Wellness – Do you know what it is?
It is the alternation between the polarities in life; between walking and sleeping, working and relaxing, outside and inside, breaking down and building up. The more easily we are able to self-regulate and find balance between these polarities, the more”well” we are likely to feel. Wellness, then, can be seen as a state that is never static, but is instead forever changing, adapting, responding.
If wellness is a matter of finding this mid-point or equilibrium, then illness can be seen as a process whereby our balance or self-regulation is altered; a point at which there exists a struggle to regain equilibrium, where there now is disease.
Wellness also describes the rhythm between these polarities: of being awake and asleep, breathing in and breathing out, dilation and contraction. Rhythm is thus the bearer of life.
For many pathological processes present in human beings – processes where healthy balance may be compromised – there is an array of correspinding components in nature, which can, through natural processes, trigger healing or provoke a self-regulating response. At Weleda, their view is that in many cases the human body has the power to heal itself – it just needs a little help from nature, and the promotion of wellness or staying ‘well’ through connection with nature is their purpose.
We can consider the picture of health in several different ways. A conventional way to consider health or wellness is to focus on different systems of the body in isolation. For example, the gastrointestinal system, the respiratory system, the reproductive system, etc. Another way to describe a picture of health is from a threefold perspective – and this is one of the ways Weleda approach natural wellness.
More about the threefold system in the next blog.
