Your Integral Health
Integral Health is about whole health. - Looking at and including all aspects of the health of an individual and his/her environment and social circumstance.
For a person, integral health includes his/her physical health, mental health, emotional health and spiritual health. These aspects are invariably related to his/her personal life, family life, work life as well as social life and evironmental and global life/context. Each of these parts of an individual's life impacts one's well-being.
Well-being is the status quo of one's health and wellness, and how he/she considers his/her state of health and overall life status. For example, one may consider him/herself to be in a good status of well-being, yet physically, from a health or medical point of view, be actually suffering from an illness or disease. Alternatively, one may be considered, from a health or medical point of view, to be perfectly well and disease-free, yet still consider him/herself to have poor well-being. Thus well-being can be related to one's physical health, but is not necessarily always realted to it, as multiple factors can be take a part in one's feeling of well-being.
The multiple factors include: individual physical health (is how you are physically doing in regards to your health - are you feeling well or do you feel tired? do you feel like you are coming down with a cold? All of these relate to your individual physical health.)
individual mental/psychological/emotional health (is how you are doing psychologically, mentally and emtionally in regards to your health - are you depressed and tired? do your thoughts continually race? are you sad a lot of the time? Are you constantly happy? All of these relate to your psychologyical or emotional health.)
family/companionship health (is how you are experiencing your relationships with your family members and/or companionship, which can impact your health - do you get along with your siblings and your parents? Do you get along with your significant other and your children, if you have any? Do you find being around your family members stressful? Are you excited at the prospect of seeing your family members, or do you dread the prospect? All of these affect your health and can have consequences on your own individual health. For instance being fearful of returning home at the end of the day to see your family members, can cause undue stress both emotionally and physically.)
work-relationship/environment health (is how you relate to and experience your working situation, as well as the affects of your environment or your surroundings on you. For example, having too much to do at work or having a demanding schedule at work can put you under a lot of stress which can impact your individual health as well as your experience of your family and your relationships outside of work. Another example of environmental health can be not just the people around you but the things around you and the area in which you live and/or work, i.e. you may be around a lot of traffic all day which can feel overwhelming and noisey. These can be distracting as well as cause individual health problems such as hearing loss if the traffic is directly over head and can not be muted out efficiently. Both of these - environmental health and relationship healthm which is a type of environmental health - can positively or negatively affect your own individual, personal health and sense of health and well-being.)
social health (relates to your sense of sociability. For instance how connected you are to the people around you and how connectedyou want to be to the people around you. - If you want to be friends with someone you are around but you feel shunned or dismissed by that person, your sense of social health is less likely to be positive than if you are accepted by the person and/or group of people with whom you wish to be friendly. Being around people constantly does not necessarily mean that you have a rich social life if you do not connect personally with them. Equally, true is the fact that not being around many people does not mean you have a poor social life as you may feel socially connected with the few people with whom you choose to be friendly.
Social health impacts an individual's sense of worth and well-being as it can physically affect your health causing undue stress and/or relaxation, depending upon what type of person you are - wether you like being in social situations or you do not.)
societal health (is the health of a society - which is made up of a group of people, typically with common interests or locale. The health of your society, also affects your own individual health and mental health as it can encourage a certain type of behaviour, or discourage a particular ttype of behaviour, which in turn can affect one's personal health.)
national health (is the health of the nation in which you reside. It can affect your individual health in terms of how you feel both physically and emotionally. If for example your nation is attacked or is insecure, you can feel uncertain an worried which can affect your individual health.)
environmental health
political health (refers to the politics of both the country in which you reside and the organisations with which you intereact. It refers to the manner in which large groups of people organise to form a working system. For example the policies and procedures and ways in which these organisations and countries are run and managed. this can all affect you both a nation's or society's health in terms of the way in which these rules affect the people who live within them, as well as one's individual health and personal health.)
