What Is Wellness?

What is wellness? Each of us has a unique idea of what wellness means to us personally. Perhaps wellness is tied to a goal of physical strength, or emotional fitness, or a level of happiness. Some say wellness is a way of life or a choice we make to achieve our highest potential.

We do know that wellness is not a destination that can be measured by experts or compared between individuals. My wellness and your wellness may look quite different, while our level of satisfaction may be the same.

Dr. John Travis developed a model of wellness that he called The Illness-Wellness Continuum. Dr. Travis proposed that wellness is a process and is never static. As a result, we are always moving toward or away from wellness based on our lifestyle choices. Our current healthcare system (US, Canada, and most of the world) utilizes the illness model - focusing on the removal of disease and symptoms. As you can see from the image below, the treatment paradigm in our current health care model does not include wellness. The current healthcare model ignores education, awareness, and personal growth for the benefit of wellness. Instead education is centered around pharmaceutical options and disease prevention. There is little to no mention of nutrition, physical fitness, emotional wellbeing, intellectual development, creativity, and the other wellness dimensions that make up high level wellness.

Each of us has an opportunity to change our experience with wellness to live a full, rich, and healthy life! By reaching out for new information regarding our physical, emotional, mental, and intellectual health and making changes to the way we think and behave, we move toward wellness and away from illness.

Our attitudes and beliefs help to determine our direction on the continuum. Think of the continuum as a pathway. People can be headed in either direction. 

 

A person who is generally physically healthy, but who is always worrying about their health 

and complaining, may be to the right of the neutral point, but may be facing towards the left, 

in the direction of premature death.

A person who is physically or mentally challenged may have a positive outlook and

be cultivating love instead of fear, and consequently may be facing to the right, in

the direction of high-level wellness. -- From Wellpeople.com

Are you aware of your ideas, beliefs, and attitudes about wellness and health...chances are good (since you are reading this blog) that you are interested in moving toward wellness. However, if you are in the habit of looking at what is wrong with your life, pay a great deal of attention to your symptoms, or feel fearful and continually aware of disease, you may be looking down the illness side of the road. You might consider an about face...where you can focus on what can be done, how good you can feel, and how well you can live.

Be Well,
Coach Joy