs and desires. How your body functions optimally in terms of what sort of fuel sources you're putting in there and what sorts of boundaries you're putting up and how you're sharing the energy with other people.
I think wellness is that it's like creating a space of inner peace. Because if you look at what wellness is not, wellness is a lack of wellness shows up as inflammation in the body. Inflammation is caused by any dysregulation within your body.
You're attending to all parts of your garden, all parts of your life. Everything matters, whether it's just yourself, with yourself, to your relationships, to your business. So taking care of everything and taking time, starting out your day, tending to yourself. And what that means to, to me is sitting, creating that safety, scanning the body and seeing if there's anywhere that needs any part of you, any piece of the puzzle of you that needs a little more love, attention, presence, and acceptance.
I think wellness is in the realization fundamentally of who and what you are. You know, whether your experience of that is with, in your heart and that energetic field that we each possess.
Or.
Your sense of who you are.
Even.
As your identity in its limited form. Wellness is in being that fully. It's in integrity, regardless of how esoteric and broad your sense of self is. It's just like owning your sense of self for whatever your level of understanding and development is at any given time and fully, fully embracing and embodying that, even if it happens to be ugly momentarily. You know, there is a certain wellness in the acknowledgment that one is sick, right? Because fundamentally that sickness is something that, like evil, does not exist. You know, on a spiritual level. It's just the absence of wholeness, integrity, compassion. So I can identify and accept. All right, today I'm having signs of mental illness.
Cool.
I'm well, that's the moment that I begin to get well. That is wellness. Because there's honesty at play that allows me to have a starting point, a point of pivot that takes me in the direction back to reality, which is wholeness and completeness and absolute perfection.