international health (refers to the policies of countries and their affects on other countries within the world which have to work with such policies. For example, the past focus of some countries on its own health and well-being has been viewed by othercountries as issolationist. Even though the one country was focussing on its own issues, it was not interacting wit the other countries of the world and therefore was considered by the rest of the world to be issolating itself from the international community of counties within the world. the international health can affect all of the other types of health in that it impresses upon businesses and companies which might want to work with a multitude of people and nations. It can also affect families and individuals as there may seem to be a sense of needing or wanting to work with and cooperate with the nation or multiple nations with which you relate.)
global health (refers to the health not only of the people and countries of the world or globe but also to the health of all of these together as well as the natural environment of the globe or world. The can affect you sense of individual health in terms of your sense of personal-responsiblity for the health of the globe and in terms of the larger issue of life and death and destruction.)
and probably many others which would make this list endless.
It is all of these which are taken into account in integral health, which makes health and well-being such a complicated topic as there are multiple angles from which to view and solve or work with a problem, whatever it maybe.
Your Integral Life
Encompassing all of these factors along with fun and recreation and rest allows for an integral life which, hopefully is fulfilling and typically is what we all want and aspire to attain.
An integral life enables you to feel balance with all of the aspects and circumstaces in your life, including your health.
Starting with one's health, as in individual health or personal health (see above), allows you to focus on yourself first and be well-first to enable you to move to working to achieve family health and work health, etc, as in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. - It is difficult to focus on other levels before the first and foundational layers of the triangle are taken care of and laid.
Starting with your own health and well-being is thus the appropriate place to start.
Integral Health is about whole health. - Looking at and including all aspects of the health of an individual and his/her environment and social circumstance.
For a person, integral health includes his/her physical health, mental health, emotional health and spiritual health. These aspects are invariably related to his/her personal life, family life, work life as well as social life and evironmental and global life/context. Each of these parts of an individual's life impacts one's well-being.
Well-being is the status quo of one's health and wellness, and how he/she considers his/her state of health and overall life status. For example, one may consider him/herself to be in a good status of well-being, yet physically, from a health or medical point of view, be actually suffering from an illness or disease. Alternatively, one may be considered, from a health or medical point of view, to be perfectly well and disease-free, yet still consider him/herself to have poor well-being. Thus well-being can be related to one's physical health, but is not necessarily always realted to it, as multiple factors can be take a part in one's feeling of well-being.
The multiple factors include: individual physical health (is how you are physically doing in regards to your health - are you feeling well or do you feel tired? do you feel like you are coming down with a cold? All of these relate to your individual physical health.)
individual mental/psychological/emotional health (is how you are doing psychologically, mentally and emtionally in regards to your health - are you depressed and tired? do your thoughts continually race? are you sad a lot of the time? Are you constantly happy? All of these relate to your psychologyical or emotional health.)
family/companionship health (is how you are experiencing your relationships with your family members and/or companionship, which can impact your health - do you get along with your siblings and your parents? Do you get along with your significant other and your children, if you have any? Do you find being around your family members stressful? Are you excited at the prospect of seeing your family members, or do you dread the prospect? All of these affect your health and can have consequences on your own individual health. For instance being fearful of returning home at the end of the day to see your family members, can cause undue stress both emotionally and physically.)
work-relationship/environment health (is how you relate to and experience your working situation, as well as the affects of your environment or your surroundings on you. For example, having too much to do at work or having a demanding schedule at work can put you under a lot of stress which can impact your individual health as well as your experience of your family and your relationships outside of work. Another example of environmental health can be not just the people around you but the things around you and the area in which you live and/or work, i.e. you may be around a lot of traffic all day which can feel overwhelming and noisey. These can be distracting as well as cause individual health problems such as hearing loss if the traffic is directly over head and can not be muted out efficiently. Both of these - environmental health and relationship healthm which is a type of environmental health - can positively or negatively affect your own individual, personal health and sense of health and well-being.)
social health (relates to your sense of sociability. For instance how connected you are to the people around you and how connectedyou want to be to the people around you. - If you want to be friends with someone you are around but you feel shunned or dismissed by that person, your sense of social health is less likely to be positive than if you are accepted by the person and/or group of people with whom you wish to be friendly. Being around people constantly does not necessarily mean that you have a rich social life if you do not connect personally with them. Equally, true is the fact that not being around many people does not mean you have a poor social life as you may feel socially connected with the few people with whom you choose to be friendly.
