By Johanna Smith B.Ed, Cert Early Childhood, Teacher, Rockingham, Perth WA.
I recently attended a Universal Medicine event day, where a photo from the 1960’s/70’s was presented alongside a discussion forum around health. This photo was of a group of young people who looked at ease with each other, had genuine smiles on their faces, were of a healthy weight range and their bodies reflected an openness and naturalness. The photo was really pleasant to see and reminded me of the feeling of being free in my body that I had when I was very young – something that could not be faked.
As a whole, we looked at the photo and shared what we saw before us. There was pretty much a consensus that this photo was sharing something that was not commonly seen in today’s society. It was not only showing how the individuals were, but it also revealed how they were with each other, how they felt and more importantly what they were reflecting about life back then. A way of life that, from this photo, seemed to support bodies to look and feel vital, engaged, open and ‘healthy.
Serge Benhayon then presented and facilitated us through a valuable workshop around the word ‘Health’. Much was discussed that was clear and made complete sense, yet some of it I had not really considered before.
The presentation and conversations in the workshop made me realise that the words ‘health’ and ‘being healthy’ relate to something we have now come to perceive as something that we ‘do’ in life – as one part of life. We have, over time, created this meaning to be what it is today and put ‘health’ into its own compartment, somehow separate from the whole of life. Therefore we are now living by a false – a bastardised – definition of ‘true health.’
We started by talking and sharing what ‘health’ means today and this created lots of discussion. Serge asked the group to split up and sit into age groups of 80 year olds, 70 year olds, etc., all the way down to under 20 year olds. Each group discussed and shared life, health and what it meant and looked like for them as they were growing up. After this we all came back together to share what we had discussed in our age groups with the whole group.
In order for us to get the true picture of ‘health through the ages,’ Serge asked us to share about health and life from our age groups, starting with the oldest group all the way down to the youngest group. This is where the whole group was able to see and feel ‘health through the ages’ – basically how we as a society have moved from what was depicted and evident in the photo shown, to what we see and feel in people’s bodies, behaviours and attitudes in and around health today.
Generally it was shared that the people who were in their 80’s, 70’s and 60’s did not really have a clear definition of the word ‘health’ back when they were growing up, except that the absence of sickness generally meant you were healthy. These groups shared things like serious illnesses – such as cancers, diabetes, mental illness – were rare and hardly spoken about; that life and health was one and the same and it did not carry its own activities or definition. Life’s activities back then were what kept you healthy and people didn’t make time to ‘be healthy’ or ‘do health.’ This point alone was very interesting to hear. Health back then was without definition but the way of life was what supported healthy bodies. So at this point there was no compartmentalisation of ‘health’ in life.
Then, as those in their 50’s and 40’s shared, we could start to see that some health fads were coming in; being healthy was getting promoted, but life in general still had more play and activity than it does today. This group shared that people did do sport and for that they exercised and kept healthy, people did have an awareness about eating habits, yet there still was not a complete division between life and health, even though it was starting to creep in. This group also shared that more awareness of some illnesses were creeping in and it was heart disease that was spoken about the most at this point.
As those in their 30’s and 20’s shared, the absolute shift and compartmentalisation of health was obvious along with the great deterioration in the way of life, relationships, behaviours and activities, and the dramatic increase of serious illnesses and diseases within it. This group shared that being healthy meant you went to the gym, went for a run, did aerobics, ate certain fad foods, were a particular image and fitted in, and so on. Yet health here all took place in isolation to life, was a part in life but not a natural part of a way of living.
This means that activities and behaviours that go completely against ‘true health’ – ones that in fact abuse the body such as drinking, excessive exercise, smoking, starving oneself, overeating, eating sugary and fatty foods, spending excessive time on technology devices, getting little sleep, working in drive and so on, can play out while the body that is doing them still considers itself ‘healthy’ because it spends some time at the gym or ‘doing health’ now and then. And so the lie of health today is revealed.
Meeting the criteria of the current compartmentalised perception of health today such as going to the gym, exercising and eating certain foods, does not mean that one is truly healthy. One could say that this mentality allows us in society to continue in our ill ways and deteriorate, without choosing to be aware of unhealthy patterns and behaviours, let alone look at the root cause of why we choose them. The lack of self-responsibility is then taking place because we collectively now ‘box’ what ‘health’ is. How can we ever consider that true health is about the ‘all of us’ – our mental health, our physical health, our way of relating to people, our confidence, feeling settled and supporting our body and ourselves in all areas so that we can be all that we are designed to be in life – if health today is a tick box exercise?
The thing is, we all have values and every human being on earth knows these deep down. True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more. It means we consider absolutely everything about us; how we are and most of all the fact that others are always on some level affected by what we think, say, do and express in life, just as much as we are. We may think whatever we like, but our bodies reveal the truth of our choices and the quality of the relationship we have with them, ourselves and life is the foundation for living in a way that is either harming or truly healthy.
Read more:
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
Johanna I love what you have presented here, I pondered on the whole meaning of health and what it meant for each age bracket. And I totally resonated with 20’s and 30’s era, where I thought I was healthy, when actually I was abusive to the body and definitely in isolation to life.
Since my stop moments, I see health from a different perspective and through the presentation of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, my new health is from the inside out, and no longer from the outside in, which was the leading cause to the path of burnout, exhaustion and this constant discontentment.
As true health is unfolding for me, I’m loving discovering more about me and my body. It may not be perfect but who’s complaining when how I live now is a reflection for others that, abusing the body is not the way forward to true health and wellbeing.
Is it also possible to consider that humanity is feeling the sensitivity of the pull of evolution? We feel this as a unrest in our bodies and to quell the unrest we eat too much and all the wrong foods and so we gain weight as some sort of barrier or protection to what we cannot stop feeling.
This article should really be presented in education including at universities, we really need this information because it seems that coinciding with the compartmentalisation of health we can see the rapid rise in statistics worldwide for illness and disease.
Melinda I agree, this needs to be presented in education. We have bastardised health and glamourised it with bodies that are hard, lean and mean. And we are always counteracting our bodies, eat so called healthy, then we exercise and smash our bodies – go figure.
Such a valuable workshop. I attended this via webcast and can remember the photo you talk about and as you have never reflected on the health and how we were in the past to now in such a way. You would think that as the years went on we would learn and life would unfold with us having more vitality, joy and true wellbeing but as we can clearly see in the world this is not currently happening. A great moment to stop and truly discuss, reflect and ponder as to why.
This is fascinating to me and I had not considered how health had changed through the years but it is clear there has been a compartmentalising of health that is now a marketable phenomenon and a very lucrative business to be in.
I wonder if we all at one time lived love and expressed love with our every breath, love being a natural way to be, and then we began bastardising and compartmentalising love by allocating it as only shared with special people (instead of all equally), and expressed on special days like Valentines (instead of as an ordinary daily basis), and seen in the things we do like buying gifts, when it is actually a natural expression and way of being and living 24/7.
Agreed, and the only reason I can see for why we would compartmentalise our love is from being influenced by fear. Fear is a reducer and controls in subtle ways that can go unnoticed till the consequences are big – like only expressing how much you love someone on one day of the year!
It is odd how we feel that we can only really express love on Valentine’s Day instead of expressing our love every day. It has become such a commercial hype, I could not believe the sea of expensive Red Roses that flowered overnight in my local Supermarket and the next day were all marked down at half price. I wonder how many Red Roses where grown just for that one day of the year? It’s interesting how we compartmentalize our lives instead of perhaps just living each day as it comes as we did when we were young.
Growing up in the ’60s there was very little talk in our house about health and everyone seemed healthy enough except for the usual childhood diseases at the time. Then in the mid 70’s I noticed my parents (now deceased) starting to do exercises and going on diets to lose weight. At one point my father was hospitalised to lose weight which by today’s standard he wasn’t as overweight as the people you see these days, but it was a requirement by the army that he lose x amount of weight. So, off he went to live on oranges until he reached their desired weight but found out he was allergic to oranges so was put on apples. During his hospital stay the only thing he ate was apples and he did lose a lot of weight but as we now know these diets do not keep the weight off, and as soon as he came home the weight came back on, and he became heavier than before the hospital stay. For us, this was the first evidence that their lifestyle choices were not healthy and health issues were on the horizon.
Most foods now are processed and heavily flavoured with a variety of ‘uppers and downers’ like sugar and gluten and dairy. and especially if we smoke, take recreational drugs or drink alcohol these effects can go consciously undetected by us but unconsciously they are making a difference and sooner or later we come up against what they have done to our bodies. One day we will go deeper and consider the energetic integrity of all that we consume and begin to become more discerning from that perspective.
I cannot wait for this day when as a whole we do this ‘One day we will go deeper and consider the energetic integrity of all that we consume and begin to become more discerning from that perspective.’ Also why are we accepting pretty much most food to be flavoured which sugar, salt, flavouring etc when it simply is not needed. Again what we demand will be supplied so if there is no demand for this, no one will buy therefore the supply will have to change to what is the demand.
It’s actually incredible how much has changed about our attitudes towards our health and lifestyle in such a short space of time. And it seems to continue to change at an ever increasing speed. There must surely come a time when people will wake up and see that all these ‘lifestyle changes’ are but a drop in the ocean when compared to living a daily life of truth, integrity, responsibility and love.
I have often wondered when sugar became such a big thing in our lives because in the 60’s and 70’s it didn’t seem as prevalent but if memory serves me correctly it was there in the form of sugared sandwiches, tablespoons of sugar heaped on the breakfast cereal or mixed with condensed milk. The introduction of chocolate bars and cola, cream cakes was also a popular thing to partake of but we didn’t have so much in the way of hidden sugars as in the processed foods they get now. It’s disturbing these days the amount of sugar is in processed food and the different varieties.
