It seems the word Holistic is now synonymous with the new age movement as everyone seems to be throwing it around, but what does this really mean? According to Cambridge Dictionary, Holistic is related to the whole of something or the total system instead of just its parts. As such, I like to use it in regards to our way of life or living.
For as far back as I can remember, it seems we have been led to believe that the way to better health is to eat, sleep and move right and the way to happiness is to get a good job, get married, buy a house and have some kids. But how many people follow this model and still find themselves unhealthy or unhappy?
We have been taught to look at the world through such a limited perspective that we cannot see how everything is in fact inherently interconnected. Unless we start to widen our lens and broaden our perspective, we will continue to deteriorate in our health as well as our happiness.
What does happiness, health and holistic living have to do with each other? Literally everything. When we are unwell, we are unhappy and when we are unhappy, we are often unwell as the mind, body and emotions are deeply interconnected; the state of our body is directly correlated to the state of our mind and emotions.
We often ignore our mental health simply because this word comes with such negative stigma attached to it that we feel the only time we should be paying attention to our mind is if we lose it. What we tend to forget is that when someone loses their mind, there is always a reason behind it and generally, there are signs before this happens. Unfortunately we are not all able to correctly interpret these signs. More so, few people are even willing to look into the signs and take corrective action but would rather seek out a quick fix solution
If we are unwilling to see the interconnectivity of everything around us, we may fail to see that things that may seem completely unrelated, may in fact be the root cause of the issue at hand. This is where holistic living comes in - the ability to see that everything in life has an impact on our life, and we have an impact on life all around us.
When we open ourselves up to see the interconnectivity of everything, we begin to live from a higher state of consciousness where we question how our thoughts, actions and behaviours impact that which is all around us and how we are impacted by them in return? This is simply taking into account the universal law of cause and effect, however living in such a way requires a certain amount of focus, awareness and, initially, discomfort as we must be willing to put ourselves into question, and notice where we may in fact be partially responsible for our lack of health or happiness.
Everything exists within a total system as everything is made up of smaller parts that make the greater whole. When we ignore parts of the system, we minimise it, not allowing it to work at optimal capacity. As such, the prime reason why many of us find ourselves unhappy and unhealthy is because we continue to ignore parts of ourselves and parts of life.
Until we are able to give equal importance, attention and awareness to the different aspects of our self and our life, we will continue to feel unfulfilled and forever question why without ever being able to receive an answer. And this is simply because we remain unwilling to look at certain parts, aspects and things and see their interconnectivity.
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