- Creating Wellness
Create wellness by focusing on the mind-body-soul. Seems simple enough. You’ve got to pay equal attention to the cognitive, physical, and spiritual parts of your life. Does that mean that you should divvy the parts into thirds? So, I started an internet search on how to create wellness by focusing on the mind-body-soul resources that are available to people. Alright, alright, my ability to do a search needs some serious work. I found that there were thousands of lists and books on the topic.
2. Lists are confusing
One list had filtered water and eating greens as ways of balancing mind-body-soul. Seems reasonable to me and I’m not even a vegan. But is it really that simple? I went through a bunch of other lists and no one else talked about filtering water. It may be beyond me to balance mind-body-soul parts. I do use something called “cognitive-behavioral mindfulness therapy.” What do you think? It does have one part of the mind, another part of the body (i.e., behavioral), and a final part of the soul (i.e., mindfulness).
3. Interchangeability.
The parts (body, mind, and soul) really work together and have to be balanced. But they really are different. I doubt that soul and mindfulness interchangeable? I’m starting to feel a little queasy here. The “soul” is a manifested disembodiment after death while “mindfulness” is a keen awareness of the moments of a person’s life. Hmmm, we’re back to the yin and yang of mental health. Awareness of life and death does provide grounding. Our bodies will give out and we will die; the goal is to be keenly aware of how to live the moments that are available to us.
4. Complementarity.
Yeah, time is a resource that can’t be stored. We only have so much of it allocated to us. Yin and yang again. I suppose that it becomes an existential question and brings us back to life after death. The Christian trope about living through dying provides meaning in hospice when your client is facing death. Pretty hard to balance mind-body-soul at that point. The mind is an organ that is being deprived of nutrients and is fading into the “gentle night.” The body’s other organs give out and decline. That just leaves the soul and it becomes all that is left.
5. Epilogue.
A saintly woman worked for years as a missionary and cared for many destitute people. She accepted no monies from any overseas organization. As she grew older, the people in the village noticed that she just withered away and that all that was left was love. I guess that’s the soul that remains after the mind and body are gone.