It has taken me well into my 60’s to really understand the meaning of what true health is. Whereas in the past, as long as I was not sick, I considered myself to be healthy, these days I know that the true state of my health encompasses the condition of my body, my emotional and mental state, my vitality and so much more. And I also know that by taking all aspects of my life into consideration I begin to build a very solid and steady foundation that holds me no matter what I am doing, how I am feeling and what challenges come my way.
Yes, this foundation is built away from acute episodes, it is built as a foundation upon which our body can stand when it is challenged physically and emotionally by aspects of life.
Ingrid I agree with you that our health encompasses all of who we are, like you the most important aspect I feel is having a steadiness within me that holds no matter what challenges come my way.
Regardless of what era we live in, true health comes from our connection with our Soul and allowing this love and this light to permeate through to every aspect of our lives, whereas ill health invariably comes from our resistance to this and thus the stubborn adherence we often adopt to the human etheric spirit and its wanton ways.
‘our bodies reveal the truth of our choices’ Yes there is no getting away from this so isn’t it sensible then to enquire of our bodies what works best for us and when? I have found going to bed earlier by a couple of hours very supportive and also remembering that it is quality rest that we need however many hours we sleep.
Oh wow, health has now become something for us to do – never thought of it like that, but that’s so true. There are many ways to plaster up a picture of ‘health’ but which are actually being self- abusive.
Compartmentalising health and only doing it at the gym is really the same as a doctor telling a patient with lung cancer to stop smoking yet they are chain smoking out the back door when nobody is around because they are so stressed out. How can anyone be inspired by that because they are not living what they propose, just as we have to live health in all areas of our life to be truly healthy.
Yes that is the same logic that tells children to do as I say, not as I do!
So much now is about how we look, appearance, both on a personal, domestic, and corporate level. At any cost keep up appearances, because if we look on the inside of any of these things a whole different world is revealed
The key is to establish a way of living that nurtures our innermost so that what is seen on our outermost is a reflection of that which is lived, cherished and nourished within.
Cjames2012 I agree with you we have made everything about face value and appearances, while underneath the veneer we are rotting away.
I have heard Serge Benhayon present on the subject of health and how it is becoming more and more common for ‘good health’ to actually be considered as ‘a lack of serious or critical illness or disease’. Which means that what was once considered ill health has now become normal, and we only regard what is actually very extreme as ill. This sliding scale does not make it easy or simple for the professionals who are given the task of treating an ever increasingly extreme-illness population, and also it does not make it easy or nurturing for the younger generations to understand themselves and the potential they each hold for bringing through what a true and harmonious society can actually be like.
Yes, it simply reduces what we value and then makes it harder to place value in the simple loving ways of how we live as a major contributor to our health and well-being.
A real exposing of the situation of the world health today and the normality of illness and disease and where we are heading that is kept hidden for fear of seeing what is really going on for us all and our rapidly declining quality of life in a time when we pride ourselves on our advancing technology achievements.
It really is very interesting to consider that when I was a young person, I am now into my 60’s, that I don’t recall there being gyms, or that people went walking for exercise and there were definitely no personal trainers. Children were not overweight or obese, I know because there was one girl in my school, I even remember her name because to be overweight was so unusual, and because she was overweight she stood out amongst her peers. Cancer and major illnesses were hardly heard of and people were shocked when they did hear of someone they knew who was seriously unwell. In one generation this way of being has been completely turned on its head and beggars the question; how has such a dramatic change occured in such a relatively short span of time.
We cannot see health as a tick box exercise. We are so much more than boxes and to see us as boxes is to limit us severely.
“True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more. It means we consider absolutely everything about us; how we are and most of all the fact that others are always on some level affected by what we think, say, do and express in life, just as much as we are.” – The body is our marker of truth!
Separating Living and health and just focusing on doing health sounds like it is causing more detriment than health in honesty.
True health is something the majority of people would have no concept of, as it encompasses every aspect of our living way and cannot be relegated to just exercise and diet.
It calls on the responsibility to allow the body to read what is needed rather than over ride with the comforts that keep us on the ride of highs and lows.
From reading this article, I can see how important it is to look back at the lives of our elders, and to learn from them, perhaps maybe not always directly, but certainly in reflection for the choices that they made.
If this trend carries on with health be ‘you don’t have cancer or a terminal or crippling condition’? Will be be like tattoos or watching TV that you’ll be considered weird if you aren’t ill?
“The thing is, we all have values and every human being on earth knows these deep down” So true Johanna. We do know when we are losing the plot with regard to looking after ourselves in a healthy way.
If we approach health as a tick box exercise we miss the point that we are way more than function and it is about all aspects of our being.
The children of today are no different from the children of yesterday when they are met and looked into their eyes. They respond just the same, towards love, if it is shown like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Our perceptions can change on anything and everything, it is only the truth of the body that remains consistent.
What I have also noticed that comes with how health is currently perceived in this modern era, is how the criteria for what ‘healthy’ activities are, are often used to judge one another. So, even though you may have gorgeous relationships and a deep love for oneself, if you do not ‘go to the gym’ or drink smoothies or engage in some kind of spiritual practise, you can be judged as being ‘unhealthy’.
I was working in inner-city London yesterday, I had some time to sit and observe people walking or driving past as I waited for a truck to turn up. I have to admit I don’t usually just sit and observe like this so I was blown away by the pace, aggression and lack of care so many people had for each other and It made me wonder how long the city had been like this, what was it like 5o years ago, were we so stressed and highly strung?
I recall when I moved to London fifty years ago the pace of life was so much faster than I had been used to. People walked so fast, even then, but the stress feels more intense these days.
We cannot say we are healthy because we go to the gym, run a mile and eat fad food, health is not what we do, health is not a doing, it is our quality of being which comes through in every aspect of our lives.
Spot on Jill. True health is something that oozes out of every pore when consistantly lived, and is so much more than what we eat and drink and how much exercise we do.
So true Jill, true health is how we are with ourselves and within ourselves first and foremost and then taking that quality into everything we do or say.
Thanks to Serge Benhayon I now know the true meaning of health and the vibration that I feel in my body when I am choosing to connect and live with this in my life.
Rules and regulations and guidelines for all areas, be that health and well being or at work or in schools (around behaviour etc) are all things that are increasing in our society – and yet when we go back to the roots of who we are, to our essence, we never need any rules and regulations and guidelines. We all know deep inside how to be with ourselves and with another inside out, but have chosen to forget and neglect this, leading a life that then requires guidelines and rules to tell us how to behave, how to be, how to take care of oursleves, how to be healthy, how to behave around people etc. How crazy is this?
Health and vitality have become a fad in our current era, rather than being a true lived experience.
So true – and then people wonder why they get such and such an illness because they are so ‘healthy’. The meaning of health has become bastardised to a tick box exercise.
I agree Henrietta, health has become something we do, rather than a way of being.
What gets in the way of living the natural healthy way of living that our bodies know so well and respond to, when given half a chance? We put so many ideas and pictures in the way of living that simplicity.. when we start letting go of what we think we need to do, how we need to be or to live to meet our own or others’ expectations, life starts to change and there is an ease and flow to it. Life is only as complicated as we make it.
“Life is only as complicated as we make it.” How very true Bryony. By keeping simplicity in our lives, we naturally pull in a flow that supports us, is constant and allows room for growth on so many levels.
Growing up in the 1950s and 60s there was no mention of ‘eating your 5-a-day’ as that was part of everyday living.
My mum was saying the other day that when she was a child she would come home from school and go straight to the large veggie garden they had and work, weeding and harvesting food for the evening meal and when I was a child I used to come home from school and go out after a bit of tv and help at the cow shed feeding calves and cleaning the milking shed it was all just part of life growing up but now days for kids it is all gaming and social media no wonder we have obese kids and super unhealthy teenagers.
Well said – the connection with Nature is gold Kevin, and such an opportunity to be present and allow oneself to be.
As a child, I am now in my 60’s, I walked everywhere, to school and back each day, to do the shopping, running messages, to church and back on Sunday, and often played out in the street with all the neighbourhood kids, and although I grew up in the suburbs, and not on a farm like yourself Kev, we were just naturally moving throughout the day; and I have a hard time remembering any children who were overweight, let alone obese.
True Health means we consider absolutely everything about us, without acknowledging every aspect of how we live, we do complete disservice to everything we are.
‘True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more.’ I agree, health is not just staying physically well, our whole way of living is important for our wellbeing.
Before I came across Universal Medicine I would have said I was healthy as I was devoid of any serious ailments however I was living with the constant tension that I didn’t feel good enough. It was only after I had started to address this that I realised how unhealthy in fact this was.
Health is not just the absence of disease.
It’s interesting that in the 60’s/70’s that there was no real concern about our health until someone got cancer, polio and measles, and yet in comparison to today it seems that everyone has a health issue or knows of someone close to them that has a serious health issue.
There is a common perception that Elite athletes are seen as being the pinnacle role models of health and well being in our society. After all they have a team of health professionals watching their every move, supporting them with how they eat, checking their vitals etc. But I question if they really represent that pinnacle of health, because if this truly was the case, then why do they get cancers, anxiety, depression etc? Something from the equation is missing…And if we make an elite athlete our top standard and role model for health, does this mean that a person in a wheel chair for example, can never be healthy?
People have different versions or different standards of health – there is the standard that says ‘if I don’t have cancer or another illness or disease then I am healthy’; and then there is the next standard that says ‘if I don’t have a cold of a flu this year than I am healthy’; and then there are the ones who say ‘if I do not smoke or drink then I am healthy’; and then there is again those who see health as exercising a lot, running and doing yoga etc etc. But very few if any talk about true vitality and joy and having mojo and purpose in their lives. It seems that this level of health and well being has been forgotten and even abandoned. Perhaps it is time we revived the original meaning of health by living it to the best of our ability.
