Wellness

How do you feel today?  Are you happy?  Sad?  Full of life and energy?  Or are you full of aches and pains and really grumpy?  What does wellness actually mean?

Whilst wellness can mean one thing to one person and something else to another, the term ‘wellness’ is generally used to mean a healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit that results in an overall feeling of well-being.  It can also be described as the constant, conscious pursuit of living life to its fullest potential.  It is a state that combines health and happiness, as well as an active process of becoming aware of, and making choices toward, a more successful and rewarding life.  (Success is defined here as being in balance in all areas of your life).

While personal trainers focus mostly on exercise, Wellness Coaching goes beyond personal training.  Wellness Coaches/Practitioners look at the big picture, working with clients to develop healthier lifestyles by looking at the obstacles that stand in the way of success. This is often more of a collaborative experience, with the coach/practitioner encouraging the client to come up with their own goals and ideas.

To explain, as a multi-disciplined Personal Wellness Practitioner, rather than just working with the ‘presenting symptoms’ I will work with the ’whole you’.  This often means looking beyond the presenting symptoms to discover and uncover where you are really at, to find out what is really going on.  For example, if you are overweight and are unhappy with your weight and you tell me you want to lose weight that is great!  It gives us a starting point.  Now we can work together to enable you to simply lose weight, or we can work together to determine why you are overweight in the first place; then we can work together to address the cause which in turn enables you to release that unwanted extra weight, and more importantly, too keep it off for good.  Which would you rather have happen?

Let´s just take a look at the meaning of wellness again, specifically ‘healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit´.  Those few words can be also be taken to read ‘heal thy balance of the mind, body and spirit’.  To work with only one area leads to imbalance which why it is important that as a coach/practitioner I work with the whole you.

As human beings we spend a lot of our life more as human doings. We are forever ´doing´ -something; whether it be working, playing, socially interacting – with another individual or a group. We are constantly ‘on the go’ – working towards this, working towards that – always in pursuit; forever chasing that which eludes us.  And it eludes us simply because we are always ‘chasing after it’.  What is this it?

People often use the phrase “I´ll be alright when I get there”, or, “I´m getting there” only to find they are getting nowhere.  Maybe that´s because they are now here!  Right here in the here and now – only they cannot see it!

By always ‘doing’ and not spending time just ‘being’ we get out of balance.  When we get out of balance we begin to feel unwell, we get aches and pains, we become ill, physically and or mentally or emotionally.  We struggle on life becomes a chore instead of a joy.  Feeling well and feeling good is our birth right, but we give it up and only a few reclaim it.  We give up that feeling of wellness as though we do not deserve it.  But we do, you do!  So how do we reclaim it?  How do we get the balance back in our lives?

To achieve a state of wellness it is important to work on its determinants. In other words this means developing a better understanding of the concept of health incorporating the physical, the mental, and the spiritual: that is to say, the whole you.  Get these in balance and other determinants such as family, wealth, healthy practices, the environment, social support and leisure seem to fall into place with much more ease.

In other words ‘heal thy mind, body and spirit’.  How?  To answer that question it is important to understand what happens when one is out of balance.

Being out of balance usually results in ‘pain’ in some way shape or form – maybe it is physical , maybe it is emotional, perhaps it is both, either way a good starting point would be to gain some element of control over this pain without the need or use of drugs.  Over use of pain relieving drugs causes havoc on the physical body; especially on the internal organs.

Once your pain is eradicated or at least, is under your control, your mind is freer and able to concentrate more, your physical body becomes easier to move and your spirit is lightened.

As a Personal Wellness Practitioner it is my job to enable you to work with your pain, be that emotional or physical pain, to control it rather than have it control you. My role is to re-empower you to engage your body´s own healing mechanism so you can indeed ‘heal thy mind, body and spirit’.

To find out more about how we can work together to enable you to be the best that you can be, please do not hesitate to contact me – send me an email to info@drewryder.com

If we take the I out of illness and replace it with WE it becomes wellness