What is Wellness?
It’s a big question…
… and I don’t claim to have the answer. I offer my understandings simply to help you get a sense of my personal orientation to wellness and how I work as a therapist. I understand and deeply respect that each of us is constantly engaged in the process of making sense of life. I do not intend to communicate my views with any sense of authority or judgement. As a therapist, it is both my professional goal and my ethical duty to open a space for us to work within your own framework of meaning and not impose my own values.
Personally, I believe that we each have deep well of wisdom within us and for an outsider to act in a way that violates our autonomy to decide what is true is a serious form of violence all too common in today's world. If you find differences coming up between your beliefs and what I express below, I want you to know I aim to understand and work respectfully within your frame of meaning.
How I Understand Wellness
I believe inner wellness is our ability to experience the richness and sacredness of life and to live from a place of authentic, loving connection with things just as they are in each moment. It's both a connection to our true selves and core sense of meaning, as well as a connection to our loved ones, our communities, the natural world and the spiritual dimension. Through our present moment awareness and embodied consciousness, we experience the flow of life moving in us, through us and around us. We are able to be active, engaged participants in life and drive the changes needed for ourselves, others and the world while maintaining a connection to our integrity and the still, vibrant presence within us.
I do not define wellness as being happy all the time or being able to escape the problems inherent in the human condition. We are not in control of what life puts on our path but we are in control of how we respond. Life is our teacher, showing us the ways we are holding back and how we can grow. We can strengthen our ability to remain fully present and connected with whatever happens and through doing that, we find a deeper sense of freedom and serenity.
As we grow, it is also critical to remember we never will be quite where our minds tell us we should be and to instead allow ourselves to experience our innate wholeness and perfect beauty just as we are. The paradox is that the more we love ourselves as we are, the more we open to change. It is about cultivating a relationship with that which lies beyond our limited conception of self -- it is that which holds us, nurtures us and helps us actualize our deepest nature.
How I Understand Suffering
When I use the word suffering, I mean the ways in which living life becomes more difficult and painful than it really needs to be. My understanding of suffering, learned from my teachers and tested in my own experience, is that when we suffer when we disconnect from our experience of being alive. Instead of feeling our integral connection and unity with all of life, we believe ourselves as isolated beings and wish for things to be different than they are to fill a core sense of lack. We lose touch with the intrinsic beauty and peace within ourselves and all of life.
We typically do not choose to disconnect, rather it is something conditioned into us from our experiences. For example, disconnecting is a survival strategy our nervous system automatically employs when something overwhelming happens to us, like a traumatic event, as it is safer in those moments to not feel. It also happens when we need to disown part of ourselves to feel like we belong or to keep ourselves safe, such as in the face of unhealthy parenting or an oppressive force. Disconnection may also arise as the result of the compartmentalized, highly individualistic culture that many of us grow up in - it is a culture that tells people they are not worthy and do not belong just as they are.
Whatever the circumstances that caused our disconnection, we possess an innate ability to heal these disconnections and a core desire to re-establish an intimate relationship with life. Unfortunately, often our environment does not facilitate that healing and the disconnection persists. From this unhealed disconnection grows further disconnection, confusion, shame, isolation, apathy and a deep sense that something is wrong or missing. We lose touch with the sense that life was ever safe and that we ever belonged as an integral and beloved being. Unfortunately, this is the reality many of us find ourselves living in. Yet, there is always a voice within us which has not forgotten and which urges us to walk the path back home.