Positive Health Online

Emma Lane, Naturopath and Integrative Health Education Founder shares her unique approach to achieving true wellbeing.

What is True Wellbeing?

To be in a state of good wellbeing the elements of mind, body and spirit must be fully integrated, in balance and functioning optimally.

With good wellbeing the individual is happy, healthy and whole. In today’s accepted terms health generally means the absence of disease. It generally doesn’t mean that you are functioning optimally and feeling happy, healthy and whole.

The National Wellness Institute states that wellness is “a conscious, self-directed and evolving process of achieving full potential”. The question is, are you evolving and achieving your full potential and assisting your clients in doing the same?

Destination Wellbeing

Unfortunately, for many of us today it is the accepted norm to feel tired, have digestive troubles, struggle with poor concentration, experience poor recovery from exercise and have that extra roll of fat around the middle. However, these modern, everyday health challenges don’t have to be a problem for health professionals and their clients. Courses, such as Integrative Health Education’s Destination Wellbeing© programme, enable you to learn essential tools that can be immediately used to create an improved wellbeing outcome.

12 Pillars of Wellbeing

There are many factors that must be considered so that the whole picture of a person’s wellbeing can be seen. In fact, I believe there are “12 pillars” of wellbeing; achieving real wellness involves a multi-systems approach. This means that attention must be given to all areas of our life and lifestyle as every component of our life affects another.

The pillars I work with are: nutrition, digestion, energy creation, chronic stress, me time, relationships, movement, self purpose, detoxification, respiration, mindfulness and emotional balancing. Bringing all these aspects of our physical and emotional being into balance is how we can achieve true wellbeing.

We are a cybernetic system, a system of systems that all talk to each other. This is why we must take into account every aspect of a person - their whole being - and what can cause disruption in that whole being.

Imbalance Leads to Dis-ease

For example nutrition and digestion affect energy creation and our emotional balance. Optimizing mitochondrial function and blood sugar management will balance and increase energy.

When blood sugar levels are imbalanced, the cells slowly become resistant to the effects of insulin, therefore the body produces more and more to try and keep the blood sugar levels balanced.

The higher your insulin levels are the more resistant to insulin you become; as the problem progresses the body starts to lose muscle, gain fat and become inflamed. This all speeds up the disease and ageing process.

Dis-ease leads to Disease

One of the roles of insulin is as a fat storage hormone. It drives and creates more inflammation and oxidative stress in the body; this has a myriad of downstream effects which include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, increased risk of cancer, Alzheimer’s, depression, obesity and of course diabetes, among others.

It’s clear to see that blood sugar imbalance is one of the contributing factors behind today’s most prevalent preventable diseases. We are facing a global diabetes and obesity epidemic;  blood sugar balance is one of the factors behind this. Addressing imbalance is not just an important factor in wellbeing creation, it is also crucial for long term disease prevention.

Digestion and Wellbeing

A functional digestive system is also very important for wellbeing. A dysfunctional digestive system can affect literally every other physiological system in the body. During my course I will be sharing her knowledge of common digestive problems such as intestinal permeability, dysbiosis, the benefits and purpose of the microbiome, and food intolerances. We will examine their causative factors and learn safe, effective healing options that can be utilised easily by health professionals and their clients.

Chronic stress is another major player that contributes to the creation of many common health problems. Understanding the effects of chronic stress and which wellbeing drainers contribute to the creation of these health challenges will make huge differences to overall wellbeing.

Other Wellbeing Drivers

Digestion, stress and energy are just three of the wellbeing pillars I work with; however, the emotional and physical aspects of me time, relationships, movement, self purpose, detoxification, respiration, mindfulness and emotional balancing are all equally important.

Some of the key points to keep in mind in order to create wellbeing include:

• Wellness requires a ‘whole person’ perspective that revolves around all the myriad of choices that we make with our attitude, habits, diet, lifestyle etc;
• An individual absolutely must realize that getting well is achieved only by taking personal responsibility for their life, current situation and their own health; and that every aspect of that life can be utilized to propel them towards the goal of wellness;
• The question of health or disease often comes down to individual responsibility. In this context, responsibility means choosing a healthy alternative over a less healthy one;
• If a person wants to be healthy, they simply must make healthy choices on a consistent, day-to-day basis;
• Our role as their coach is to lead by example, give the appropriate and correct information, guidance and support them fully in their journey;
• No matter what a person’s current state of wellness might be, they can take steps to improve it.

It is a joy to be able to guide a person to create wellbeing so that they can experience being a consciously aware, self-directed individual who feels happy and healthy and who can continually evolve to experience their full potential.

Further Information

Do you want to be apart of this Wellbeing Evolution? Join Emma Lane’s three-day Destination Wellbeing ® - Health Evolution course. The course is suitable for health professionals or members of the general public who want to improve their own wellbeing.  21 hours CPD. Booking via www.integrativehealth.co.uk