Fourth Form of Madness

So I am at work the other day, having a social chit chat conversation around the water cooler.  One of my co-workers has hurt his knee and will be unable to exercise for over 10 months.  I feel his pain, I once had an injury that took me away from doing something I loved very much and I was amazed how much it challenged my identity.  In the end it turned out to be a god send but it didn’t feel like that at the time.  So there we are, he is lamenting over the effect this is going to have over his fitness and my gaze temporarily clouds over.  Fitness.  What a scientific term.  It was in the name of fitness – that very visible, measurable, scientific term that he ended up in this state.  Overtrained, over competitive and over focussed on the ideal body (ideal – hee hee I can’t help laughing every time I hear this word – do we every ask who’s ideal?).  I no longer hear his individual words, I just feel the concept of unbalanced.

Fitness….such a masculine term.  I’m thinking to myself, as in this social forum I would never feel free to express my thoughts, whatever happened to wellness over fitness?  Fitness is, by it’s very nature , physically focussed in our commodified world.  Fitness is easy to sell to people who don’t have the time to work on wellness but can squeeze 30 mins in daily for a run or a cycle to and from work.  Wellness is more metaphysical.  The physical is so easy to sell.  Wellness, she’s a harder sell and you may never look like popular culture would like you to, but that won’t be your focus.

Each time I have been at my fittest in life, it has, and I am not sure if this is even a coincidence, been at the same time the rest of my life was at it’s shittest.  Over worked, not enough time for key relationships either with myself or others, and living in full throttle habitual living.  Phenomenal stress keeping me separate from myself, keeping me separate from others and more importantly from my innate spirituality.  No-one will convince me that this wasn’t hell.  But as one of my favourite sayings goes “If you are going through hell, keep going”.

See wellness requires you to be a pioneer.  You need to leave the pack behind and dare to venture out on your own even when you may appear slightly crazy, argumentative and damn right odd to others.  Wellness requires you to make decisions that others will not understand.  Wellness isn’t about having the best physical appearance or best recovery rate.  It reaches far beyond that scope.  Wellness is your totality, it is in every thought you have, every decision that you make, in every word you speak and every action you take.  Wellness is not for the lighthearted or easily led.  There is no formal training or education for wellness. Wellness is accessible to all and that’s why I like it so much.  All wellness requires is for you to listen, not so much to the external prompters but to your internal.  Listen again to your breath, to your innate rhythms and to your aches and pains and joys and your thoughts for those will lead you home.

It was to my surprise the other day that my mind started to repeat a mantra that came out of no-where but hasn’t returned there yet. I couldn’t get the word “wellthy” out of  mind.  At first I thought I was just thinking of wealthy but then realised it was loudly and proudly wellthy!  I realised amongst the vibrational repetition of the word that my whole definition of wealthy had changed, without me even consciously realising it to, wellthy. Well-me!  I’ve always been a great one for list making.  So I sat down and wrote what I believed to be the top 5 requirements of being wellthy.  These are in a very significant order of priority:

1.  Sleep

2. Relationships with yourself and others

3. Passion

4. Code of ethics and knowing why you think what you think

5. Well rounded eating and exercise that listens and follows the rhythm of your body (this will be very different for everyone)

I have much to say about each but that is for other blogs.