Lesson 3: Various Ways of Understanding Health
Most of us were never taught how to stay healthy, neither in school nor at home. We only get some random "grandmother's recipes" but no overall understanding of what is happening. Not many "experts" seem to be able to answer the following questions:
- Why do I get sick?
- What can I undertake so that I do not fall sick again?
Until recently, this knowledge was not easily available. Now, thanks to the Internet, it is. Below we have listed a few ways of explaining health. We have tried to use a lot of analogies to help you better understand.
1. The Healfi Approach
The Healfi Approach looks beyond only nutrition and exercise and aims at balancing 12 areas of your life that influence on your health: exercise, nutrition, fun, environment, helping others, time (stress), mindset, other people, life partner, finances, work, feng shui. You will learn more about this approach throughout this course and on healfi.com.
2. The Healfi Car
To help you understand health, let's make an analogy with your car.
For a car to run smoothly, it needs proper maintenance (fuel, tires, oil, water, cleaning). Furthermore, you need to regularly have an eye on the dashboard to make sure that you respond in time to any warning signals (fuel, oil, speed, tachometer).
To drive, you need a driver's license to make sure that you follow the traffic rules. To learn how to drive, you also need a driving teacher.
And if you break down or have an accident, you need car repair. There are also some regular car costs (maintenance, insurance, tax).
If we now look at your health from a similar perspective...
For your body to run smoothly, you need proper health maintenance (good nutrition, sleep, exercise, hygiene, water...). Furthermore, you need to regularly monitor your health to make sure that you respond in time to any warning signals (listen to your body, your emotions, physical and psychological needs). Now it gets interesting: we need a driver's license, but no "health license"... maybe this explains why there are less car accidents than sick people. A health license would make sure that we are aware of the health rules.
To learn how to stay healthy, you would need a health coach (virtual or real). And if you fall sick or have an accident, you need medicine and hospitals. And of course, there are some regular health costs as well (maintenance, insurance).
Attached you will find a document that summarises The Healfi Car in table form.
3. The Intelligence Angle
Another way of looking at health and a balanced lifestyle is the "intelligence" perspective:
- IQ (intellectual quotient)
- EQ (emotional quotient)
- BQ (body quotient)
- SQ (spiritual quotient)
An astrophysicist will probably have a well-developed IQ, whereas a social worker might have a high EQ, a ballet dancer a high BQ and a Tibetan monk a high SQ.
Next to these "main" intelligences, you can also identify:
- linguistic intelligence
- musical intelligence
- spatial intelligence
- naturalist intelligence
Our understanding is that the better you are able to balance all these intelligences, the more alive you will feel. If you want to know more about these specific intelligences, a quick research on the Internet will get you plenty of detailed information.
4. The Battery View
Another way of looking at health is to compare yourself to a battery that constantly needs to be recharged to operate smoothly.
On healfi.com, you will find plenty of ideas of things you can do to "recharge your batteries". A few examples:
- eat natural foods
- get plenty of exercise
- earn money doing the things you love
- listen to uplifting music
- forgive others (not holding on to anger)
- talk with optimism (not complaining)
- get quality sleep
- showing gratitude
- being around positive and supportive people
- taking immediate action (no procrastination)
The "Measure Your Health" questionnaire gives you a rough idea of how charged your batteries are.
An interesting thing to understand is that when your battery reaches a specific amount of energy, you cannot become sick. In other words, your immune system will be so good that bacteria and viruses are powerless. We cannot tell you exactly where this threshold lies... that is part of your creative health work to find out what measures you personally need to take to stay above that threshold.
© Chappatte - www.globecartoon.com/dessin
"Have a nice week-end and do not forget to recharge your batteries!"
5. The Frustration Index
Imagine a glass of water. Each time that you get "frustrated" for whatever reason (bureaucracy, husband, boss, traffic jam... ), a small amount of water is added to the glass. We let you guess what happens when the glass gets full: when frustration reaches a certain level, you will inevitably get sick. Now, your job as CEO of your own health is to make sure that the water does not run over the edges. Nobody else is responsible for your glass of water.
A classical example is divorce (which Healfi puts in the same category as any other disease): when one or both partners have let their Frustration Index hit the roof, the situation explodes. The alternative would be to be honest with each other, communicate properly to find solutions to have one's mutual needs met.
Frustration build-up: boring tasks, traffic jam, hang-ups, artificial environments, job dissatisfaction, negative relationships, unresolved relationships, clutter, unresolved problems, bureaucracy, everything that goes against common sense...
Frustration build-down: physical exercise, sex, violence (please, not!), talking about one's issues, resolving relationships, cleaning...
Frustration avoidance: no resentment, natural environments, no stress, frictionless relationships, caring community, making sure to have no unresolved issues, having no enemies...
Thank You!
Healfi Cards
Attachment
Exercise
One thing that you can do is to write your own "Frustration Table" (build-up/build-down/avoid). First, think through your daily activities that add water to your glass. Then go through healfi.com to see what measures you can take to build down or avoid future frustration.
In our modern hectic lives, it is very difficult to avoid frustration completely, so do your best on the build down side!
Exercise
A car is just one of many analogies to health that you can find. Another one is to liken health with a business. If you view health from another angle than the one above, try and build an analogy to health with how a business is run (or should be run ;-).
Exercise
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate your main intelligences: IQ, EQ, BQ and SQ. Are you out of balance anywhere? If yes, what measures do you think you can take? Maybe you can find hints on healfi.com?
