The four pillars of health
Health is about the choices we make. Ultimately the better the choices the better the health.
There are four pillars to good health, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Health is about the choices we make. Ultimately the better the choices the better the health.
There are four pillars to good health, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Just like the four tyres on a car you need these all to be in balance. If one is overinflated it is not good to drive and if one is flat you’re not going anywhere.
These pillars are built on the health foundations of sleep, breath, nutrition, spiritual practice and exercise
It allows the body and the brain to unwind, recover, grow and heal. Getting a good night sleep helps your body to recover and also gets your body ready for the next day.
We all know how much better we feel after a really good sleep and how after a short or poor sleep the next day is a lot harder.
Breath relates to the emotional.
There are many studies that show breath has a direct connection to how you feel.
You control your breathing, you control your emotions, and emotions have a direct effect on the physical. So breath work very important.
Exercise connects with the physical. We are physical by nature so movement is very important. Understanding what exercise works for your body is vital. This may change at different times of the year and of your life.
Spiritual does not necessarily mean religious (although religion can be a spiritual practice).
There are many different types of spiritual practices including mindfulness, organised religion, just sitting quietly, contemplating or getting into nature.
All of these pillars work together as one.
Physical has an effect on the mental and visa versa.
Emotional has an effect on the physical and so on...
Training one but not the other will never give us the whole health picture.
If you love to train ( physically ) but don't work on breathing correctly before, during or after you won't get the best results and the same goes for every other pillar. By de-stressing emotionally means you can focus on your next goal ( intellectual ) and so on.
Being more mobile and flexible will help with strength training. Better sleep will help emotionally and mentally to help with recovery and in turn help with the physical.
Quite often, people have embraced gyms and training without adding the extra so all they do is the physical believing that is all they need to do to maintain fitness but they aren't actually adding to the strength because there is no focus on mobility or flexibility at the same time.
All these pillars work together and hand in hand to help you reach or maintain a level of health, wellbeing and fitness you want.
At Elemental we can help you work on these and build plans and ideas to help you get the most from your body.
We can choose what we eat. Energy producing foods or energy draining process food, sugary food.
If we choose to turn the TV off and go to bed that little bit earlier we can help ourselves recover, get stronger, relax. We can then start the next day better so that when stresses do arise we feel better to face them.
Part of what we do at Elemental is to help put these pillars in place to help you on your path to better wellbeing.
