Real Secret of Living Well: ‘Wellness’ has little or nothing to do with diet, exercise, or sunscreen

by Ken Winston Caine

Wellness is not about the absence of illness or malady.

It’s not about diet, exercise, or using sunscreen. Paying attention to those things can be useful, but they don’t create a vibrant state of wellness.

At the heart of the Spirit of Wellness Work™ that I’ve been developing, documenting, practicing, researching and sharing over the past decade is this simple truth:

You find yourself living well a moment at a time, whenever you are creating an interesting and meaningful life — from moment to moment – despite whatever challenges or conditions you may be facing.

You can be actively engaged in pursuing a fascinating and pleasing quality of life, even if you are lying in a sickbed in a darkened room and wracked with pain and bordering on deleriousness.

Even in such a dreaded state, you can shift attention to one or more of the real wellness factors. For instance, you could slip on headphones, or turn on a bedside CD player programmed with your favorite, most inspiring, most pleasing, most comforting music. And within moments you would find yourself beginning to appreciate at least a little of it, if even for only a few intermittent seconds at a time. But for those few seconds, you are in a better place.

The same is true when you shift your attention, ever so gently, to the other wellness factors.

I don’t just depend upon scientific studies to tell me this. I know this is true. I’ve been there personally. And more than once.

Of course, I have dug through the social science, medical, and spiritual research studies and discovered and documented the evidence to support this. And in the process, uncovered more than 40 real wellness factors which I call: “Subtle Shifts that Evoke the Spirit of Wellness.”

You don’t need to memorize 40-plus real wellness factors. You don’t even need to memorize the seven biggest ones. But playing with any one of the following seven core shifts at just the right moment and in just the right way will bring about an engaged sense of well-being. Most often the alchemy of well-being involves invoking a custom combination of several of these. Living WELL in the longer term, always involves incorporating a combination of these factors.

You evoke the Spirit of Wellness when you are engaged in finding, appreciating and/or sharing:

• Comfort
• Joy
• Beauty
• Meaning
• Humor
• Love
• Wonder, Respect and Awe for all that is greater than yourself, and for all the great things you, yourself have to offer and experience, and that you, yourself, have offered and experienced.

Underlying these seven core explorations is an eighth essential factor. When you are engaged in pursuing any of the above, you are also engaged in finding, appreciating and/or sharing:

Ways and means of pursuing and expressing your youniqueness and your:
• Constructive curiosities.
• Positive personal perspectives.
• Talents.
• Special skills.
• Personal strengths.
• Finer qualities.

And that’s what you are put on this planet to do. And sometimes it takes obstacles to draw these things out of us in a truly significant way.

Is it easy to move your attention to these important, productive distractions when you are feeling like hell?

No. No it’s not. Not at all.

And that’s why through Wellness U, Inc. I’ve been developing simple techniques, processes, courses, workshops, coaching instruction, e-guides and more. Because we all need help with this. And the rewards are so great when we begin to master it.

(Portions of the above excerpted, with permission, from the upcoming book, Seven Subtle Shifts That Evoke the SPIRIT OF WELLNESS: Stop Feeling Like Hell and START LIVING WELL! Now! Regardless of Challenges or Conditions © Ken Winston Caine)

© ken winston caine; wellness U, inc., all rights reserved; no reproduction except by written permission; you MAY reproduce the first 50 words so long as the excerpt is hyperlinked to the full article at: http://www.mindbodyspiritjournal.com/?p=53, and is is credited to ken winston caine and Mind Body Spirit Journal.