Recently I attended a professional development workshop on mental health. The presenters studied and work in the field of psychology and within education and training. For me, a large foundational part of mental health is ensuring that our physical health – our bodies – are taken care of, supported and nurtured. In my experience, the two go hand-in-hand.
It seems quite strange to me when I see someone who is ‘qualified’ in a physical or mental health field or holds a position of importance or power, yet their body, movements and manner do not show signs of good health and vitality. It highlights there’s a greater problem stemming from our education on the topic, and what we have chosen to accept as true. No matter how much we ‘know’ about a subject, the body always has its own marker and gauge of whether it is working at its optimum vital level and in harmony within all other areas or not. This fact we cannot change.
On the morning of my professional development workshop I had quite a distance to drive in peak hour traffic, so I made sure that I gave myself enough time without rushing. I arrived 15 minutes early and was the first to arrive. I walked in, said hello to the two presenters and went to find a seat.
As I was choosing my seat, unpacking my belongings and setting them up just as I needed them to be for the next 8 hours – placing my drinks, pen, paper, books, computer etc. down – one of the presenters said to me, “Whoa, that’s healthy.” Immediately I knew he was referring to my vegie drink and not my herbal tea or the manner in which I set up my space, simply because it was green in colour.
Initially I felt a little awkward that my choice of drink, which was a normal for me, had been highlighted. So, at the time I smiled and replied “Mmm…” But this comment caused me to pause and got me thinking… I pondered on why his response was a “Whoa.” I recalled that I have come across this reaction quite a few times over the years with ‘healthy’ food and drink choices, either when I myself was making them or when others around me at work or in public were making them.
These types of comments are reactionary to a way of eating or drinking that is not so commonly seen or practised, thus highlighting the person who is looking after their body and consuming nutritious food as being ‘different.’ Immediately I questioned what our societal gauge is being set from. If I had come in with a sausage roll and cream bun, it is likely I would have got no comment, or perhaps one that was in favour of my food choice.
Let’s face it, making supportive food choices that nutritionally support the body is going against a current norm and way of how people commonly choose to eat in society today. We do not eat to nurture or hold our body in harmony – a fact that is shown in the continuing rise of non-communicable illness and disease rates today, such as diabetes.
If it is not common and even considered unusual for people in general to drink or eat something that is good for their bodies to a point that it stands out and gets labelled and highlighted as ‘healthy,’ then how far have we slipped away from what is true and natural for our bodies. I find it interesting that we even have this word ‘healthy’ and don’t just live as our bodies need us to live. It is a clear indicator that we base our living and vocabulary around looking after ourselves from a way that is not conducive to the true vitality of our bodies.
Why do we not seem to question the meals or food people are consuming that are clearly not supportive for the body, yet are very quick to identify those who make more supportive food choices? Imagine if people started speaking on behalf of the vitality of the body by publicly noting to other people, “Whoa, that’s really unhealthy.” I wonder if we would start to think twice about what we are putting in our bodies.
The fact is that more supportive food choices do stand out from the crowd. And this is simply because the norm, the majority, the crowd acceptably choose food that is not supportive to the body. BUT, what if the majority did eat in a way and manner that nourished and vitalised the body, allowing it to run at optimal level?
Why do we even have a perception of what ‘healthy’ is and why is it not just embedded into the way we live?
Our understanding, perception and definition of ‘being healthy’ today is actually only based on and comparable to, the very unhealthy lifestyle – the way the majority of society are choosing to live, eat, indulge in and over consume.
This to me is a type of rot when we look at the extent of the damage it does to our bodies, our perception of health, the pressure it places on our medical system and so on. The illness and disease our bodies are increasingly showing through our health statistics speak loudly of our current global choices… to the point that the definition of health in our English language dictionary is stated as “the state of being free from illness or injury.” (1) Why is health not defined as, “the body working in its true optimal and vital order, each part working in harmony and joy with all others”?
If we all naturally lived from the latter definition as being our norm, then the word ‘health’ and a definition for it would probably not exist, simply because this would just be the way it was. Caring for our bodies would be the norm.
Back to my professional development workshop and the comment from one of the presenters that started this line of pondering and blog . . . if I had the moment again to respond to his “Whoa, that’s healthy”, I probably would have replied –– “only relative to how we live today.”
