Wholeness = Wellness

"The part can never be well unless the whole is well."

- Plato

Winter Wellness

Wellness: Having the resources (physical, mental, spiritual) to meet ordinary life challenges every day; and having the resources to recover and heal from extraordinary challenges like injury, illness, and loss. To be well, we need to support our body’s innate drive for balance (homeostasis). Whether it is biochemical, nutritional, emotional, social, environmental or spiritual.

How do we do this? Through self-awareness, prevention, and self-responsibility.

Awareness: learning to listen to my body’s needs. To rest when I need rest, to eat (wholesome foods) when I need to eat. To be social and active at times and seek solitude at times. To learn to listen to the feeling state, which often makes itself known through sensations in our heart and our gut.

Prevention: how I live my life today provides the building blocks for my body 7-10 years from now. The old saying an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure holds true more than ever. We can no longer depend on job-sponsored health insurance to pay for that pound of cure. We are feeling it directly in our own back pocket, and it is costing more and more. Wellness means planning for my future, and not taking my health for granted.

Responsibility: We must put ourselves back in the driver’s seat and take control of our own health. It is no longer good enough to assign our health to doctors and other health professionals. We alone are the experts of our bodies. Who knows your body better than you? Turning over the controls to others’ leads to depression, the state we sink to when we feel we no longer have any control over our own life.

Winter Wellness: Each season brings its own special health needs. We want to hunker down in the winter, and sleep more with the darker nights. It is certainly a season to get more rest, support the immune system, and not stretch our health dollars too far out of reach. Colder days discourage thirst, but we really need to stay hydrated to protect ourselves from colds and opportunistic viruses. The body will stay strong with hearty warm soups and stews, rich with winter vegetables like roots and squash.

The solitude of Winter gives us time to dream and create the coming year’s projects, letting new ideas emerge from last year’s activities, failures and successes; however, we also need to reach out and maintain social connection for mental health. Lack of sunlight at this latitude leads to chronic Vitamin D depletion. Oral supplementation is practically mandatory, as Dr. Tom Archie demonstrated in a meta-study he performed here. Low Vitamin D levels in the body compromises the immune system in many ways and has links to heart disease, depression, and many cancers.

The dark cold days of winter often discourage us from getting enough time in Nature and taking in fresh air, instead inhaling the concentrated stale air in our highly sealed homes and offices. Making the commitment to get outside for a short 15 minute walk will bring fresh oxygen into the lungs, heart and body. It helps us stay connected to the seasons which helps keep our spirits up. Walking (or any active exercise) boosts our metabolism and keeps us from adding unwanted pounds over the winter months. Find a winter sport to embrace that supports your fitness level, and experience the beauty of our wondrous lake and mountain environment.

Each moment of our lives we are making choices. What to do, what to think, whether to take action or inaction. We always have the power to choose something that is better for us, or worse, whether it is our relationships, our job, our diet, or our attitude.

The Winter Wellness Festival returns to Lake Almanor this year with activities slated for March 12-15, 2009. Marking the 4th year of the event, this year’s Festival theme is Health & Hope: Simplicity, Sustainability and Gratitude.

Contact: Chester-Lake Almanor Chamber of Commerce at info@LakeAlmanorArea.com, 530-258-2426

c. 2009, Jan Davies, CWHE All Rights Reseserved.

Create a Bigger Picture of Health

© John W Travis M.D., M.P.H.

Health is a function of participation. - Werner Erhard

The "participation" that Erhard talks about is participation in relationships and participation in work that serves a vision or a context larger than your own personal survival. Your health and wellness are by-products of a life that is focused and ripe with meaning, full of generous engagement with others in the creation of a world that works for everybody. This insight is not new. Wise women and men throughout the ages have demonstrated an elegant unconcern for their own problems (physical or circumstantial) combined with a diligent commitment to the wellbeing of others. Such an orientation results in an observable radiance, a tangible strength of character and profound wisdom, as well as a remarkable ability for compassion even in the direst situations. Think of Mother Teresa. Think of the current Dalai Lama. Think of someone whom you admire.

People in Western industrialized nations have a great luxury of time and money to devote to personal health. But it may be beneficial to ask whether these populations are truly healthier and happier than other cultures as a result. Are we really well in body, mind, and spirit?