Quite strange if you think about the fact that we can consider ourselves healthy in today’s world because we go to the gym and do a work out, regardless of the fact that we might go out and drink alcohol and do drugs and party late on a weekend. And we excuse that behaviour saying we do not do it every night and that most of the time we make healthy choices. But what is it that makes us believe that we are in fact then healthy? Could it be that we have settled for a compromised definition of the word healthy?
In medieval times herbs were greatly used and in modern times chemicals are the basis for medicines. For me herbs work with the body and feel more gentle. Pharmaceuticals have their uses but they also have their side effects. They also have the added burden of the energy under which they are manufactured and sold, clearly with profit in mind.
There are so many versions of healthy. I used to think I was a healthy eater but still would experience symptoms that I knew were not 100% healthy, like runny/blocked nose, disrupted sleep, bit of a lower back pain sometimes, all things that maybe most people would consider acceptable because they didn’t impact life particularly. But my ‘healthy’ eating or my ‘healthy’ yoga didn’t really shift the symptoms. It was only when I came to understand the body with its energetic aspects, thank you Serge Benhayon, that I begin to make the changes needed in my diet and my approach to life, where no longer did my body need to communicate with those particular set of symptoms, yet, there is a constant communication from my body that I can be responsive to. That to me is true health – not that we are symptom free, but that we are responsive to the underlying messages from the body and choose to make changes that address the energetic/behavioural aspect of the symptoms aslong side the physical.
I love listening to our elders and seeing these narrative snapshots – we can glean a lot of understanding of how the world was a couple of generations ago, and then understand the trajectory we are on from that perspective. But we can also know that same trajectory by looking around us and clocking what does not match what we know in our bodies to be a true way of living. The more truth /love I allow myself to know in my body, the more I see and understand around me.
We are totally lost whilst we think we are living “true health” whilst we are overriding the Divine messages of our body.
Ah, I love that Joshua, the addition of the word Divine – of course they are Divine messages and not just ‘messages’ when our bodies are made of the same matter as the universe!
There is little that we see in our current world that is promoting true health from within. Everything is offered from the outside and interestingly enough, sold to us as a quick fix when what resides within is calling us to release the true vitality that we are all craving for.
Health is unique to us, hence why a one-size fits all ‘health program’ will never work – each person at their own stage needs different bits to support them.
Health has become a multi million dollar industry, everything is based on diet and exercise, yet we all miss the most important ingredient which is what we can do for ourselves by way of our everyday choices.
What should be clear to us is we are moving further and further away from the truth and the trajectory we are plotting as a race can only lead to higher rates of illness, corruption and disease. Time to change our direction.
We are always wanting to find a way that is better, in all aspects of life from fashion to technology to cars etc. With out trying to hold on to the ‘old ways’ and always open to evolving and expanding we could stop and reflect back like this blog offers how there is a vast difference as to how much simpler life used to be and this offering space to be where we were at and not seeking the next new and advanced things. It is so clear from generation to generation how it has become less and less the simplicity and being and more about a life of seeking and complication.
We certainly live a very different way to how we used to, and this is very evident in our health and vitality. However it is possible to choose not to follow the norm and live a far more simple and healthy life that honours our natural way. We do not have to be a statistic.
What you share here Rebecca is immensely powerful as it lets us consider that the way we live is our choice, we can change at any moment how we live and can choose to live in anyway we wish. What if we chose love as the basis of how we live?
The reality of the past that health was part of the way we lived and not something separate that needs to be done is very revealing of the intensity we have created life to be now and the enormous rise in illness and disease, so common it has become normalised more and more each day. Serge Benhayon and the Way of the livingness is offering the world a way to come back to who we are with a joy, vitality and true health as part of our lives in every moment and the settlement this allows us from inside.
Spot on Tricia – joy, vitality and true health are inter-related and you cannot have one without the other, and when you bring them all together, it is accessible to all, regardless if you are in a wheel chair or living with cancer. I know of some beautiful people that are vibrant and radiant and joyful and living with cancer, whilst others who have no illness or disease feel far less healthy in their body – this is an eye opener to what health truly means!
We have raised the bar of intensity on this planet so high, on this I think we can all agree. And it seems that we still have further to go before we really take on board the horror that we have created, and just how far we are away from living the simplicity of who we truly and naturally are. Thank you Serge Benhayon for reflecting the Way of the Livingness in your every word and movement and in this showing us our true nature within.
I think in some ways we are heading towards defining health by the absence of cancer or something immediately life-threatening, rather than having a connection with a true sense of joy, love and vitality in ourselves. When we drop our standards it’s like we’re normalising being less than who we truly are.
We have to stop and consider what is nowadays considered health. When we do not have the joy, love, openness, vitality, sensitivity and acute observation of a young child, we are not well. If we think we are healthy, we are lying to ourself.
Exactly I wonder what my daughter will understand health to be if she just observed the world around her? Very different from what I would have done when I was young and yet now we get to re-set the standard of health to be something far greater than just not having a terminal or serious illness.
It is so important to have markers for where we have got to. The slide into ill health has become so normal that we have forgotten what a truly vital society looks and feels like.
It’s fascinating how with each generation our understanding of well-being and health has changed. Personally I would have thought that ‘well-being’ was ‘well-being’ and that its meaning would be constant, but to discover its re-interpretation is a surprise. It makes sense that in every way we have changed the meaning of words and life over time to be something it originally was not.
We can be healthy but cannot do health.
Health has been made into a commodity… You can buy health through vitamins, gym memberships and diet fads, but is it truly health if when those purchases do not actually contribute to settlement in the body?
I’d say that’s an example of how we can think of doing health in a compartmentalised way rather than appreciating it is intrinsically linked with how we are in every aspect of our life…
Agreed Michael but as you say how much is true health, one that has a deep settlement in the body?
And how much do we have not only a deep settlement in our bodies but live with true vitality in all aspects our life?
In work places today, stress and being busy are the norm and what’s expected: it’s like if you’re not frantically busy and a bit stressed then you’re not working hard enough. But we are the ones perpetuating this: we’re the ones who make ourselves feel guilty for leaving on time, even if we arrived early; we’re the ones in charge of our relationship with our workplaces and workloads. While it’s great that employers are starting to support their staff with this, nothing will truly change until we get honest with how we are relating to our work and life and why we’ve allowed things to get so out of balance.
Health doesn’t have to be a ‘thing’ but simply a way of living where we look after ourselves, nurture, be fit for what we need to do for our jobs and continuously evaluate and deepen all of the above.
I hadn’t considered the different perceptions of what health is to people until Serge Benhayon began to present about it, and very quickly, what he was sharing began to make sense. It has taken a while but now I consider every part of my life, the way I move, what I eat and drink, how I sleep, how I express to others etc all integral parts of my health, and the more loving care and attention I bring to all these aspects the healthier I naturally am.
If things don’t change I really wouldn’t like to see what the next photo would look like of youth in another 10 or so years, when gaming, computers and smart phones suck more of the life out of them and if food becomes even more convenient over healthy.
No matter what era we live in, the ageless truth remains the same: it is very healing to align with our Soul, and it is very harmful to not.
Such a great excercise to go through and a real stop moment for us all to reflect on where we are. I love how it has been known all along what is true and that this has never changed it has only been a stepping away which means we can always step back at any given point we choose to.
It’s clear that the vitality and ‘spunk’ we once used to live with as part of our everyday life has become something of a rarity compared to an everyday occurrence, it does make me wonder why have we settled for a way of living that is far lower in quality than just a generation or so ago?
There is a certain innocence that we have lost through the taking on the intensity and corruption of today’s world. In the days without technology we did not have the whole world in our living rooms, we had the space to live our own lives and connect with the people around us. In the present day we are so bombarded by TV, internet, cell phones, and many other factors that it is almost like our lives are not our own. We then walk around carrying it all. No wonder our bodies do not feel free and easy like the ones in this photo. Reclaiming our lives back is something we can choose to do, and it starts with reclaiming our bodies one choice at a time.
It is interesting, the stark differences of how health has been perceived throughout the last even 5 decades. And how we could not say that now, even with all of our medical advances, that we as a global race of humans are actually truly living a healthier more vital life and especially if we take in to account mental health statistics.
I too found it fascinating to read the feedback from the various groups. In my 60’s I can easily relate to what was shared about health not being what you did but more so how you lived. And the health conditions that are rampant these days were not in great numbers then either. Today’s global health statistics are definitely painting a gloomy picture of the direction of humanity’s health, but how amazing that Serge Benhayon is presenting that it doesn’t have to get any gloomier, there is a way of living that has the potential to stop the rise of ill-health and then to turn it right around.
It seems that keeping things simple in our daily life is an ingredient that supports health and wellbeing… These day when you look around, we are bombarded by distraction and images of what you have to do in order to be ticking the box of being healthy…
Complexity is the elixir of the human etheric spirit, just as simplicity is the breath of the Soul.
I can’t help but see that we have much we could learn from those who lived down the ages, but we instead choose to arrogantly see ourselves as the most advanced we have ever been, largely based on technological advances rather than being based on intuition and how we are in our bodies.
“Life’s activities back then were what kept you healthy and people didn’t make time to ‘be healthy’ or ‘do health.’” I can remember life being this way. It was a much simpler time – regarding food, technology, cars, clothes…and there was certainly not so much choice. And as you say health was not a ‘thing’ because the way we lived was generally ‘healthy’. It’s ironic that today there is so much focus on being healthy, while our society is actually sicker than ever before.
The definition of what true health means has definitely changed over the last forty years, along with how complicated life has become. Is it any wonder then that the health conditions are also complicated and on the increase.