By Johanna Smith, Ba Education, Diploma of Counselling, Esoteric Practitioner, Perth, Western Australia
References:
1.Oxford Dictionaries | English. (2018). health | Definition of health in English by Oxford Dictionaries. [online] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/health [Accessed 1 Aug. 2018].
Further Reading:
Eating Dis-orders
To Nourish or Bludgeon – How do we Use Food?
Living your own medicine
412 Comments
Vote provoking question Johanna. Can somebody be in true good mental health if they don’t have a vital body? I would say impossible, but then you also have to redefine what true good mental health is.
Why is health not defined as, “the body working in its true optimal and vital order, each part working in harmony and joy with all others”?
What I enjoy about this definition Johanna is that it gives permission for a responsive relationship with health that will be different for each and everyone of us.
Healthiness and vitality is a way of living life free from anything that is not love or not loving.
It sure is Zofia, I love how you have put it so simply.
Johanna, this is true and the reactions can feel like there is something wrong with being ‘healthy’, that is is not ‘normal’ and the reactions can make the person making the healthy choices feel alienated. I know at school it is the ‘norm’ to have lots of packet foods and sweet foods and that to have homemade, healthy foods stands out and from what I have observed mean that the children with the healthy lunch boxes can be picked on and singled out.
I remember this being the case many years ago when I was at primary school. We envied the kids who got jelly crystals or sweet treats in their lunch box. Now as a parent I would never think of sending such a snack to school.
Being healthy incorporates everything in our lives, not just the food we consume, but the quality of our movements, self care, language, expression and intentions. It is a complete package. The green drink is just one segment of a whole way of living.
The Whoa person may have also responded to the way you came in early, i.e. well prepared and how you set up your space but may not have known how to mention those items and therefore latched onto the conversation point that was available to him – the green colour of your drink.
Agreed. Sometimes we can’t put words to what we are feeling or noticing, so unused to doing so are we, but we can feel another’s quality probably well before we clock it with our head – the drink was simply something tangible he could connect with and express about.
It is always funny how irritated some people are, when they see me shopping food, as most of it is green and light and called “healthy”. Interesting that we live at a time, where buying natural , non processed food is being seen as alien and not normal, isn´t it?
It is very interesting Stefanie and does not really make sense as surely it is the most ‘natural’ thing to be doing! Yet somehow taking care of ourselves is a strange thing to be doing.
The way current trends are going it is soon going to be weird or unusual to be healthy as in not having one or more major health conditions or problems.
I think that if we got a random group of people together and got them to honestly declare what is going on for them in their bodies right now we would be surprised at how many of us have symptoms that we simply dismiss as normal, and something we just have put up with.
It’s weird for me too when people separate mental health from physical health – it’s rather like in the hospital you have someone looking at your lungs, someone else looking at your heart, and nurses looking after your immediate daily needs. We are all one being.
We do not educate, support and encourage people to reconnect to and honour our innate awareness as a guide in relationship to health as well as all other areas in life.
Instead everything in society promotes the idea that those labelled as ‘experts’ have the monopoly on truth of any situation. So we end up with rules and dogma, rights and wrongs, instead of honouring and encouraging a deepening understanding and relationship with life.
The is a big emphasis on preventative steps in healthcare but when they are promoted and delivered by those who are also not living in true health they are never going to be successful.
Any-thing that is delivered by someone whose body does not back it up is not going to be truly successful.
What if health is about vitality and not simply about not being sick?
Very good point, and I would say also that health or wellbeing is very much about the quality of connection that we feel inside which can be there even whilst going through an illness…
Great question and it comes down to what we set our marker of health at. If it is not having cancer or a terminal illness then we will accept anything else. If it is waking up full of vitality every day then we will not accept any less. So what we set as our benchmark and standard determines a lot and what we will then accept in our lives.
I know it is so much more powerful and authentic when you listen to someone speak about health and well-being that actually lives with health and well-being and you can easily tell this by observing them.
When we make the choice to self-love and continue with this, we enjoy a healthy way of living.
“If I had come in with a sausage roll and cream bun, it is likely I would have got no comment, or perhaps one that was in favour of my food choice.” Are we then not living in a poisonous society that does not support living in a way that is supporting of our body but one that is actually constantly awarding fighting our bodies?
