Wellness as a Way of Life?
I’m sure you’re aware that wellness is not a new concept, even though the term has been adopted by countless social media personalities as a way to boost audience participation. The truth is that wellness, in all of its myriad forms, is a subject that has held our interest for millennia.
We can still read accounts of wellness traditions that trace their origins to cultures that existed thousands of years ago. We can explore these traditions via the surviving literature: exercises for strength and endurance, stretching for flexibility, a balanced diet to maintain the body’s optimum functioning, meditation for inner peace and visualisation to harness the body’s subtle energies. Many of these techniques were developed through long centuries of close observation of the human organism. Other methods evolved from an intuitive grasp of how we function. The underlying unifying concept was to bring all aspects of the human body into harmony and alignment.
Yet, in our haste to reinvent the concept of wellness, some of the ancient principles have been forgotten, ignored or discarded. We could argue that there is nothing new in the realm of complete wellbeing – only re-interpretations of ancient wisdom. This should not be confused with the wonders of modern medicine. It’s simply that our current medical practices focus on curing disease whereas the ancient traditions focused primarily on prevention. Breathing provides us with a good example. Mastery of the breath was considered so powerful that the techniques were not written down. They had to be transferred from teacher to pupil after years of dedicated training and only if and when the student was considered ready. We breathe all the time. If you weren’t breathing, you wouldn’t be reading these words! But there are incredibly powerful benefits to be experienced from developing breathing as a precisely-controlled technique, a natural key to re-balance the body as well as to harmonise our mental and emotional energy. Even Yoga has strayed far from its traditional practices since it was adopted as a purely physical exercise.
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Despite the technological shifts and cultural revolutions that we’ve experienced in very recent times, humans haven’t changed much in tens of thousands of years. The methods that were developed for our complete wellness are as valid and useful today as they were when they were first introduced. We don’t need a social media marketing campaign to re-invent the core benefits of wellness. Natural, balanced wellbeing is our most natural condition.
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