I agree that health today has become a way of doing rather than a way of being. It tends to be things we do to offset our other unhealthy choices rather than looking at the whole of our life and seeing how it is affecting our health and wellbeing. Health for me is a way of life that supports a well-being which then naturally supports the health of the body.
We think our past was just full of dirt and disease but it’s time to wipe the muck from our eyes and come to realise that in times gone past we lived and knew beauty in a super powerful way. It’s not too late to bring that back today.
It feels like there are changes as we go through the generations, but without the rose coloured spectacles, there is little true change. In my childhood, I remember more air pollution, lead petrol and paint, men working in the mines and with asbestos damaging their lungs. Now we have too many insecticides, junk food, obesity and heart disease, but the point is, we have more freedom of choice today to choose how healthy we want to live. The question remains.. why are we not choosing to live healthier?
We have the signs everywhere. How we have been living and the world we have created is not working. Even our own bodies are yelling out this fact. We say we want a great world and a loving world. Yet – obviously and tragically – it seems that it has to get much much worse before we are ready to accept there is a flaw in the whole foundation of how we are approaching life.
Very true Golnaz perhaps when we all say enough is enough will we look for the other way to live, to work and to contribute to society.
It is correct that we often compartmentalise our activities in our life, as in I go to the gym and do yoga so I can go out for that drink, get stressed and stay up late that night as if the good points will balance out the less favourable activities – we do not live with point systems however and the body feels the disregard when ever we chose it. We do separate life these days and in this we do not take responsibility for the whole of life and how every choice we make matters. Health is a matter of vitality and commitment to life, its foundation builds from every choice we make, it is not about many muscles you have, how far you can run, or what yoga pose you can get in to, but the sparkle in the eye and a true responsibility to keep healing and caring for the whole of us.
There are primitive societies where everybody looks very healthy and in some societies that is actually the case but in other societies there is a very high death rate and only the fittest survive – the survivors look good but that is not the whole story. What we are currently managing is keeping people who are ill alive and, somehow, functioning for much longer but we are unable to reverse the trend so we are looking worse and worse and now in some countries death rates are actually increasing again despite the miracles of modern medicine.
Medicine can only serve so much but it is our choices and lifestyles that are the biggest pills to swallow!
I am almost 50 years old, yet I do not look or feel this at all! I fact people often think I am still in my 30’s! I do not engage in the usual way of life that is common today. I do not watch TV – I prefer a walk in nature and to talk to real people, I do not drink alcohol – I hate the way it makes me feel, I keep active, I like to learn from every situation instead of complain about it, and I am learning to love myself and others more and more each day. With an open attitude and an open heart there is no need to crumble up and become a statistic of our modern day living. Adopting a much more natural way of life is where it’s at.
I think instead of stopping and really considering what’s truly going on that our health, wellbeing and vitality levels are decreasing in many ways, it gets dismissed as ‘normal’ or not even appreciated and instead it is championed that we may live longer, without care for the quality of that life all the way through…
In the 18th century people died regularly and suddenly, so a 40-year old was normally considered too old to marry. Over time medicine and other measures made it easier to go into old age but are we now testing just how much medicine can rescue us from our lifestyles so we can continue living?
It we start to consider and ponder the quality in which we work, move in and our relationships then we can be honest in terms of true wellbeing and health.
How fascinating to be able to get a picture of what health and wellness looked like through the ages in this way. I wonder if the steep rise in the 20s and 30s group also saw a steep rise in marketing power and branding. We started to be ‘sold’ a picture of health and wellness.
I reckon we have compartmentalised health to be just what’s happening in our physical body instead of it being related to how we think, feel, how we express and relate to others etc. It has to be an overall thing that encompasses every part of life since everything has an effect. Not only have we compartmentalised health to be what occurs in the body but we have separated it from what precedes what happens in the body – the way we live our life.
People will often say they have good health when they actually have arthritis, mental health issues, and other long term illnesses that they have come to accept as normal. I have heard Serge Benhayon say that we are moving towards health being an absence of terminal illness. We need to redefine and reassess what being healthy means to us before then.
Our natural way is to feel alive and vital. What does this tell us about our current way of life?
True health is a spherical way of living that encompasses the all. Serge Benhayon reflects this in his living way 24/7 and continues to inspire others to make different choices to find true health for themselves.
“It means we consider absolutely everything about us; how we are and most of all the fact that others are always on some level affected by what we think, say, do and express in life,”
We need to be far more honest about life and exactly what is reflected back at us. This article offers a great example of how we are great at fooling ourselves by just what we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore. Maintaining a reduced view of life will keep us unintelligent and retards our evolution.
That is true – it gives us the illusion of comfort but our body and, regularly, our mental health gets worse.
The reality of our health and how we are living that used to be known seems to have got lost in our so called evolving society and the fix it mentality of function over true quality and livingness.The awareness of this is a great call and knowing that can bring about loving choices and allow true vitality to be lived.
True health comes from living in connection with the deep well of love and wisdom that lives within us all regardless of our age or the ages.
A reminder that the ideal and beliefs that we attach ourselves is far from true with the wisdom lies within.
The awareness and truth of our health in the world is declining rapidly and something clearly needs to change and it seems only when disaster strike us do we come together and bring the basis of love back into our lives.
We think we’re a smart species but when you take a close look at us…we don’t always like what we see.
“We may think whatever we like, but our bodies reveal the truth of our choices and the quality of the relationship we have with them, ourselves and life is the foundation for living in a way that is either harming or truly healthy.” I was thinking about this yesterday when I observed people around me and feel that we have accepted our bodies looking a certain way and accepted that as normal and that normal means being slightly overweight and quite often bloated. I’m quite slim and sometimes I consider myself too slim if I compare myself to everyone else but I actually think we’ve gotten used to a shape that might not be fully true.
I agree Matts, there is a relationship we develop with our bodies that can be as sensitive as we allow it to be, and that relationship will determine our body shape and how at ease we are with our body shape.
And how much joy and fun we have!
I do remember taking my health and wellbeing for granted growing up as if it is something that does not require self care and honouring and cherishing of the body.
I was speaking with someone recently who had been quite unwell and had had an overnight stay hospital. The medics were amazed that this person only presented with ‘one condition’ as more often than not these days people who are sick have a multitude of symptoms. This change is definitely a sign of the times, and asks us to reflect on how we are living as a society that influences our health to such a degree that it becomes normal to have multple symptoms and not just one or two.
Recently it’s become more and more ‘clear cut’ and assumed that if you hit the gym then you’re fit/healthy, and if you don’t then you should ‘really exercise more’. This completely neglects the fact that fitness is to do with so many different factors, and there are many ways you be active, and that for teenagers (my peers) it shouldn’t be a case of gym being the only option. Gyms aren’t for everyone, and it’s important to find your own way of staying active and feeling fit for your life.
We’ve boxed what healthy is instead of it being an overall lifestyle choice. Maybe that is convenient as then we can tick a box and say we are healthy without looking at the whole picture.
“The words ‘health’ and ‘being healthy’ relate to something we have now come to perceive as something that we ‘do’ in life”. Studying public health, I have been surprised to find how little agreement there is in the literature on the word health. Observing the way people talk about health in general, I find the meaning has had a significant downgrade just ion my lifetime, especially with the current era marked by so much chronic health. In Plato’s writing health is holistic, where there is a state of health and harmony in body, mind and soul. There have been many teachers over time who have shared this same knowing that health is far more than a certain gym look, a diet or level of function. Health has to be holistic and include our soul, as this is an essential part of who we are, the ignoring of which will certainly create ill-health.
Wow what changes in such a relative short time in remembering what is accepted as true health and the way we are living as being part of this naturally. Coming back to a true marker of health and well being is something we need to bring our attention to through our bodies and all we truly feel and live and not in isolation of our connection with ourselves.
Years ago when I was a kid having good health was just an accepted fact unless you got TB, Polio, Mumps, Measles etc. Nowadays it seems like we consider ourselves healthy even though we may have a multitude of niggly things affecting our every day and we say we are healthy because we don’t have cancer, diabetes, heart disease. Could it be that the definition of what’s healthy has changed?
I would say yes to that Julie. It seems that there is a general acceptance that our levels of health are way below that which they used to be, and that it is relatively ‘normal’ to have some sort of ailment.
Knowing that nostalgia for the past isn’t true, but that there’s something we seem to be incrementally losing every day, we find ourselves in an awkward spot. Rather than ignore and carry on, it’s crucial that we wake up and see that not only are we not progressing the way we think we are, we’re living further away from Love than ever before.
Let’s consider that to be healthy means more than just being well and in fact we are made to be vital, joyful and fully engaged in life.
I turned 50 last year and over my life time, especially in the last 20 years I have seen a dramatic change on what people view as being healthy, illness and disease is rife, everyone knows someone with cancer and this obsession with body image sees many overdoing diets or pumping iron and taking steroids and muscle building products.
The line in the sand has been moving and when we all accept the moved line, that is now the normal. But what if it is far from what is truly normal and in this case healthy?
Wow, so much has changed in such a short period of time.
Redefining health as the absence of disease rather than as the presence of physical and mental vitality as well is a tragedy.
If our way of living can change in this way with such an effect on our level of health in just a few generations it is worth considering what is possible if either it continues as it is and our health also continues to deteriorate or if we start to make changes to live a more healthy way once again.
It’s quite incredible how perspectives and ‘truth’ can be warped through successive ages resulting in different realities we consider the norm. Yet, compare it to a different generation and we can realise just how out of kilter we really are.
Yes, we look back on previous ages and wonder how they could ever have come to the judgments and opinions they did yet we have a large catalogue of things that will be considered very strange in future as well.
