Until a few decades ago, wellness was typically linked to physical health alone. However, society has collectively started to recognize and understand that wellness is a multidimensional concept, and therefore, holistic wellness is a better phrase to use.
Think of the many times someone has asked you how you’re doing, and you responded with “fine,” however, while you may be doing fine on the surface, i.e., physically, you’re often not really fine on the inside.
Holistic wellness, therefore, focuses on your health inside out. It is more of a lifestyle approach and is something most people today aspire to. But what exactly is it?
What Is Holistic Wellness?
Holistic wellness has two broad definitions. Sometimes, it refers to alternative medicine where it’s used to refer to a more holistic medical approach to an illness. These approaches focus on more natural ways of treating a condition.
However, mostly, when people talk about holistic wellness, they’re referring to a particular lifestyle approach that is based on a person’s overall health and wellness. This approach recognizes the fact that the several dimensions of health are all interdependent and require holistic efforts that help maintain a healthy balance for the body, mind, and soul.
How Does It Affect Your Overall Well-being?
Since holistic wellness isn’t a specific treatment or practice, but a whole lifestyle, it involves several steps that contribute to one’s well-being. While experts have varying opinions on which areas holistic wellness caters to, most agree that it helps one’s physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being.
Other areas it helps to balance are our intellectual, financial, occupational, and environmental aspects of life.
The underlying concept of holistic wellness is that every aspect of a person’s life, be it their emotional health, their finances, or social experiences, it’s all linked in direct and indirect ways. When one domain of wellness is neglected, everything else can be at risk—it’s a domino effect.
For instance, if you’re neglecting yourself emotionally, but are doing well in the financial and social domain, sooner or later, these will be affected as well, along with others health areas. Heavy emotions like anxiety, hopelessness, and grief may not directly show up on your face at first, but they will affect your sleep cycle and eating habits. This will then affect your physical health. Moreover, you may start finding it hard to focus on work or even hobbies, and gradually, your social life and finances may be affected.
This is primarily why going to the gym regularly and taking all your meds aren’t complete solutions. Ideally, these should only be small aspects of a more extensive health and wellness plan that focuses on holistic wellness.
How Meditation Helps With Holistic Wellness
Holistic wellness incorporates several lifestyle practices and healthy habits. Almost all practices are meant to address one or usually two health domains. One practice that seems to affect multiple health areas at the same time is meditation.
While meditation is often used interchangeably with the term ‘yoga,’ it’s important to understand that meditation refers to a particular process that involves focusing all of your energy and attention on a specific space where you try to realign your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and perspectives in order to achieve a sense of balance and self-awareness. It could be part of yoga but isn’t exactly the same as yoga.
In general, meditation can help your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being and should be a part of your personal wellness plan.
If you want to learn more about holistic wellness or are looking for wellness coaching for women, feel free to reach out to us at xoxo4wellness. With our “Redefining Your Wellness” Program, we can help you transform your life from the inside out using a holistic approach.
Give us a call to learn more.
