Wellness Wednesday: {An Introduction Pt. 2}

Last Wednesday I introduced a new weekly feature of this blog: Wellness Wednesdays! If you missed the post, you'll definitely want to catch up on it, and can read it here.

Today I'll do a little more introduction to the concept of wellness. Again, to remind you, wellness isn't the absence of the negative (pathology, disease, etc...), but the presence of positive components. Neutrality DOES NOT equal health. This is a crucial concept to understand.

Here's a definition of wellness:
A way of life oriented toward optimal health and well-being, in which body, mind, and spirit are integrated by the individual to live life more fully within the human and natural community. Ideally, it is the optimum state of health and well-being that each individual is capable of achieving” (Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 2000).

Oooh...sounds a little intense, doesn't it? What I love about this view of wellness is that it is holistic. Sometimes I think it's easy to just focus on physical health (nutrition, exercise, etc...), and we forget that there are other types of health that we need to be focusing on as well. The thing is, because there are many parts integrated into the whole (an individual person), these areas of health affect one another. If we're only focusing on one, the others will be neglected, and our overall sense of health and well-being will not be very strong. From what I see, this is one of the most crucial concepts of wellness that is often overlooked. It's about the health of the whole, not just one little part of the whole.

I think each of us probably have one or two areas in which we feel we do a good job of maintaining health. I wonder what would happen in each of our lives if we started looking at ALL the components and factors of wellness, not just one or two?

What I'd like to know:
Does this definition of wellness make sense to you?
Do you have one or two areas of wellness that seem strong to you? What areas might you be neglecting?