It is amazing when you talk about what is truly healthy, because as much as the word ‘healthy’ can be interpreted in many different ways according to one’s own perspective and experience, when we talk about true health this seems to take the discussion beyond the personal view and out in to a more global consideration of all that is happening today.
It’s interesting how each generation looks different depending on the trends and behaviours that are current for them. And trends and behaviours obviously affect our health as this blog so beautifully presents. It begs the question, why do we follow trends and copy behaviours over tuning in and listening to our own bodies and what they are naturally asking for? It is possible to live in the way that our grandparents lived if we want to. We so easily get sucked in to what everyone else is doing.
Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s the concept of health was certainly very different than it is today, where it is so often placed into separate “compartments, somehow separate from the whole of life”. But how can you separate our health from our life when the way we live in every moment of our day has an effect on our health. Global health statistics these days are showing so clearly that a huge percentage of illness and disease is a result of our lifestyle choices, ie the way we live our lives, so if we change the way we live it follows we will then naturally change the quality of our health, as the two are inextricably intertwined.
What an amazing activity – to see how the world has changed from generations and how by the way we live, we have changed the meaning of a word. So if health was very different 60 years ago, then why are we still calling it health today? Is it perhaps because we don’t want to see the misuse of words to fit our agenda?
I remember seeing a black and white photo of my mum and dad and a group of their friends at the beach and I was struck by how healthy and vital they all looked even though it was an old black and white probably taken in the fifties. I thought at the time that’s what we would all look like if we didn’t have the over indulgence in whatever form that takes and all the processed and takeaway food on the market today.
Is there a stereotype of what a sick person looks like? We only need to look into the mirror to find the face that sits in waiting rooms everywhere. Could it be that trying to live a healthy lifestyle and then living someplace that is not a healthy environment becomes self-defeating? It is proven; lifestyles, food, exercise and the environment we live in, can all be hazardous to our health. We need to reconnect to what has never lied to us, our body.
To ignore the fact of us having walked away from true health we have to introduce boxes we can tick so we still can call ourselves healthy even though we are not. The same is done with religion, it’s actually a way of life but we have abandoned that way of life so we need buildings, rules, ideals and beliefs to adhere to to be called religious even though truly this is all done through a way of living.
“We may think whatever we like, but our bodies reveal the truth of our choices and the quality of the relationship we have with them.” So true, yet so many feel surprised – even shock – when presented with serious illness, despite having trashed their body for many years. When will we wake up to the fact that lifestyle is medicine?
What if, we supported what the body required, with lifestyle choices rather than what the mind thought it needed. Would there be the demands of medical intervention we have today?
True health is all encompassing and not only boxes we tick such as going to the gym or eating foods that support us… it is much more than this eg. we can still have dementia even though we exercise regularly and eat healthy foods.
With ever worsening health stats seen globally juxtaposing a global rise in “healthy” living regimes and programmes it is clear that humanity has got the definition of health widely incorrect. For if we were truly living healthily don’t you think our global illness and disease rates would reflect that?
The trajectory of a normal way of life that we are on has images of walking around the streets looking not at where we are going, but at our phones. Oops… wait a minute… that is already happening. There is a deep trouble at play with the new age of technology, and it dismisses the joy of nature and the experience of one another.
The modern approach to health, where we ‘do healthy things’ in order to stay healthy or in reaction to an illness, disease, ache, pain, soreness, etc. is a lot like never doing any preventive maintenance to your care, never changing the oil, cleaning it, getting a tune-up, changing the tires and brakes, etc. and only waiting until something serious breaks down and you are stuck on the side of the road miles from town for you to actually bring ‘health’ back to the vehicle (just like one’s body).
Not only is health considered a tick box exercise we don’t consider our whole being and whether it is living in connection and harmony. Rather we look at aspects of health in the compartments of physical, mental, social etc.
Without idealising the generation that came before us we have to admit that they had to have been better off than us as they didn’t have screens to stare at mindlessly and because of this they actually had to connect to one and other.
It feels as though the whole of life has been compartmentalised and packaged into boxes rather than living life as a one unified whole where we listen to our body and embody the ancient wisdom of the past rather than letting our head run away dragging our body behind it.
It is interesting how the state of our health has changed through the ages, and different things have become the ‘norm’. My grandmother died from lung cancer, and this was still rare and definitely unspoken about back then. Today cancer is one of our regular and common diseases. Being sick has become the norm.
In the 70s what we were being exposed to on a daily basis as young people wasn’t perfect but it was very different. There is more ugliness in the energy of what young people unconsciously consume than ever before – through the anger, sadness, sexism, porn etc that fills our music and video games, the norms such as sexting and cyber bullying in their online relationships, and all that is available on the internet. It is no wonder our young people are looking jaded when they experience the worst of human life more than most of us each day.
It is interesting to recognise how, over the last 100yrs at least the change in lifestyle and how this has had an impact on illness and disease.
It is an interesting reflection of half that time of how we keep expanding our longevity and at the same time increasing the illnesses and diseases befalling us!
Its interesting that the older generations knew and lived a life that was ‘healthy’ when they were younger and that so much of what they knew and still know was and is simple common sense and very wise, and as the generations get younger so much of this wisdom has been lost in the ‘ideals of being healthy’ but are not being lived.
Johanna, it is really important to raise this point about health through the ages. Being aware of this change can allow us to see that the way we are currently living is making us sick. As a society we did not used to be this ill 50 or so years ago. And so the way we are currently living is not working.
True health can only happen, when we consider everything, reflect on everything and live as a result of this true reflection.
Often we have this perception that going to the gym will keep us healthy but if our gym session is performed in an abusive manner then isn’t this counterproductive to what we hope to achieve. Years ago, going for the burn was considered the thing to do, no pain no gain comes to mind, but what if this way of pushing the body puts it into more stress.
I come from the older generation and way back then in my growing up years life was simple, you were either ill or well. Unfortunately I bought into the “health” revolution in my forties, and I can’t say it helped me at all; it feels like mental activity started to kick in, and control, and doing what is “right”, rather than remaining with just being with your body and what was going on and responding to it as it happened. The word “prevention” needs exploring, for although considered a “good” thing to do it could possibly lead to this attempt to control the body rather than listen to it.
I also come from the other side of 50 and comfort always seemed to win hands down, over healthy lifestyles! But as comfort expands so does one’s waistline and future health issues are almost a given outcome unless we reconnect and reestablish our connection with our bodies!
“our bodies reveal the truth of our choices and the quality of the relationship we have with them, ourselves and life is the foundation for living in a way that is either harming or truly healthy.”
So true and something we seem to have forgotten in blaming things outside of us and looking to be fixed instead of taking responsibility for our choices and how we are living. What a difference it would make by bringing back a whole body way of living with quality and love.
Today even if you’re someone who is naturally fit through work or general activity, you may not meet the ‘healthy’ criteria unless you go to the gym or are able to lift a certain weight, which is crazy when you consider how some people are incredibly fit and strong as a result of their natural lifestyle.
There has always been a plethora of self-help books and now the WEB that points out ways for us to deal with our past choices. But, we are the only one that can change the mess we have created and the longer it is left unresolved, like a stain on the carpet, the harder it becomes to remove.
From my lived experience I can see that people are less vital than they used to be. People seem to need more and more stimulants to get through the day which is a clear indication that how we are living is not supporting us to be vital.
As health has become more compartmentalised we have lost the sense of our holistic well being and also our responsibility not just to our own bodies but to how others are affected by our choices.
It seems that our excessive consumption of sugar, alcohol (also high in sugar), fast foods and convenience foods are taking their toll on our physical health and yet there are people now saying that eating healthy is bad for us. Even going so far as to say that it is an eating disorder – how crazy is that.
Julie so true, perhaps when we change the way we eat by looking at what is driving us to eat in that way, we will transform our health.
Are we upsetting the Flat Earth Society members and their beliefs by; eating what our body requires other than what the mouth and head want?
The best way to remain healthy is to enjoy life – not in a destructive or indulgent way, but in a way that allows us the freedom to move through life in a way that is supportive. It makes sense that if we feel happy and supported our health is more likely to be great.
We have created a world of solutions to our problems, putting band aids on everything, the only thing is that band aid has moved on to be much more serious drugs but we are still trying to cover up what is really going on and looking at why things are occurring. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine do exactly that, supports you to look at the root cause and arrest the energy that has manifested such dis-harmony in the body and being. The modalities on offer are extraordinary and I have witnessed hundreds and hundreds of people that have chosen to look at this and heal from within that which is not of our natural essence and beauty.
And, it is never too late to return to the natural essence and beauty that has never left us, just forgotten it was there.
It’s amazing that something as basic as our individual health and our attitude and approach to health in general has changed so much over the decades, and that’s just in this century. There is a real irony in the fact that we have access to so much incredible technology and so many amazing drugs to suppoort our well being when we are sick, that the whole world is getting sicker. Something simply doesn’t add up. Perhaps its time for those who have questions about the state of world health but don’t seem to have any answers, to spend sometime listening to what Serge Benhayon has to say about true medicine, with a healthy curiosity and open mind.
‘True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more.’ Great point Johanna – true health is our relationship with everything in life.
Watching not just the next generation coming up attached constantly to a screen or device, but this is now spanning all generations, myself included. Remembering how I used to feel after a ‘movie marathon’ or trilogy – all expectation and excitement beforehand, but feeling just awful afterwards, and wondering why we make it such a big deal.. now we have a constant movie/you tube/ social media marathon on tap 24/7. From experience of knowing how that can affect my own mood, behaviours and general vitality and energy, what are we as a collective doing to ourselves, and what quality are we denying us all from being able to live.
