“A large body of research has established that having a regular meditation practice produces tangible benefits for mental and physical health.”
— Deepak Chopra
When I studied wellness in school (in the 1980s/90s), these were the aspects of health:
Spritual + Social + Physical + Mental + Emotional
Now, we’ve expanded them to include a few more:
Spiritual + Social + Physical + Mental+ Emotional + Intellectual + Environmental + Occupational
As we work to lift the mental health stigma, we’re missing the boat. The conversation should be: What can we do to promote a mentally healthy environment for ourselves and others every day?
Mental health is a spectrum; don’t delude yourself, we’re all on it. It ranges from “normal” emotions to “abnormal” emotions…from happy and perky at one end to suicidal thoughts at the other. And most of us aren’t hovering around happy and perky.
We don’t realize how much our daily emotional and mental health affects us. How we feel affects every single thing in our worlds. Just take a snapshot of any scenario from yesterday. What happened? What were your feelings around the event? How did you react? How did you feel physically based on what you thought and did in response? If it was a negative exchange at work, for example, maybe you got a knot in your stomach and couldn’t concentrate on your project for 45 minutes after the encounter.
