Definitions of Wellness

• Wellness is a choice—a decision you make to move toward optimal health.
• Wellness is a way of life—a lifestyle you design to achieve your highest potential for wellbeing.
• Wellness is a process—a developing awareness that there is no endpoint, but that health and happiness are possible in each moment, here and now.
• Wellness is a balanced channeling of energy—energy received from the environment, transformed within you, and returned to affect the world around you.
• Wellness is the integration of body, mind, emotions, and spirit—the appreciation that everything you do, and think, and feel, and believe, has an impact on your state of health and the health of the world.
• Wellness is the loving acceptance of yourself.

Wellness is the right and privilege of everyone. There is no prerequisite for it other than your free choice. The "well" being is not necessarily the strong, the brave, the successful, the young, the whole, or even the illness-free being. A person can be living a process of wellness and yet be physically handicapped; aged; scared in the face of challenge; in pain; imperfect. No matter what your current state of health, you can begin to appreciate yourself as a growing, changing person and allow yourself to move toward a happier life and positive health.

Wellness is about learning to love your whole self. It is about assuming charge of your life, living in process, and channeling life energy. It is about choices. It is about the one way to wellness—your way. It is about you.

The Illness-Wellness Continuum and the Wellness Energy System that follow, set the scene for the remainder of this entire area.

What Is Wellness?
Medical Paradigm compared with Wellness Paradigm
No Fascism, Please
Key Concept #1: The Illness-Wellness Continuum
Refining the Illness-Wellness Continuum
About Energy
Key Concept #2: The Iceberg Model of Health and Disease
Cultural Norms and Wellness
Cultural Norms and Wellness (Part 2)
Your Cultural Norms
Key Concept #3: The Wellness Energy System: Introduction
Wellness Energy System (2)
Wellness Energy System in Action
Wellness Energy System: Distortions
Wellness Energy System: Distortions (II)
The Wellness Wheel
Wellness Wheel Example 1: Paul
Wellness Wheel Example 2: Kate
Wellness Wheel Example 3: Marty
Wellness Wheel Example 4: Ramon
Wellness Wheel Example 5: Gail
How Best to Use The Wellness Energy System

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