What is health?
Health has many facets. There is so much more to health than being free from illness. We all want to feel healthy, whether that involves having more energy, being grounded or feeling fitter. What health means differs from person to person. There is no universal plan for achieving better health and wellbeing. While there are ways of improving your health, what helps you feel healthier is entirely unique to you.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
This definition has not been amended since 1948 and has been criticised for many reasons: limited value, exclusion and focusing on disease absence, rather than disease management. Something we emphasise is that the road to healing and health is a journey, not a destination. What should be considered here is the ability to adapt and manage physical, mental and social conditions throughout life. Such conditions enable you to realise your potential as an individual. They also fluctuate across our lifetime.
The circle of life
A more comprehensive definition of health would consider all aspects of a person’s life. At Ora Collective, we refer to these aspects as the ‘circle of life’ or the ‘Ora Circle’. This involves looking at health holistically and not just from a physical perspective. We have established 12 key pillars of a person’s life as part of the Ora Circle. They include:
Career
Relationships
Health
Home Environment
Spirituality
Mind-Body Connection
Creativity
Education
Finances
Home Cooking
Community
Joy
Each area is as important as the other. We believe that in order to feel truly healthy, each segment of the circle of life should be in balance. Of course, the areas will become out of sync at various moments in time but there is no need to stress about it. That is life and always remember that the quest to health and healing is a continuous journey.
Once you realise that one or many parts of your Ora Circle have become disconnected, you can work on re-establishing the connection. For example, you may be happy with your career but upon closer inspection, you realise that you are not cooking a lot, you are stressed about your finances and/or you feel disconnected from your body. A huge accomplishment is acknowledging this in the first place. It then allows you to focus your energy into those areas and bring a state of equilibrium into your life. It is the first step in working towards optimal health.
What health means to you
You can be free of disease but maybe you are underwhelmed with your career, lonely within your community or unhappy with relationships in work. Have you become distracted from your purpose and goals? There can be times in life where you feel that something is missing yet you are listening to experts, reading their advice but unsure of what is really worth doing. That’s because the things that help you get healthier are entirely individual. There are guidelines you can follow and techniques you can try that have been proven to help improve your wellbeing (yoga, mindfulness, journaling) but one or more segments of your Ora Circle could be out of sync. Once you look deeper into the areas of your life, you realise things you might never have noticed before. This realisation helps you to set personal goals and work towards them in order to achieve better health.
We would love to invite you to fill out the ‘Ora Circle’ and identify areas of your life that are lacking attention. It’s a short but powerful exercise that helps you to check in with yourself. How are you really doing? What does health mean to you? Are you feeling “healthy”? Let us know how you get on.