Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Wellness Wednesday {An Intro}

Welcome to a post that I hope will be a weekly regular on my blog. I'm dedicated in my counseling practice, as well as in my personal life, to help others increase their overall levels of health and wellness. I introduced the idea of wellness on my blog in December 2010, before most (if not all!) of you were reading. So, before going any further, you may want to check out my introduction to wellness here. This will summarize everything clearly (I hope).

The basic idea of wellness is this:

Wellness is often viewed as the absence of pathology or identified disease. For example, there's no depression, anxiety, cardiac problem, etc... so I must be a healthy individual.

THIS IS NOT WELLNESS! The absence of pathology is more like just being neutral- nothing really positive, and nothing really negative. Neutrality does not equal health! So if the absence of disease isn't wellness, then what is?

Wellness, therefore, is not the absence of the negative, but the presence of the positive that indicates health and wellness. Let me repeat myself again, because this is crucial to understand! Wellness is the presence of positive components in life!

This, then, leads to a few potential questions: What are these components that play into wellness? How do I get to a point of being "well"? Does wellness just involve the mental and the physical?

I hope that through these Wellness Wednesday posts, I can not only address these questions, but give information about each of these components of wellness, give practical advice on how to attain health, and share personal stories of health and wellness.

I'll leave it at that for this week, to give you a little time to wrestle with the idea of health not just being the absence of the negative, but instead presence of the positive.

What I'd like to know from you:
How do you define wellness? What are the different components or factors in wellness (like nutrition, for example)?

9 comments:

  1. My definition of wellness, most unfortunately, is making it through the day. As a single, working mom, I'm sure my life is not all that well. I hope you continue this feature so I can read it all the time!

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  2. For me, wellness is about nutrition, healthy living and stress free living...

    Making sure that everything you do is great for your entire body and mind...

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  3. I think I'm going to like Wellness Wednesdays! I'm bookmarking your blog! :)

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  4. What an interesting job you must have! I think this will be a nice addition for readers. #commenthour

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  5. For me, wellness is about growth. About moving towards a more fulfilled life. Glad to have found you from #commenthour!

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  6. Wellness, for me, is slowing down. I was a single working mom for 6 years before finding the man of my dreams... I had about a second to breathe before we found out I was pregnant. I'm "well" in that I'm in love with a supportive partner, healthy, inspired creatively, and truly happy. But I could definitely use some time to just slow down and relax. Interesting post. It's already got me thinking about potential changes to my routine! Glad to have found you via #commenthour.

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  7. I am so happy that you've made this post. People idealize the concept of wellness to the point where they will almost always be disappointed with their life, because negativity doesn't actually disappear. The most we can do is find ways to healthily roll with what comes without dwelling on it and letting it drag down the positives we experience. Besides, we can't truly appreciate the good things without having a bit of down times~

    visiting from #commenthour

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  8. Stopping by from comment hour! Wellness for me is making time for myself amidst all my responsibility of marriage, mommy hood, and school. Working out helps a lot, but sometime it can be as simple as sneaking away to a movie, alone...LOL

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  9. Wellness, to me, is being balanced and being positive. It's living out some of your dreams, whilst still being able to carry out daily tasks like paying bills, cleaning, looking after your family.

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