It’s interesting to consider that many of us live in a ‘free country’, where we are supposedly allowed a freedom of choice in most aspects of our lives and yet if we look at things more precisely we can be constantly bombarded by our colleagues, the media, advertising, the pharmaceutical industry, bit corporations and, in this example, the mass irresponsibility of the majority.
Perhaps we have a seeming free choice because those who want to steer our choices feel they can easily manipulate those choices for their benefit. Our choices may be much more restricted if it would be more difficult to manipulate us.
Arriving 15 minutes early is healthy. Setting out your space is healthy. It isn’t just about what we eat.
Agree! A healthy lifestyle includes everything in life we choose- every moment either harms or heals. To hurry or giving your power away, sympathising , wanting to be liked, searching for an outcome, unloving way of communicating- the list is endless…All our choices define our wellbeing. That´s why many people get sick, although they are eating the “right” healthy food. It proofs the fact you are stating here, Otto!
Wow Johanna what a great blog you have written . . . “The illness and disease our bodies are increasingly showing through our health statistics speak loudly of our current global choices…” I am wondering why this statistics are not something the whole world is in discussion about! It seems that most of us have a blind eye at that point – therefore I very much appreciate that you have put your finger on it.
Even the definition of heath is bastardised all to keep our minds at ease with the ill choices that it continues to make.
This blog shows to me that it is not only about food choices that make people healthy but instead that it is about a way of living that is natural to the body and will tell you what to eat and what not. This is completely opposite to what society currently is doing as it tells us what we have to eat on billboards advertisements and in the media that is far from healthy and we all know it but choose to not listen to that inner knowing because we do not want to stand out but instead fit in to what generally is accepted as ‘normal’ – the norm.
Our perception of life is totally scewed and so our perception of health or any component of life can’t help but be totally off!
My impression of humanity is that we are having more and more niggling things, some times more serious issues and at times severe cases. And pretty much every one is experiencing at least one thing or another, although since most people put on a brave face, find ways of coping and say they are fine, we don’t get the real picture. Whenever one person opens up and shares about their health issues it is astonishing what everyone else starts to reveal.
We are fast approaching the moment when our true marker of health will be swallowed up by our warped understanding of this vital, joyful and empowering state of being. This is our true heritage and to me it seems we have sold out to a very poor cousin indeed if we regard health as an absence of disease. What about classifying Health as having oodles of energy, a robust immune system, bursting with enthusiasm and commitment to life, feeling open hearted and full of joy? That to me equals Health and feeling anything less needs some serious attention.
Great observations of the decline in our collective notions of true health which does include the whole. We have become so apt at compartmentalising some aspects over others that we don’t see the truth of our neglect until the body begins to shout loudly to wake us up.
This definition of health added in every dictionary and across newspapers worldwide would be a major step-up for very necessary change in humanity’s true health and wellbeing to be lived as a natural way of being.
“Why is health not defined as, “the body working in its true optimal and vital order, each part working in harmony and joy with all others”?”
It is interesting how people notice and judge their own choices relative to others, either to be inspired or merely judge.
What we call health has changed, meaning rapidly in the past few decades. We are adjusting our definitions where we should be adjusting our lifestyle. We may think that this will cover up the consequences, but we have been given an honest body that shows us relentlessly and literally to the end what our choices are.
Excellent point Carolien. We can change our definition of health as many times as we like – but that won’t change how the body responds. Thank goodness for that for otherwise we would be very lost indeed.
Actually, we can say that we do not know anymore what it is to be truly healthy as by all the bastardisation on its definition we have lost the true meaning and in particular its movements.
I agree we seem to be continually lowering our standards of health to make things look not so bad rather than maintaining a standard of health that is a basic right for all and asking the bigger questions as to why our health is declining and moving away from what we know is possible.
‘What we call health has changed’ but thank goodness what our bodies know to be health has not and will not ever change.
This exposes the process by which we erode the truth contained in language and words to fit us rather than holding them in integrity.
‘…we have been given an honest body that shows us relentlessly and literally to the end what our choices are.’ This pretty much sums up what most of humanity is choosing to ignore, instead going with the belief that we can feed and treat our bodies abysmally without consequence. But the body remains loving and true despite the abuse and will continue to offer up illness and disease as a means of clearing the rot we engage in and pretend not to feel.
What is actually truly healthy? When you go to a bookstore or looking at magazines, everyone is telling you something different. The only way to find out, what truly healthy is for you, is to know stillness in your body. From this place you know what you can eat and what you can´t eat to preserve it. Your body is the greatest marker of truth, when it is in its most natural state of being- in stillness.