Obsession with health can be every bit as wasteful of your human potential as ignorance and carelessness can be. Focusing primarily on self-health may be endlessly fascinating, but it can also be tremendously isolating, exorbitantly expensive, and outrageously time consuming. Ultimately, overconcern for personal health keeps people imprisoned in a tiny cell, limiting the vast possibilities of creative expression and loving relationships that await them. The equation is really basic: in serving others, we serve ourselves. Or put another way: Creating a bigger vision and living in support of it, we put our personal concerns in perspective, and we are subsumed and fulfilled by a greater need, a greater possibility, a greater love.

Reaching Out
"People helping people" is a tried and true strategy for moving out of and beyond personal pain and suffering. You are not alone with whatever diseased condition you may be struggling with, even though it may often feel that way. People are typically ashamed of their weaknesses and vulnerability and fearful of more pain, all of which feeds their loneliness and isolation. Yet when someone opens a door by showing friendship or offering a hand of assistance, especially if they have walked the same path of pain or disease, that help can be tremendously beneficial, drawing you out of your closed world and inviting you into the larger world with others who share a common vulnerability.

Service to others in need can be a powerful remedy for your own pain or sense of alienation. There is relief in putting your own drama aside, for however long, in order to touch, with understanding, the life of another.

Few people can fail to generate a self-healing process when they become genuinely involved in healing others. . . . Selflessness is the greatest weapon in integrating and aiding the self. - Theodore Isaac Rubin, MD

The best healers are often those who know illness intimately from their own experience.

Moving beyond Identification
To identify with something is to incorporate that thing (be it an object, a person, a job, a role, a thought, an action, a feeling, or a series of symptoms) within your definition of who you are. It’s funny, but most people don’t realize how closely their self-definition depends on a particular identification until that identification is challenged in some way. For example, people become identified with their jobs. When they lose their job, they lose their self-esteem.

When you are ill, illness tends to permeate your world, whether it is a simple cold or a chronic condition. Having asthma or having arthritis can easily become "being the woman with asthma" or "being the guy with arthritis." And you may come to identify yourself with that illness. You might use it, and abuse it, to judge yourself or to manipulate others. Some folks believe that illness or disease is some form of punishment. When they are sick, therefore, they feel guilty. They feel unloved and unlovable. They compound an already aggravated situation with negativity and self-judgment. To align with a bigger context of health means refusing to use illness or disease in this way.

Next time you find yourself "under the weather" or experiencing discomforting symptoms, watch the way your mind works. Illness can provide self-understanding, if you don’t get stuck in it. Pay attention to what you identify with. Self-observation is the first and most crucial step in breaking unproductive habits about your health, like blaming or berating yourself, other people, or circumstances for your condition, or thinking that because you are ill you are somehow a failure.

Observation without self-judgment is the key. Seeing clearly what your mind is up to, especially when it is caught in a loop of negative feedback, will teach you to simply move forward, regardless of the mind’s chatter.

Open to Prayer
Some people pray as a means of seeking comfort in difficult times. Others view prayer as a type of communion with a source of love or with the mystery that surrounds their lives. Because prayer, by its very definition, connects you with a higher power, or universal source, or deep innate wisdom, it can encourage a more expansive view of life. With prayer, the gift of health may be seen in a new perspective, which prizes health but does not assign it ultimate importance. The old adage, "If you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything," simply isn’t true. There are values more transcendent and meaningful than personal health.

Prayer can also serve as a means of expressing your interrelatedness with others. Recent research indicates that people who are prayed for by others, even by people they don’t know, receive benefit in the form of fewer complications in surgery and faster healing time. Science may question such studies and the efficacy of prayer for a long time. What is unquestionable, however, is what it does for you. When you direct care and attention outside yourself toward another person’s wellbeing, when you unite yourself with others in the commonality of shared pain and shared humanity, there is no doubt that you are healthier for it.

Expanding Your Context
Here are a couple of ways to carry the bigger picture of health even further.