Because we now have a new appendage, our phone, that has everything we need to know, are we self-diagnosing ourselves? Why go to the doctor for he/she, is just going to tell us something we already know? The energy that is running us now is in our hands, literally and figuratively!
More and more often I hear cases of friends, family, colleagues and others in society getting cancer and in some cases dying of it. There is no doubt our state of true health has decreased and we are only fooling ourselves that it has not.
I remember the 70s and there was usually only one overweight kid per class if at all. So being in a healthy weight range was the norm. We used to play outside a lot, at school and at home and sweet, salty processed food was measured out carefully. Now with so many adults and kids overweight we have lost this marker of what’s normal weight. It seems now there is nothing to stop us from realising we are not looking after our health.
It is quite fascinating to live over a few decades and try and remember back how things used to be years ago. Our memories trick us and we recall in many different ways, so what the head thinks is often not true. My feeling is that many things have changed, the younger generation today have different issues and expectations are higher, but we are going round in circles until we find out that in the world we need to come back to Love.
The body reveals all.
It is actually that simple that our livingness determines the health of our body. So really it is up to us to make the loving choices and change the way we live if we want to increase the wellbeing of our health and of society.
We as a society have become lazy, not wanting to take responsibility, but rather having a attitude that medicine will take care and solve our ills.
I feel the meaning of health has been distorted to a lower standard. It seems that a majority of people classify people who are healthy based on their physical appearances and performances, like having a fit body, how far we can run, how often we go to the gym, how much sport we do and what diet we are on etc. But we often forget to consider our inner health, how does that look and feel, and consider the quality of how we live, our lifestyle choices and the quality of our thoughts impact on our health.
I can relate to all of the decades presented and have lived through all of these changes. Have we de-evolved from these changes? Could this be another curse of free will? But, it is also our opportunity to choose what no longer feels right. Our health has always been in our hands!
It was a very uncomfortable experience for me to witness the difference between two photos of similar age group of young people – one from decades ago and one of current time. The confidence gaiety and connection with one another seemed so false and forced in the more recent photo, showing the pressure, desperation and trying that is part of today’s life. And the obvious reduction in vitality and health was another stop moment. I realised I just had not wanted to see the evidence under my nose
We don’t need the facts and figures of illness and disease to know we are not doing well. We just need to open our eyes and see that even what we call healthy is not really something to be proud about.
A brilliant exposing of what is happening to our health with this sharing of our lived experiences over the ages shown here and the consistent increase in disease levels accepted as normal even with the increased medical advances offered. The quality of how we are really living eating moving and the anxiousness and stress levels clearly are affecting us dramatically and it is clear our livingness connection and listening to our body is the only way to actually change the trend and bring back our vitality aliveness and true health.
Taking the responsibility of working together to support each other by living our true values and the reflection of this that is so inspiring for us all to see and begin to heal ourselves.
Johanna, I have found this article fascinating. Since reading it I have been pondering on this subject and have been talking to people of different ages to get a picture of health through the ages. It seems that so much has changed in the last fifty years and our health has gone dramatically downhill. With the abuse of alcohol and increased consumption of convenience foods and sugar and the stressful, busy lives we seem to lead, the increase in ill health is starting to make sense.
I agree – health has changed so quickly, becoming a commercial consumable product rather than a way of life
Healthcare has become like our morning cup of coffee, as you have said Rebecca, a commercial product we are learning to pay for if we chose to maintain our motion.
exactly – we no longer can imagine a world without coffee and alarm clocks, but that’s not how it has always been
It is crazy when we look at it, we have added to our own illnesses with the increase in consumption of convenience foods and sugar, stressful and busy lives we seem to lead. We have just got caught in the cycle and not stopped to reflect back on what is truly going on.
‘We may think whatever we like, but our bodies reveal the truth of our choices…’ This is key Johanna, because it’s easy to think that we control our health simply by ticking some boxes while indulging in others, but in the end of all, our body is crystal clear and always shows the effect of how we live as a whole. As Serge Benhayon wisely states “Our body is the marker of all truth”
I also attended this presentation, I loved it and it invited us to be open and supported us to see what is really going on in our society. This presentation like many others, invited us to ask questions and to bring our awareness to the changes and why they have occurred. To be honest about what is really going in our society.
Beautiful exploration of the presentation offered by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, it is interesting to look at our relationship with words and not make assumptions that things have always been as they are now…we can learn from this reflection and our relationship with Health is a great example.
It took thousands of years to evolve to where we are today. So, why in the last fifty have we chosen to be less? Health has become like a new car that has its standard features, and then there are the luxury extras. We want to go faster and farther but seldom worry about the damage to the environment we are causing. Our health needs to be once again the primary standard that all cars come with, like four wheels as our foundation.
One of the biggest changes is that we have learned very well how to deal with the symptoms of heart disease. This allowed people to live longer and opened up many more incidences of illness and disease.
Until we address the core of hurts and perceived issues there cannot be true healing.
This really exposes how life is lived in pieces and how as long as we have a piece called ‘health’ in some part of it, we can then ignore how we live in those other parts. So we go to the gym and then we then we can stuff our faces as we’ve done a workout so used up calories … the lack of a whole life and whole body approach is obvious with this, yet this is how we are encouraged to live as parts and we see the results all around us, in a humanity that is less healthy overall and with more long term degenerative conditions. So it’s really great to consider what we now mean by health for our way back to true health is based on clearing speaking what it means and that it’s all life and not just some parts.
It is amazing that we have more health professionals than ever before, more funding for research to find “cures” for the diseases that are rampant throughout society and more drugs than ever before causing high death rates, what is happening, when with all the research and drugs that we have, we as a humanity are getting sicker and sicker. ?
We talk about our environment, our workplace circumstances, stress, pollution, and at times about our consumption as the cause of our health problems. And we seek solutions. But never do we go as far as questioning why we have the world we have today, what made us lose the plot to this extent, and even more important, why are we not bringing in substantial change to all of our lives. In fact we attack those who bring forth a new way of living that is focussed on love, health, wellbeing, playfulness, brotherhood and a one unified truth and purpose.
“Compartimentalising our health’ this is very well observed as it has become something to do, like a hobby but really one we do not like that much, or on the other side of the spectrum, get absorbed by. The thing that should stick out like a sore thumb here though is the fact that being healthy, joyful and vital simply is NOT NORMAL anymore. How far have we gone down the rabbit hole to not make this the single most important subject in the world today?
Because health like everything in life cannot be compartmentalised, going to the gym and only focusing on that, sweating it out and pushing ourselves to feel really smashed the next day cannot be called health, but it is the normal defined way of being healthy today.
I agree, and the current trend is to be healthy through dieting, going to the gym and looking a certain way which to me doesn’t reflect the true health of a person. True health should be reflected from inside out and not the other way around. Being healthy is not just about how we look but also about how we feel, our vitality levels and the quality of our movements.
Health is how we live in each moment and the quality we live in. But that is certainly not what I have grown up with. It has become a lifestyle add on – something we do when we’re not working or relaxing, Health has an on and off switch and this is something we don’t stop and question.
It is a bad way of living we have all fallen into, with the on and off switch. We will only look at our health, when and if we fall ill rather than living in a way so we never fall ill.
The lifestyle that many live today includes staying indoors being sedentary while watching TV or operating computers. So very different to the regular lifestyle several decades ago. No wonder people are overweight, unhealthy and ill. We have lost our natural way of moving, enjoying the outdoors, and have forgotten how to play. Our free time used to be community based, whereas now it is mostly solitary while sitting in front of a screen. A very sad state of affairs that does nothing for our health and wellbeing.
We are more than community, we are unity and so to wilfully cut ourselves off from others is bringing in a resistance (which is a force) that requires a substantial amount of effort to sustain. Any resistance in our bodies will always lead to illness because illness is our bodies way of showing us that we aren’t living harmoniously with the natural order of life.
Obviously our awareness of what health, illness and disease mean is in constant change, probably it is not better or worse as such but mainly different, but it is of main interest to reflect on what true health really means and what is needed today to answer the urgent demand caused by raising stats of illness and disease. Universal Medicine does exactly that and contributes valuable answers that complement western medicine.
‘Health back then was without definition but the way of life was what supported healthy bodies.” Just as the way of life was the key factor back then, it is now only our way of life has changes such that it is now what is making us unhealthy. The wisdom lies in the simplicity of life back then and yet to find our way out of the mess we are in today we keep making life more complex and fragmented.
Really it is not healthy to compartmentalise any aspect of our life. It is all one life and everything affects everything and everyone.
This is what we as a society are truly not understanding, that everything affects everything and everyone. Our every movement is important.
‘True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more.’ This is so good to understand that every aspect of how we live affects our health, it’s not just diet and exercise.
What an amazing opportunity Serge Benhayon presented to show our health and livingness throughout the ages and how it separated with time and the deterioration of our health and the separation of this from our lives and daily beingness. Very disclosing and the highlighting of how we can change and the importance of this as the key to bringing us back as humanity to true health and wellness.A beautiful read and understanding of how life used to be and the importance of listening to our bodies and what we feel.
The biggest shift for me was in learning how to create consistency in my life, which when applied to everything restores true health. This began with creating a consistent connection within me and with my body, so I could then consistently gauge the effects of my life style choices based on how I felt. The ensuing choices have been amazing, achieving a way of life previously felt to be unattainable, living proof that the answers lie within us, not in our techni coloured world outside.
When I was young I did some sport but never really carried it over into my adult life. As for habits that started when I was becoming less interested in sports and exercise. For quite some time that continued until I started to be honest by what I had already knew and felt that was not supporting me. Thanks to Serge Benhayon and his presentation I started to see and it all made sense that my habits such as drinking, smoking and recreational drugs were all based on hurts that I had not dealt with. What a turn around from healing those and now wanting to exercise and look after my body.
