Skip to content The 8 Practices and the Natural Laws of Life
Finding balance – Understanding growth
Health is often understood as the absence of disease or sickness. While this definition is valid, it lacks the comprehensiveness of a broader approach. So start assessing your holistic health and wellness on a wider spectrum than just avoiding diseases.
Holistic health and wellness is sustained by one indivisible tendency: having the highest and best interest of the whole organism. As we study the eight pillars: physical, nutritional, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, financial, and environmental we start to be aware, and understand, where changes are needed in our mode of living. In my studies on Human Life, there are also Natural Laws (philosophies) that address the effects and the relative affects that these inherent laws have on maintaining a healthier organism.
The pillars will give you a sense of how to work toward your optimal wellness, but it’s by no means prescriptive. The path to wellness is not one-size-fits-all. The journey is unique and different for each individual.
Your biology, personality, and environment will determine what wellness means to you. That’s why your approach should be personalized. The common thread for everyone is that wellness requires a holistic approach.
The Journey begins now!
Holistic Wellness
Body, Mind, Soul. There is a connection
Wellness is a modern word with ancient roots. The key tenets of wellness as both preventive and holistic can be traced back to ancient civilizations from the East (India, China) to the West (Greece, Rome). Holistic Wellness considers the Whole Self in seeking out ailments; the negative consequences of neglect to a healthy state of being. We focus on the causes and not the symptoms when designing an individual’s self-care goals.
Holistic Wellness informs us of the benefits of healthy living, self-help, self-care, fitness, nutrition, diet, and spiritual practices that have become a flourishing wellness movement in the 21st century.
Wellness is an individual pursuit—we have self-responsibility for our own choices, behaviors, and lifestyles—but it is also significantly influenced by the physical, social and cultural environments in which we live.
Wellness is distinguished by an interactive state of being: all systems go! It is associated with an active process of awareness and making choices that lead to an outcome of optimal health and longevity.
As one of the greatest minds in the Holistic movement, Dr. Herbert Shelton once said, “The Whole is Greater than its Parts.”
Meditation, Motion, and Mindfulness (M3)
One grounding moment deserves another
Meditation is meant to be a daily practice where we can calm a complex human system promoting a more awakened, focused, and balanced thought process. In the long run, it lets us establish new, less reactionary pathways to our unique relationships with Life. Through Mindfulness, a skill we learn to use on a consistent basis, we are aware of what surrounds us, how we feel, and what we feel, enabling an awareness of the Self free from the ego and all of the controls of mind-thought interpretation and judgment.
Motion comes into play to stimulate energy flow and heighten mental awareness. Sustained physical activity can also outsmart the brain and inhibit the taskmaster (the prefrontal cortex) and influence a state of rational freethinking. Whether it is Yoga or a treadmill run we focus on the physical motion, we tune in to our body, and our breath and we shift into the present moment, from feeling busy and distracted to feeling capable and resilient and improving flexibility, muscle tone, and strength.
M3 is an ideal trifecta to arrive at an intention, a point of awareness, where the past or future is neutral and we are allowed to pay attention to what is happening within us (or outside of us), with a non-reactive perspective and stronger more positive self-esteem.
