The 5 Dimensions of Health: Part 1- Physical Health

What comes to mind when you think about being healthy? Do you think about feeling physically strong? Or maybe you think about having mental clarity or feeling emotionally at peace. The truth is that it involves all of these! Our health is multi-dimensional and it is important to nurture each one of these dimensions in our quest for healthy living. I think of the 5 different aspects of health as being: physical health, mental health, emotional health, spiritual health and energetic health.

Physical health

This is probably the first aspect that comes to mind when you think of your health. Our physical bodies reflect so much of our underlying well-being. These bodies of ours are comprised of trillions of cells that make up our tissues, our organs, our bodily systems. When there is an imbalance in our bodies this is when we start to feel symptoms. A symptom however like a sore throat, or pain, or a fever is not the problem but rather the manifestation of our physical body telling us something is not right. It’s important therefore to explore deeper and ask why is this happening? Taking something to suppress the symptom may make you feel better in that moment but it is not addressing the true underlying cause.* Why does this matter? Because even if the symptoms in that moment are gone it doesn’t mean the real problem was solved. It is likely that symptoms will come back or that other new symptoms may manifest instead. Sound familiar!? Another key point is that our physical symptoms are often expressions of unresolved issues with another dimension of our health. For example severe chronic grief could eventually develop into heart disease. (see more in sections below). Our bodies have an innate ability to heal and want to be in a healthy, balanced state. We just need to remove obstacles to cure and give our bodies the nourishment they need to heal. You can support your physical body by working on the other aspects of health, eating organic whole foods, drinking plenty of clean water, getting adequate rest and sleep, breathing deeply, and through exercise and movement.

*There are reasons and appropriate times to suppress symptoms like in anaphylactic reactions (ex. Throat swelling in severe bee allergy)