All that we require lies in a way of life which is a return to our true nature.
Simply put that is all we need to look at “The way we are living”, does it have a true flow, a rhythm, true choices?
The number of people that thought they were living a healthy lifestyle that cripples themselves in the pursuit of this nirvana is increasing. Where is true health in these actions, at any age?
When we look at the changes in our relationship with health over the years a big question comes up about our notion advancement of humanity. We seem to be proud of ourselves because of the increased complexity of technology and the management of illness and disease. But how come we are not putting in this equation the fact that illness and disease has been increasing in the first place – and also keeps increasing despite of the medical advances?
As someone in my mid 40’s, I can remember how when I was a teenager there began to be more fad diets and exercise regimes that became popular (vegan, vegetarian, ‘Weight Watchers’, diet pills, Nautilus weight lifting machines, muscle building protein mixes, etc.) But what I can feel now is how all those techniques and fads were just ways to avoid the simplicity of living life as medicine itself, bringing gentleness, understanding, and love into all our movements, instead of separating life into segments of healthy activities and normal everyday living, which is why 99% of the time none of these fads ever worked for people.
It makes sense that years ago health wasn’t something you practiced or ‘did’, but was something that was lived and a normal part of life. To break it down like this into the decades, I find fascinating and it shows us much about our choices and the way we choose to live today.
Absolutely and breaking it down shows the difference that we experienced through the generations how we have step by step adjusted our understanding of what health is and the way to achieve it.
Great point Rachel, our focus and standard on health has changed. I feel this it is not truly supporting us. Living healthy is what is needed and not performing to be healthy, i.e showing an outer appearance of being healthy but our body is carrying poison from lifestyle choices and undealt hurts and issues.
Yes I agree, it was just a way of life back years ago, there was more simplicity in life back then, now there is too much choice and complexity, which confuses so many.
We may be living longer but we are certainly not healthier in this longer life that we see as an achievement. The evident pressure on our health systems, excessive waiting times for a back log of surgeries and research for new drugs to treat ever increasing diseases speak for themselves with our current ways of approaching with health.
Absolutely Jane – and in compartmentalising life we seek to remove the effects of actions in one area from others, despite the fact that this is simply not possible. An example being that we may exercise and eat certain food to try to be ‘healthy’ and yet also believe that we should have a ‘healthy’ social life which includes going out late and drinking alcohol – the two simply do not go together but by having different criteria for different areas of life in their own compartments we somehow try to rationalise this.
What really stood out for me in this article is that we have lived times of absolute wholeness to life, meaning that everything was part of our lives. No compartments. As we can see and is described above, in quite a short time we have gone diversional, away from a naturalness. I am in my 20’s and I can relate to the difference felt for example of how my mom has lived, she is in her 50’s, only knowing that this is a 30 year difference in a world where we have lived thousands of years. Now, this is a great point to ponder. What has been occurring ?
Keep Fit can become just another addiction, as we get hooked on the endorphins that are released with excessive exercise. Ironic how we can have such an unhealthy relationship with attempting to stay healthy.
God forbid that we look back at this time in our history and consider that we had good health.
When I grew up, many people died at relatively young ages (40s and 50s) from heart disease. This has been greatly reduced and we have many more old people now but what is surprising is how many more unhealthy young people there are today.
We pride our selves on our modern day gadgets and quality of life but fail to see the tide of ill health before us arising from the way we use our gadgets and technology, evidence that striving to improve the material aspects of life alone is not the real answer. Bringing our awareness to our inner qualities, integrity and respect can bring enormous changes in our life style habits with astounding results on our health. Its low cost, very ecofriendly and widely accessible, the best modern day resolution to a multitude of ills.
First step: Getting aware that we are compartmentalizing life
Second step: Considering that compartmentalizing might not be the only or even best way
Third step: Open and honest assessment of what might be a really loving, caring and healthy approach to life
Yes, and then making that change to each compartment until there are no more compartments as any need for them dissolves.
Our compartmentalization of life has spilt into our fashion, with cargo pants with lots of pockets! For us to carry things, we don’t need.
Ha! Steve this is the same as ‘organiser handbags’ – with vast number of pockets and zipped compartments where it is easy to loose things in. Rather like having to take a degree course to learn the layout to remember where all items are! Keeping our life in compartments like this requires a huge amount of unnecessary effort and stress.
Alexander, 3 steps we can all take and with them such power will unfold.
The changes in the health of the population today are stark compared to decades past, and yet we carry on as a society in the same train we have been that got us here. If for just a moment we stopped to look at the consequences of our fast food, high sugar, low exercise lifestyles, we would see our pathway forward is not looking postiive.
That said Gill; there was a simplicity to life back then. It’s as if today the intensity of everything from school, work, families and everything in between is more dramatic and larger than life.
It’s that very “compartmentalisation of health” that means our physicians look for solutions to ill-health in its parts – rather than looking to life itself as a whole and understanding that we have many aspects beyond the physical body’s breakdown.
It becomes obvious that health is not something we do now and then but that every minute of life is either contributing or adverse to our health, thus it is the way we live that makes our state of health what it is. We cannot escape that responsibility as it is with us every second.
Let us not forget what actually went on in the 50’s, 60’s 70’s and 80’s, decades where smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol was the norm. These addictions existed and were never questioned until as I remember the 80’s, the decade I stopped smoking. Living amongst elders, those of the WW1 and WWII generations, I am struck by the number of people I hear of who died of cancer, and some of them of lung cancer. In my youth, cancer was a taboo subject, and the silent killer no one spoke about.
It is crazy that we are actually living longer these days when our lives are often so much more unhealthy than the past and that illness and disease is so rife with every one of us knowing someone with some sort of cancer. We are living longer but what is our quality of life?
Exactly we live longer but with a very poor quality in life, no doubt in the near future we will come around to looking at how we extend quality of life not just quantity of life.
Great point Kevmchardy, when I look around, our elderly generation are mostly suffering from multiple illness and disease, and their quality of life is very poor. For example, I know a 90 year old who suffers from a list of aliments and disease, he wakes up every hour during the night and is on constant pain killers and he is taking multiple drugs to support his body to function as much as possible.
Statistics on rising ill health are truly alarming. I find it interesting how society can label itself as advancing or healthier or more evolved when the evidence is far to the contrary!
I agree Michelle – it would appear that we have a gross mistake in our decision of what constitutes ‘advancing’.
That there was no compartmentalising between ‘life’ and ‘health’ (in the 80’s, 70’s and 60’s age groups) shows how a humungous industry, with all its arms and aspects, has sprung up over the last 60 years, and how we have made health something outside of us, that can be sought, bought and brought to ourselves – rather than something that is simply lived.
As a young person, it is rare for me to find someone who feels really at ease with themselves or their life – most have some level of anxiety, stress, depression or lack of self worth playing out in one way or another. We can’t ignore the steadily decreasing level of health and wellbeing from a younger and younger age
The difference between the age groups when it comes to health is very revealing; it is as though we have separated health from daily life, made it something we ‘do’ so that we have an excuse for our otherwise unhealthy lifestyle choices.
We support and justify our unhealthy lifestyles by balancing it with a bit of fitness. How many times during the Christmas overconsumption of everything season, do we hear people express that they will have to go to the gym to work it off?
We are looking at all the symptoms and treatments but non of the causes and healings.
We may know causes and we may know how to treat symptoms and we know what the patient needs to do – sometimes in detail, sometimes in outline. What we don’t know is how to have everyone, especially the patient, perform at their best in removing causes and co-operating with treatments.
I agree that medicine today is often based on solutions that try to fix or manage the problems of ill health rather than looking at the way of life or lifestyle that may have caused the problems in the first place.
If 80% of our illnesses and diseases are lifestyle related, then it makes sense to take stock and relook at how we are making ourselves ill in the first place. As they say, ‘prevention is better than cure’!
The way that we use the word ‘cure’ is totally false and completely misleading. We tend to say that someone is cured when they are symptom free but without knowing if the energy that set the illness in motion is simply lying dormant, has migrated to another place or morphed into another illness. And as the energy that sets all illness and disease into motion is first set in motion by our choices then this really calls into question the whole meaning of the word ‘cure’.
Modern medicine is fantastic and they are great at what they do, but it feels to me like there is a part of the equation missing and you have nailed it Andrew. We have to start looking at what is causing our illness and disease, it is time for us to take responsibility and look at our way of life, how is this affecting our health?
Yes I am currently at a Physiotherapy conference listening to some great reasearch that is being done on the human body which is definitely broadening our understanding of the pathology and physiology of how the body breaks down and how to best support the body physically when it is ill or in dysfunction and we do need this medicine, because there is so much illness and disease in the world and it would be unbearable for humanity to live without it at this time. But I do agree that if we limit ourselves to this form of medicine we are missing out on the bigger and deeper picture as to why these illnesses and dysfunctions are occurring and actually occurring more often and we are not getting to the roots of the problem but merely rearranging the foliage thinking we are fixing the problem. But if the roots are still rotten then we have not changed the real energetic dis-ease in the being which is precipitating into the body.
Our medical advances seem to keep pace with the rise in ill health, developing more and more amazing medicine to deal with our ills. But somewhere along the line we need to stop and seriously take heed of the true ‘why’ behind our diseases, the lifestyle choices, quality of inner connection and level of personal responsibility. Our ill health is quite literally costing us the Earth, but it doesn’t have to.
Honestly seeing that we are seriously degenerating, not improving as we like to think, is the first step of humanity returning to the truth – a way of life based on Love we could have lived all along.
I agree Joseph that becoming really honest about where we are at with our overall health and wellbeing as a species is a great start.