* Spend some quiet time, an hour if possible, in which you simply contemplate and/or write about the ideas presented above. For instance, what do you think about the statement, "Health is a function of participation"? What do you believe about the old adage, "If you've got your health, you’ve got everything"?

* Make a phone call to a friend or relative who is currently ill or dealing with some chronic condition. As you listen, silently support, love, and pray for the person without trying to solve any problems or without demanding anything for yourself. Just be there. Notice if this activity affects the way in which you view your own health concerns.
http://healthy.net/scr/column.asp?id=519

Simply Well by John W. Travis, MD, & Regina Sara Ryan. Copyright 2001. Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA. www.tenspeed.com John W. Travis, M.D., M.P.H.,Wellness Workbook with Sara Regina Ryan (Ten Speed Press). The online version of the Wellness Inventory may be accessed by individuals at (www.WellPeople.com) and licensed by organizations (www.WellnessInventory.net).

Holistic Counseling may play beneficial role in Alzheimer's

From Counseling Today, March 2008, cover page article, Untapped Potential by Jonathan Rollins

"Although the study and treatment of (Alzheimer's dementia) has largely been the purview of medicine, as information about this disorder has emerged, a clear role for counseling has taken shape, " Douthit* wrote in an article for the Spring 2007 issue of ADULTSPAN Journal, published by the Association for Adult Development and Aging, a division of the American Counseling Association. "Interventions across the life span that address stress, depression management, social integration, spirituality and other targets of holistic wellness such as diet and exercise hold much promise for delaying or circumventing the cognitive disabilities associated with (Alzheimer's dementia)."

*Kathryn Douthit is a counselor with a background in biomedical sciences, with an interest in Alzheimer's disease and gerontology. She is chair adn associate professor of counseling and human development at the Univ. of Rochester.

STAYING HEALTHY TIPS - spring cleaning for the whole person!

In spite of the worldly and personal challenges we all face at this time,
we can be nourished and healed by Nature. In "10 Tips for Spring Cleaning" Elson M. Haas, M.D. offers you practical suggestions for getting your life in order.
1. Become Current in your Life in this inspiring season.
2. Look at your personal relationships and see how they affect you and how you affect them.
3. Choose three habits that inhabit your life.
4. Clean and organize your home.
5. Get outdoors and exercise.
6. Look at your dietary choices.
7. Next look at your Emotional and Spiritual aspects.
8. Do some Cleansing or Detox Program for 1-3 weeks this Spring.
9. Look at your Nutritional Supplements.
10. Make your Overall Plan and Commitments.

Check out the complete details of this great list of healthy tips at:
http://healthy.net/scr/column.asp?id=507

Elson M. Haas, MD is founder & Director of the Preventive Medical Center of Marin (since 1984), an Integrated Health Care Facility in San Rafael, CA and author of many books.

Copyright Elson M. Haas, MD, 2003 All Rights Reserved

Anyone may subscribe to Staying Healthy Tips at the website, www.elsonhaas.com or send an e-mail message to subscribe@elsonhaas.com

Whole Health Education - holistic health information counseling

The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Hippocrates
How would you like to...
-be listened to in a deeply respectful way, with unconditional acceptance?
-understand the cause and effect of disease and "the big picture of health®"?
-have personalized health research information so you may enjoy better patient-doctor communication and better health?
-have the knowledge you need to control your healthcare management and prevent disease?

Whole Health Education is a holistic health information model which provides:

...an understanding of the big picture of health®, the whole picture of health®, which includes the physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and spiritual aspects of our lives, and the impact they have on our health, well-being, and happiness.

...a relationship-centered, shared-decision-making process which invites the individual to participate in their own healing and self management process, through informed choices and options. Both the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has identified guidelines for the practice of health care in all settings, which include: "patients at the center of their healthcare decision making; care for the whole person; and evidenced-based health education" as key guidelines.

...an understanding of how stress and stress adaptation influence health, wellness and disease outcomes.

...personalized research information, making available the most current scientific and medical data including integrative medicine references.

No prescription is more valuable than knowledge.
C. Everett Koop, MD, former Surgeon General of the U.S.

Janis Davies, CWHE
Certified Whole Health Educator
Upstairs Natural Health & Day Spa
Chester, CA
(530) 258-0377, ext. 2