Wellness is the complete integration of body, mind, and spirit,
the realization that everything we do, think, feel, and believe
has an effect on our state of well-being.
Greg Anderson

Perspectives on Health & Wellness focuses on the concept of wellness. This is the definition of wellness from the World Health Organization: “Wellness is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

What Is the Problem?

Wellness challenges the assumptions, methods, and claims of conventional medicine. The terms "conventional" and "wellness" are broad terms used to describe two different approaches to health treatment.

Conventional medicine is fragmented into treatments by highly trained specialists who concentrate on particular problems of body or mind. Conventional medicine and psychiatry identify and treat a wide array of specific disorders with specific remedies and procedures, such as drugs, radiation, and surgery.

Perhaps you have experienced going to several specialists to be treated for specific problems. The responsibility for finding the right solution—or solutions—for your health problems depends on the diagnoses, prescriptions, and remedies prescribed by professionals who are experts on specific problems.

The fundamental problem with all of this is that you are not treated as a whole person. Instead, you are identified by your specific problems. Even more significantly, you aren't the one making the choices about your life. You are expected to follow orders given to you by specialists who do not treat you as a whole human being.

The Life-Changing Question

How would your health change if you considered your health from the perspective of wellness rather than sickness? In contrast to conventional medicine, wellness medicine regards you as a whole person who has greater responsibility for your health and wellbeing than simply following doctors’ orders.

In broadest terms, wellness medicine can include a wide range of definitions such as “functional medicine, alternative medicine, holistic medicine, and integrative medicine.”  Wellness goes beyond diagnoses of specific medical problems, to consider all aspects of your life.

Here are three definitions of wellness from three different sources:

Wellness.com, Inc. defines wellness in terms of “mental, physical, spiritual, social and lifestyle.”

National Wellness identifies Six Dimensions of Wellness: “emotional, occupational, physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual

Global Wellness Day includes "holism, balance, self-responsibility, positive and proactive."

In other words, there are no hard and fast definitions of wellness. Whatever the specific definitions used, the unifying concepts are:

• We are whole beings.
• Wellbeing apples to every part of our lives.
• We are responsible for making changes to create wellness.

The life-changing question is: How can you create wellness in your life?

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