Health - Body, Mind & Soul

Now a days, we often hear so much about how our overall health relates to the Body, Mind and Soul. What does it really mean? We know, we need to have a fit body for good health and a clear mind for better mental health. What kind of health would then our Soul refer to? Let us first try to understand what health is.

What is Health?

When should we call ourselves healthy? If we can run nonstop for 2km or may be 5 or 10 km/miles, or if we can pull up a 50 Kg or 80 kg weight. Or may-be if we are not hooked on to any of the daily medications like BP, Cholesterol, Thyroid, etc. So, is good health just absence of a disease? What do we call ourselves when we are with slightly high sugar levels, or borderline blood pressure, i.e. when these conditions may not have yet identified as a disease? Are we healthy or not healthy? Confused?

Let us try thinking the other way, may be that is easier - when do we call ourselves unhealthy?

Am I unhealthy if I look fat but my BMI is not yet in the obese range, am I unhealthy if my digestion is weak or I’m constipated but not ‘yet’ prescribed to a medicine or am I unhealthy if I have pre-diabetes but not yet diabetic? Does it mean that when I have a known ‘illness’ I’m unhealthy, but otherwise I’m healthy just before that threshold gets hit?

I’m sorry if I confused you, but it is confusing when we come to think of it deeply. It seems our system has tried defining measurables thresholds about our body to label it as healthy or unhealthy, incidentally which also keeps changing over time with studies. Hope you understand the point I'm trying to make. There are a lot of greys between the healthy & non-healthy. That is grey is where we can work on self to not allow our health to go black.

How do we know then, are we healthy? May be real health is how we feel inside? The animals know it, why not us? Unfortunately, in current world we are so occupied that we don’t have time for this. Let us first understand the three key health pillars - Body, Mind and Soul.

Body

The human body has not gone under much evolutionary changes since many million years. We have not grown or lost much of organ (like our tails). (And Darwin’s theory is still debated whether we are really an evolution from Monkeys). It is almost the same body which we had used to hunt animals & gather food as an early man. Our body is hence used to the physical endurances it had to perform to survive in such environment. Our environment however has drastically changed especially in the last two to three thousand years, even more rapidly in the last 50-80 years. Today’s material luxuries were not imagined by even the greatest kings of the old times, and we now have them in our homes as basic necessities. World seems to be moving towards more and more comfort which our ancient body may not be so used to.

Humans seems to have adapted very fast on the surface but is the same old body at the core. Our food is becoming more processed & chemically enhanced, and we don’t have to put effort in eating or gathering it. Almost any type of food can be made available at any time today, unlike old times when we could only get it after a kill or harvested.

Our stress causers are now our worries, the stress at home or work environment, social issues, emotional breakdowns rather than the ancient fighting or running stress from animals & environment. Any stress immediately changes the biology of our body thereby stopping functions like digestion, immune system, etc which typically returns to normal after danger passes. But long-term stress keeps our body tight & active in a ‘fight or flight mode’ thereby giving lower priority to important activities like repairing, cleaning, immunity, digestion, nutrient absorption etc. Even our Environment has more toxins, viruses/bacteria, etc than before. And slowly with age our body tends to deteriorate faster with multiple diseases and difficulty in movements.

Our body is what we have made it today by our routine & actions. But we now know, that by just keeping the body healthy, doesn’t make us healthy. We have seen many cases recently where a person with perfectly healthy body succumbed, for no clear reason, just heart failure or a stroke, implying that there are many more things at play than just healthy body. Let’s now understand about the role our mind.

Mind

What is mind, is it our brain or an organ in brain or something else? We commonly understand that our mind is probably some entity in our brain which makes us a unique human. All our thoughts, emotions, and complete personality seems to be what our mind create. It is so wonderful that even though we are just a spec in the Universe but it makes us feel the centre of it. May-be it could be thought of as a combination of our brain-intellect, how we think and execute decision and heart-emotions, the way we perceive others, experiences and the possible action. It is not what we have been born with but mostly what we have built or experienced in our lifetime.