“Whoa, that’s really unhealthy.” I really like that suggestion. I wonder if people would accept that as much as they judge the way someone eats in regard to their body. What they are actually avoiding is to feel, what they are consuming- talking about another´s choices and discussing it, keeps you busy to not feel how much you abuse your own body and how less you care.
‘the definition of health in our English language dictionary is stated as “the state of being free from illness or injury.” (1) Why is health not defined as, “the body working in its true optimal and vital order, each part working in harmony and joy with all others”?’ I love your question and suggestion for a new definition of health.
Recently I read one on eating disorder that really stayed with me because I feel the truth of it:
‘any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.’
What if we said true health lives in the quality of your movements? Then this whole world would be exposed for the racey, delusional mess it truly is.
Now that would change everything as we would start to see just how different our life is and could be when we introduce movement as part of health. But not just running or exercise, each and every movement.
A drink or a food that will be okay for us to eat one day may not feel true in our body the next. As we deepen our awareness about food we learn how to appreciate what we do eat and then it becomes important to understand that maybe one day what we are eating will no longer serve our bodies.
I recently had a similar experience with my dinner that I had cooked at work and one of the team making a joke that there was nothing decent on my plate worth eating except for all that healthy stuff. In that moment I went: hang on buddy I don’t judge or comment on your food, yet when I truly stopped and took stock was that really true. I know where I am at and my relationship with my body and love supporting it to the max. As you say, it is pretty much a contrast to a lot of people and the way they eat. Being able to let each other be where we are at and not pass judgement is critical for us all to be open to see that no one way is right or wrong. What I could sense is that when people see you eating healthy they feel exposed for what they eat.
Thanks, Johanna, for re-defining health here – “the body working in its true optimal and vital order, each part working in harmony and joy with all others”. It would seem that the majority do not even know what it would be like to have a vibrant, vital body, so accustomed have we become to a sluggish, exhausted and artificially stimulated state of being. This, of course, has an enormous impact on our mental health as well.
I agree Janet. I’m no biologist but I do appreciate logic. If you put toxins and destructive food in your body, you’re going to get poisonous and destructive thoughts in your mind.
Yes it’s somewhat ironic that the mind that thinks of itself as separate to the body is actually fed by it.
Someone commented on the contents of my supermarket trolley recently saying a similar thing “Wow, now thats a super food trolley if ever I saw one”. What was different in my own response was that I simply smiled and agreed with her without feeling any sense of awkwardness which I would certainly have felt in the past. Its great to fully claim this is how I eat and not feel I have to make excuses for it anymore, even if it is different to others or the accpeted norm.
The response of someone who has a healthy level of self-love Sandra – how awesome.
‘For me, a large foundational part of mental health is ensuring that our physical health – our bodies – are taken care of, supported and nurtured. In my experience, the two go hand-in-hand.’ there cannot be one without the other.
Absolutely, there will come a day when we understand that our mental health is mostly generated by our physical health. The quality of energy we choose is first in the body and then from that comes the movement, whether it be physical or thought.
What is accepted as normal is fast being shown to be toxic to the body, yet the choice to keep going to the toxicity is maintained all too often and used as a prop to get through life rather than feeling the truth of the choices. If we feel the truth of the impact on the body we will never go there again.
Well said Ariana. People want quick fixes so they go to the ‘toxicity’ yet it only achieves short-term relief and does not appreciate the long-term results.
Why people react to seeing someone making healthy choices will stay a mystery until we see things from a multidimensional point of view, in other words from the realisation that human life is run by an incarnated wanton spirit inside of us who knows it is eternal and which has a long track record of trashing its current human body knowing full well that it comes back to a new one when it needs to.
“Our perception of health” – is based on the quotient of love we give to ourselves to give us the quality of our livingness and in this our vitality.
Johanna, it is interesting that making healthy food and drink choices causes such a reaction, when as you say coming in with an unhealthy food item or drink is considered ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ and will not raise an eyebrow. It shows that what we have accepted as the ‘norm’ is foods and drinks that are actually harmful for our bodies and what we reject and react to is foods and drinks that actually support and nurture our bodies. This highlights that as a society we are not supporting or nurturing ourselves in the way that we could.