Social health impacts an individual's sense of worth and well-being as it can physically affect your health causing undue stress and/or relaxation, depending upon what type of person you are - wether you like being in social situations or you do not.)
societal health (is the health of a society - which is made up of a group of people, typically with common interests or locale. The health of your society, also affects your own individual health and mental health as it can encourage a certain type of behaviour, or discourage a particular ttype of behaviour, which in turn can affect one's personal health.)
national health (is the health of the nation in which you reside. It can affect your individual health in terms of how you feel both physically and emotionally. If for example your nation is attacked or is insecure, you can feel uncertain an worried which can affect your individual health.)
environmental health
political health (refers to the politics of both the country in which you reside and the organisations with which you intereact. It refers to the manner in which large groups of people organise to form a working system. For example the policies and procedures and ways in which these organisations and countries are run and managed. this can all affect you both a nation's or society's health in terms of the way in which these rules affect the people who live within them, as well as one's individual health and personal health.)
international health (refers to the policies of countries and their affects on other countries within the world which have to work with such policies. For example, the past focus of some countries on its own health and well-being has been viewed by othercountries as issolationist. Even though the one country was focussing on its own issues, it was not interacting wit the other countries of the world and therefore was considered by the rest of the world to be issolating itself from the international community of counties within the world. the international health can affect all of the other types of health in that it impresses upon businesses and companies which might want to work with a multitude of people and nations. It can also affect families and individuals as there may seem to be a sense of needing or wanting to work with and cooperate with the nation or multiple nations with which you relate.)
global health (refers to the health not only of the people and countries of the world or globe but also to the health of all of these together as well as the natural environment of the globe or world. The can affect you sense of individual health in terms of your sense of personal-responsiblity for the health of the globe and in terms of the larger issue of life and death and destruction.)
and probably many others which would make this list endless.
It is all of these which are taken into account in integral health, which makes health and well-being such a complicated topic as there are multiple angles from which to view and solve or work with a problem, whatever it maybe.
Your Integral Life
Encompassing all of these factors along with fun and recreation and rest allows for an integral life which, hopefully is fulfilling and typically is what we all want and aspire to attain.
An integral life enables you to feel balance with all of the aspects and circumstaces in your life, including your health.
Starting with one's health, as in individual health or personal health (see above), allows you to focus on yourself first and be well-first to enable you to move to working to achieve family health and work health, etc, as in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. - It is difficult to focus on other levels before the first and foundational layers of the triangle are taken care of and laid.
Starting with your own health and well-being is thus the appropriate place to start.
The Question is:
How do you go about achieving an integral life to include all of these aspects as well as your health and well-being?
The simple ansewer: - one step at a time.
The more convoluted answer: - working on the first pirorty or step first, once you have that step working as second nature, whilst continuing to implement the first step, working on and adding the second step. Once you have both the first and second step working, together in 'harmony,' as second nature, whilst continuing to implement these two steps, you work on and add the third step. And so it progresses, a little at a time, until you have all of the steps you have orriginally outlined and decided upon to get to where and how you or your family or copmany or friends (whatever the group or individual which/who wants to or is interested in implementing such methods/changes.
To start with it can look very complicated and confusing - you are simply trying the best you can to stay afloat, make ends meet and juggle all the commitments you have whilst taking care of your family and not getting fired or laid off.
Yes, it is all very dizzying and can be completely overwhelming, but if you take it a little bit at a time - one step at a time - you can create the health and healthcare you want and it can and will b integral - encompassing the whole, all aspects of your life including your health.
