Wellbeing

Reflections on health, vitality, therapies, and healing

Perspectives on Mind-Body Health and Wellbeing

The stress-illness connection and wellbeing

Chronic stress can have a significant negative impact on both your physical health and overall wellbeing.

Prolonged exposure to stress hormones like cortisol can weaken the immune system, making you more susceptible to illnesses and infections. It can also contribute to the development of serious health conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression. In addition, chronic stress can affect your mental health by causing anxiety, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and insomnia.

Furthermore, it can hinder your ability to make healthy lifestyle choices, leading to poor diet habits, lack of exercise, and increased reliance on unhealthy coping mechanisms like alcohol or drugs. Recognising the signs of chronic stress and taking proactive steps to manage it through relaxation techniques, exercise, therapy, or other strategies is important for maintaining physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing in the long run.

The problems of simply taking control of your mind

A fairly common approach to stress reduction is to change how you interact with your mind in order to create better habits, and these in turn will improve your overall wellbeing.

So there are many therapies which focus upon increasing awareness of your thoughts. This approach is based upon the underlying presumption that once you understand the activities of your mind, you will be able to change them.  Whilst this approach can be beneficial for many people, it also has some limitations.  

Firstly, developing awareness of mental activity does not automatically correlate with change.  There is a gap in the middle here which does not automatically resolve itself.  This can be seen in the case of highly intelligent people, who are able to talk extensively about psychological issues, yet who still struggle with taking control over their own lives.

Secondly, when you take a dualistic approach which is based on the mind and body being separate, then you are only addressing half of the problem.  You also need to work with releasing the effects of stress from the rest of the body. This is where somatic work can be particularly helpful, and where holistic therapies and bodywork can prove invaluable.

But there is another element here which is often omitted, and that is to also evaluate all the other aspects of life which create chronic stress. For example, how do you solve the problems which are due to cultural, political, or collective issues? What about the contradiction between different approaches towards health and healing? Or what happens in situations where you are exposed to long -term illness or suffering? Or if you have a terminal diagnosis and are facing death? In each of these situations, simply trying to change your mindset is likely to be ineffective and you need to look deeper.

Reflections on Health and Wellbeing

Coaching for Embodied Wisdom and Wellbeing

Clarifying your own philosophy for health

Stress occurs in the gap between your lived reality and how you want your world to be.  This is usually the case, even when applied in circumstances where external events are causing a reactionary response.

If you feel that you are stuck in a particular area of your health, and you are struggling to find some emotional peace, you could very well be encountering one of the issues described above. Where there is a resulting conflict between your beliefs, desires, and experiencing the world as it is. Even if you are not consciously aware of what the problem is right now.

The solution is to work through your own philosophy for health, and to clarify the points which are causing you to feel stuck. There is likely to be a point of conflict where your beliefs are not aligning well with your reality.  Once you find this point, and work through it, you will finally be able to get the resolution that you are looking for.

This is not a process which is always easy, especially where there are intense issues to be addressed - like moving beyond trauma, or loss, or living with chronic illness or disability.

But by exploring your situation, it is usually possible to make some progress towards improved wellbeing. Even if your intention is simply to reduce your stress levels to a point where you feel more comfortable, or if you want to learn how to live better with a chronic health condition.

This is a process which lies on a spectrum - from simple stress reduction, through to exploring existential concerns which impact your health and wellbeing.  The journey is a personal one, and you only need to reflect on life to the extent to which it feels right for you.

Coaching for Optimum Health

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