How do you know you are healthy?

I have a confession.

I love morning routine videos and self help books. If there is anything claiming to have all manner of useful self care and nourishing habits then I am in!

Recently I was watching a morning routine and she said the person’s morning routine she was trying was arguable the healthiest man alive.


Oh now I am very in!!!


So I popped over to his video and honestly I didn’t last 3 minutes. I marvelled at what we consider “healthiest.”

Everything about him was being measured. He wore multiple devices, got on a scale first thing that read out several things, and is apparently being followed by some 30 physicians.

There was no real foods; only powders. He went from one building to another to work out. He went to bed so early that even the most tame celebration with community would be missed.

And it got me thinking about what we use to measure how healthy we are. What are the reliable metrics? Is it just numbers on a scale and a blood test?



What if they were these:

• Our relationship to nature – the time we spend out surrounded with and part of it

• How we wake up in the morning – are we happy, excited, energized, inspired?

• How we connect to community – are we supporting and being supported, eating together, celebrating, grieving together?

• How we love our bodies – are we doing “healthy habits” to worship our bodies and hold them as a sacred ecosystems of self, or is it all powders to keep it “clean” and keep it from having a countless number of separate mechanical parts fail

• Our relationship to sex, turn on, orgasms – do we feel fulfilled here, turned on by life, deep in our pleasure

• Our connection to our spirituality – do we hold anything sacred, are we attuning to anything bigger then ourselves, are we pausing the marvel at the reason we are all here

Now these are all great and beautiful, but, there are also immediately some very irritating implications:

• They depend on others. More enraging, they mean we do not control our health as individuals.

 

• They also do not allow us a one sized fits all, find the right formula and then... ah there we go... all our health questions are solved and right if we just keep following the formula.

 

• These metrics demand a state of presence, a constant flux with life, and an acceptance that we are always dancing with our health in real time.

The great news is that we are in fact ecosystems, not merely responding to stimulus, but where all the beautiful parts are striving and collaborating to bring us to equilibrium and alignment. Even small gentle acts can have a huge positive effect.

Nothing needs to be completely solved. Instead of berating ourselves to find the discipline to follow the exact formula all the time, we can cultivate the practice of being present with ourselves instead. We can gently access supports, connects, rituals, habits, etc as we are called to them and as we need them for our own unique needs.

My wish for you is this more gentle sense of health – connected to all the rest of us.