Importance of Health and Well-being
The next decade needs to witness major shifts in the design of our health systems and how the world approaches health care. But the real transformation needs to come within each and every one of us. How we human beings respond to the challenges and look for holistic answers will vastly determine how our future health and well-being will pan out. Countries, governments, and the world at large, facing formidable challenges associated with human health and life, are still reeling and at a complete loss in tackling the unfortunate challenges that COVID-19 has left us with. As though COVID was not enough, we have also added wars to the mix, along with fuelling natural disasters, through our complete lack of care towards nature. The diverse challenges are only mounting with brief respites, with no effective solutions for human well-being in sight. In these challenging times, we are looking up to our governments and our healthcare systems to come up with solutions. Unfortunately, they are developing band-aid solutions that only profit from the commercial interests of politicians and industries, including the pharmaceutical industry.
Today, the definition of health is understood only in terms of expensive health insurance, huge hospitals fitted out with the latest diagnostic technology, specialist doctors, and never ending concoctions of medicines. What we need to understand is that the modern healthcare system is designed only to support you in managing your health as a fallback system when something goes wrong. Primarily, your health is in your hands, not somebody else’s.
Then the question arises, ‘What are you doing about your health and well-being?’ Most people I address this question to typically come up with a list of challenges and constraints that are barriers to managing their health and well-being. They sincerely believe that it is in the hands of their government, their politicians, their medical systems, and research and technology to improve their quality of life. But people miss the whole point of this question: ‘Their health is their business.’ When I ask people what the most important asset of their life is, I hear varied answers from ‘my family, my children, my home’ to ‘my most expensive luxury car parked outside.’ Again, people miss the whole point of this question. YOU are your greatest asset. You see, we have trained ourselves to look at our material successes – the external conveniences – as the only way to our inner happiness. Material success is a wonderful thing, but it unfortunately does not guarantee inner well-being, joy, or peace. If you learn to take care of the most critical asset that you have (which is yourself) in a holistic way, then there is scope for you to reach a certain state of inner well-being irrespective of the external circumstances.
People are often willing to set themselves on a holistic path at the beginning of the year as part of their New Year’s resolutions or when their medical/blood reports show something drastic. Sooner or later, though, they come up with many excuses to give up the holistic maintenance and recovery path and are eventually happy to leave it to their doctors and healthcare systems to manage it. The usual excuses range from something as simple as “lack of time and competing priorities” to ignorance, nonchalance, and laziness toward their own well-being. I have heard people say they are happier to pop a few pills to mask the diseases of their body and mind rather than try to manage and cure them themselves holistically. These are times of fast foods and quick fixes – looking for fast results with minimum or no effort. These are also times of glossy packaging, where everything is about how it looks on the outside. Alas, that is going to be the greatest challenge that humanity will face over the next decade and further on.
It is not as if there is no solution to this. We do have an answer to all our woes if we are prepared to invest a little bit of time in ourselves. In these modern days, we can seek refuge in an ancient science that has withstood the test of time – the science of yoga.
Yoga and Its Transformative Role in Enhancing Well-Being
Yoga as a science is not new to the world. Yoga has existed for thousands of years. Yogic texts say that yoga dates back to the ‘Father of Yoga – Pathanjali’ about 3000 years ago, but it is clear that it dates back even further to the Adi Yogi (First Yogi), many thousands of years before that. What is amazing to note is that yoga has been trampled upon in many ways in the thousands of years that it has existed, but the real essence of yoga has still remained the same. Yogic sciences offer us holistic health and well being through managing the four dimensions of our existence – our body, our emotions, our life energies, and our mind. These four dimensions are like the four wheels of our life, and they all need to function for us under our intelligent directions. If they don’t, then the four wheels pull us in different directions, with life becoming a pain, not a pleasure. The science that brings us into a complete state of balance to conduct life is yoga. It aims to align these four dimensions of our existence and make them work for us and not against us. This science that could bring us to perfect health “inside-out” is referred to as “Yoga.” Yoga is not a philosophy or religion. It is about simple and profound methods to manage our holistic health through managing our inner wellness If we are willing to invest some time into it for ourselves.
Currently, our next biggest challenges going forward into the next decade are going to be mental wellness, anxiety, loneliness, and depression. The topic of mental health is often ignored, and if and when spoken about, it is addressed as a separate issue. Physical and mental health go hand in hand. A disease in the body is mostly a result of disturbances of the mind, and all mental ailments will eventually have to be reflected in the body. In general, we tend to suppress our feelings of depression and anxiety and expect them to go away. Instead, they accumulate over time and assume gigantic proportions, sometimes eventually consuming lives. These are complex conditions where we need to be aware that we are not able to manage our own minds. We know it, but we still continue to suffer and continue to treat it from outside. Mental health problems exist in our inner experiences, which means that addressing them requires an internal approach. Today, there is enough proven evidence that yoga practiced regularly under expert guidance can create a complete transformation in people who suffer from depression and anxiety. It makes us look at life with clarity and helps create a balance from within. Where there is balance, there is clarity, and where there is clarity, peace automatically prevails.
The modern world understands yoga as a stretching exercise that employs our physical body to achieve a certain state of health. Yes, that can be true, but only to a certain extent. The physical aspect of yoga, as in postures, is only a very minuscule aspect of what yoga really is about. The postures are a fantastic starting point, but “Yoga” really is that path that provides experiential and tangible answers to all our questions in managing our holistic health and well-being.
In conclusion, I want to ask you, the reader of this article, if you think that you are unique and special. If you think that you are, then you are right, because you truly are. Remember that there is only one of you ever, ever in the history of creation. Never ever has there ever been “a YOU” before this, and never again will there be another of YOU. You really are a Unique Edition. If that is correct, then you need to take great care to make sure that you live a life of richness, experiencing only joy and peace. You may be financially rich or poor, young or aged, healthy or not, but you have a glorious life. It is glorious because it is a privilege to have a precious human life. But then again, it is not just about having a life and just living. It is always about how lively a life you can live. Since you already have this precious and glorious life, to keep it that way, I urge you to take care of it and set aside some time every day for your inner well-being.
Remember – ‘Your Health is in Your Hands’