What is Health, and is it even achievable?
Health is a journey, not a destination.
Health is such a complicated, elusive topic and with it having become a “buzzword” in today’s media, it’s even harder to tease out what health REALLY is and if it’s actually something we can achieve.
Let’s simplify things quickly. Health is more than the absence of disease. Just because you don’t have diabetes, autoimmune diseases, or asthma, or frequent colds and flus doesn’t mean you have good health. It means you don’t have disease. But HEALTH is the presence of something. Health is having the energy to do all the things you want to do, sleeping soundly at night, laughing with your friends and family, and pursuing your dreams without thinking about your digestive upset that will come from long days or migraines that could attack at any second. Health is the body’s ability to quickly recover from minor illness, return itself to homeostasis, and keep us doing the things we love to do. The things that set our hearts on fire, give us more time with those we love and remind us of our purpose.
More important than all of that, is that health looks different for every single person. There is no one-size-fits-all.
Chinese medicine provides us with a framework to see health in every season of life, in every expression of nature that exists in us as people, and in doing so our approach at Sheridan Wellness Collective is individually tailored to each person with no two plans being the same. Chinese medicine is all about finding the balance of yin and yang in every aspect of our lives within the context of who we are and what we value. *Yin is the dark, slow, restful, quiet, substantial, introspective aspect and Yang is the bright, airy, active, extroverted aspect.
The last thing I want to say about “health” is that it encompasses every aspect of our lives. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the “wheel of health” or “8 dimensions of well-being,” but that is a good image of how each aspect of our lives is impacting our health and overall well-being. We can eat the most nutritious, “clean” diet imaginable, but if we don’t exercise and have significant financial stress our health is going to suffer. Health is about finding balance in all aspects of our lives, including in our spirituality (this could look like going to church twice a week for some people, and look like coming to terms with being atheist and what that means in that person’s life for someone else), in our finances, environmental health (reducing toxin exposure, getting outside, etc), and being able to find a sense of belonging and purpose somewhere whether that be socially or at work or with some volunteer projects.
The point is that health encompasses our entire being. It is not merely the absence of disease. Finding health is a journey of constantly assessing our lives and making shifts here and there that better align our actions with our values and desires. It is achievable, but it takes some patience and effort.
I am passionate about helping people to rid themselves of the symptoms of disease and make changes in their lives that will support the flourishing of health. If you’re interested in working together or have questions, feel free to fill out the contact form, email me, or call or text!