When we are born, we are a clean slate, we only have & understand basic needs of our body. Eventually as we grow and learn, we start building our mind based on our experiences with the environment including the people around us. Mind is a very essential component of us, but how does it relate to health?

Fortunately, we have now become more aware about the need for mental health. Olden times where the science typically measure mental health with hard problems like madness, autism, etc had horrific treatments like electric shocks, making a hold in head, exorcism, etc. Fortunately, science understood the importance of mental health and the branch of psychology was created in early 19th century. Stress has now been seen as a pandemic and numerous help centres & hospital divisions are there to take care of it. Even the schools provide help through counsellings to kids.

Since a long-time science still looks at mind and body as separate components and has separate treatments for them. With the newer discoveries in modern medical science, researchers have proven how our emotions can impact our physical body or vice versa. There has been a medical branch at most notable bodies under psychosomatic medicine (psycho-mind, somatic-body) which studies the relationship between mind & body.

Most of us now have realized that we need to take care of our physical & mental/emotional fitness, but then what role does Soul play in health?

What is a Soul

It is not easy to believe in soul unless we have been asked to believe, either from our seniors or religion. Although almost all religions believe in soul but then our analytical mind wants proof or scientific evidence. Interestingly, there have been a number of experiments to prove or disprove the existence of soul.

21 gm - the famous experiment by Dr Duncan MacDougall. He spent a considerable time recording statistics from his dying patients and even photographing them. Although his work still remains in controversy but for those who believed, he showed the weight of the soul as 21 gm through experiments and even clicked photographs showing a light around patient’s skulls when they died.?But he still couldn’t get to change the notion of scientific community.

Today we are so bound by the notion that only what we can see materially (with senses or experiments) exist and find it difficult to believe in something otherwise. How can we then define a soul?

Do you believe there is ‘life energy’ in all of us? ?It is something which is present in all living beings and is part of a Universal energy. Whether we call it Prana, Chi or even quantum field, everything in the Universe has energy and we are all connected. Let us assume Soul is that energy with memory of multiple lifetimes. And if you don’t even believe in energy or think there cannot be substance or mass of energy, then do read about what is weight of a proton when its constituents (quarks, gluons) are less than 5% mass of it, then what is the rest, yes, it is all energy.

If nutrition is the food for body and positive thoughts is the food for the mind, what could be the food for the soul?

Considering Soul, a form of energy, which is everywhere, connects everything in the Universe together, if we want to do something for our Soul, we need to do something which helps us connect to the Universal energy or with other living beings and share positivity.

It is not some science to know how we can share positivity around. Doing simple things like feeling & showing of gratitude to others, spreading love and kindness, doing social or community service, giving things to needy, etc. can definitely help us heal our inner self. We always feel good after doing such helping deed. It is not surprising that we always hold high regards to people who do such work, especially without expectations of any returns.

The three is one

Now that we understand all the three aspects, Body, Mind and Soul their relevance for our health, it is important to know that all three are equally important and are not individual domains. The three is one, us human. It is like three important pillars wherein even one weak or shorter could impact our overall health. They all constitute one human being. Any disbalance in one would definitely impact the others.

Let us try to bring discipline in us for all three. Taking out time for exercising for our body including nutritional food and even fasting, pausing to realize our emotions whenever they seem to go off and use tools like meditation, mindfulness or even breathing to bring ourselves to a stable level and do best to spread love, gratitude and try to help others without selfish motive for the health of our Soul or energetic self.

Interestingly it is said, when we show gratitude – all negative emotions simply vanish, why not try it out today. Even if you don’t want to speak it out, just keep it in your mind. If you feel upset by someone, just try to think about the good things (I know it is very hard). People will be astonished on how calm and grounded you look and feel. Believe me, everyone loves to be in company of such a person. Take charge of your life in the three pillars and stay fit & healthy.