Health is vastly different today to what it was in the 60’s when I did my nursing training. Back then cancer was less common, now it is in every 3rd or 4th person with those people also having additional problems like heart disease or respiratory failings, diabetes or arthritis. Yet we are in an age where there are more medical supports than ever. We have to look at how we are living as with all the so called advances that have been made in health, research, technology and inventions etc we are far less vital and well.
I find it fascinating to listen to professionals and our elders who have lived and worked over many decades in the same industry, to hear how things have changed. There is not one field that has not changed and I would say that most have not ‘progressed despite the idea that they have – as when we look at the quality of health, vitality, commitment and relationships within these industry, we could say that we have in fact slipped when these are the qualities used to measure progress.
We take certain ideals and beliefs and say they are healthy, like going to the gym or running but these things are not healthy if we are pushing ourselves and overriding our body.
A great point vicky its not only what we do but the care and way we do it, I know for me though a bit more gym and exercise would be a great support!
This weekend they are expecting a record number of runners, over 40000 to run in the 37th London Marathon. There is also expected to be the hottest weather on record for this event. Where is the Saber Tooth tiger chasing all these people?
There is not a single ideal or belief that is not absolute poison for the body.
“Yet health here all took place in isolation to life, was a part in life but not a natural part of a way of living.” As someone from the older group of people who grew up with the knowing that being healthy was simply part of life, on one level it is almost shocking to read that the group of people between 20 and 30 see health as something separate to the rest of their lives. But when we start to unpick the facts it becomes easy to see why this would be the case. Thankfully there are many people now who are beginning to feel for themselves what feels true for their bodies and what does not, and they are waking up to the reality of what we have been ‘fed’ about health in general.
I’m only really starting to understand and appreciate that it is absolutely everything that involves the quality of our health and to feel amazing when you choosing this is the confirmation as to why you want to continue this.
The human being has been forgotten. We’re no longer communicated with as if we matter, as gentle, exquisite beings we are. We are primarily consumers of products the market place is intent on selling: anything and everything that leads us to lose ourselves and sense of wellbeing. The sad thing is most people have bought the health lie.
‘live in a way that honours our health and wellbeing in every moment’ This is a powerful statement Richard and expresses the essence of true health: the relationship we have with ourselves 24/7, not an add-on.
Reading this article I can feel what a huge change there has been in the way we live today compared to in the 1960’s/70’s. There has been a huge shift and it’s important to discuss this rather than just accept this as the way it is. Our health and well being have deteriorated, if only 50 years ago cancer and heart disease were a rare thing and today they are common. Something about our lifestyles today is clearly not working.
This blog made me more aware of how much attitudes to health have changed in my own lifetime. Sad to see how ‘health’ has been misappropriated by big business, commerce and charities and promoted as separate from everyday living. This change, introduced so subtly, with many unaware its happened. Thank you Serge Benhayon for opening up the conversation and deepening our understanding of what is really going on and how perceptions of health have been manipulated and distorted. For myself and other students of Universal Medicine health is something lived every day and part of us. It is not an add on.
We seem to have traded technological advances for true health. Making conversation, looking each other in the eyes, discussing subjects other than a list of ill conditions, feeling joyful, loving our jobs, all these are symptoms of good health. So the question arises, what do I want more, to feel healthy or be submerged in my smart phone and disengaged from the world?
Yes we are beginning to question our lifestyle choices. We are really up against the coalface of our choices as our health deteriorates and our health care service struggles under the burden of these.
Thank you for sharing your experience of this Universal Medicine day. I love the insight into the changes over recent decades in our relationship with ‘health’. It is clear that as we focus on it more, we become less and less well and this is certainly in part because we are trying to compartmentalise the activity of ‘being healthy’ rather than it being an absolutely integrated aspect of the way we live.
It incredible how quickly health can change, how we can accept lower and lower standards of living whilst touting increases in health and life span.
The first law of thermodynamics, states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So, we are obeying this law, to live longer at the cost of our standards of living!
And also whilst it cannot be created or destroyed, when we put our energy to self abusive use it doesn’t just go away but keeps perpetuating itself until its momentum is changed.
There are aspects of our life that seem to be getting worse. I doubt that such a photo would be easy to make – most likely somebody would be on their smartphone – and their average weight would probably be about 5kg higher. That doesn’t feel like progress.
It’s fascinating to look at society’s trends through the years, connecting the dots and see what was occurring during big shifts.
I remember the 80’s/90’s TAB commercial (a low-calorie soft drink) with a well known model in a white swim suit looking ‘fit and healthy’ at the beach and staying that way because she drank TAB. It was my first experience of ‘marketing healthy’ and alas, it was not my last.
I found this a really interesting exercise – hearing what the different age groups described as their experience of health, showing how things change, and relatively quickly so at that. I’m sure it’s not only the case around Health, but equally so with regards to our varying experience of for example, Community or Work or Family. Hence the importance of determining what is true amongst these changing relationships.
I love how you share, Johanna how each age group in the workshop shared what health meant for them and how, with the change of generations and ways of living what we have perceived this to mean or lived this to mean.
Studying Universal Medicine has enable me to really enhance my quality of life by addressing my everyday choices, so that exercise, healthy eating, early nights and long working days are a normal part of my life, nothing in excess and everything working together to nourish my health and wellbeing with awesome results.
Reestablishing what we feel so that “our bodies reveal the truth of our choices and the quality of the relationship we have with them, ourselves and life is the foundation for living in a way that is either harming or truly healthy.” And the Universal Medicine model is setting a standard, which is second to none with the ways it simply allows everyone to come to their own understanding of what true health is for them.
Wow, the decline in our way of living being naturally healthy is clear to feel reading this blog – it begs the question of what have we lost with the introduction of all of our ‘advances’ in life such as everyone having cars, new technology such as computers, tablets and smart phones as well as the internet and the new forms of games? Our health has been foregone to some extent in their introduction.
Yes Michael, the question is who drives the march towards so called progress with complete disregard of ill-health consequences. This is a technological nuclear fallout we’ve all signed up to and it’s deadly.
What I get is that knowledge is a dangerous thing when used without understanding. We have to feel what is healthy in all of life, and stop this search for the 10 minute workout that will act as a magic pill for the other 23 hours and 50 mins.
Growing up in the sixties there weren’t obese kids in my neighbourhood. Today the skinny kids are the ones that stick out. The only time we had TV dinners was when our parents did the big food shop for the month. The name gives it away, TV dinners, the dawn of fast, processed foods are allowed into our homes. There were even TV tables, foldable tables for one to eat these products, consuming fat, salt and sugar-loaded meals all while watching the TV to distract you from what you were putting in your mouth. The greatest anti-exercise machine ever invented, the idiot box!
What an ingenious plan to keep us all fat, sluggish and unconnected to ourselves, what more do you need to numb down what we all can feel is the true healthy lifestyle.
It is clear that we perceive health dependant of the age we live in and that it is not a fixture but on a sliding scale instead, a scale that we tend to easily adjust downward, simply to not become honest and to feel our own contribution to the fact that our level of vitality and health is becoming worse and worse every year.
Many would say that they have a knowing of true health but that the demands of society do not allow that to be lived. and in a way that to me is true, but we have to remember that we all are part of that society, so have our contribution to it. We all can make it change, we do not have to wait until it comes to us.
Great point, Nico. Understanding the intensity of life, but not handing our responsibility over.
For too long I have handed over my responsibility for the society I live in to the administrative bodies in which the only responsibility I took was for going to vote every four years. But now I have found that this is not taking responsibility, it is simply not wanting to take responsibility for the environment I live in but to accept living a lesser me as I do not fully acknowledge that quality that lives in me and wants to have a place in life and in our society.
We all know deep down what health is that it is about a way of living but too, we know ways to bastardise this knowing and make it about the outer image. Eating the so called right foods, doing some sort of sport and so on, instead of returning to a way of being that will support true health and vitality from within.
I agree. In addition, businesses have become far better at how to draw our attention and our finances and the consequences of this are poorly understood at the moment.
I understand what you say Christoph, businesses are there in support of our ill choices and to keep us unaware. But there is some light at the horizon when we for instance look to the Universal Medicine business that is in support to make us aware of our ill choices instead and does not support us in any way to stay unaware.
Seeing how the definition of health and how we approach it has changed during the last 80 years or so makes me wonder what would cause the shift from living healthy in all our movements in the first place? Could it be that we have been sold a convenient lie that our ‘health’ can be attained through outer means to merely fix us so we can continue with our indulgent ways of living and think that we are getting away with it.
There is an aspect to health that is not often considered and that is our inner health. We look at physical health in terms of exercise and mobility, we look at mental health in terms of behaviours but do we truly appreciate the energy that governs our thinking that leads to anxiety and stress? Do doctors see or feel the separation that leaves us feeling unwell at our core
There are certain qualities that have definitely been lost through time, but interestingly my own experience shows me that those qualities are easier to access than ever before.
When I was young I never saw people out jogging or the like, but life was very active. I used to cycle to school, walk to my friend’s house, ride my horse, play sport and this was quite common amongst my friends too. All felt very natural and kept me fit without trying or pushing my body beyond its limits. When I see people out running these days or working out in a gym, it feels very hard and over demanding on their bodies and it makes me wonder “what are they running away from?”
Yes, it’s a dead give away. If our life is not naturally giving us the exercise we need to stay healthy then we end up pounding the pavements and pumping iron at the gym. This never used to be the normal way of life. We call it a ‘work/life balance’ but we are actually way out of balance.
The way the world has turned, with less and less about connection and more and more about online is most of the issue today. It’s not even one generation either everything is getting so blurred and out of control it makes sense ill health and poor mental state of being is starting to become an epidemic.
We have lost our connection with so much in life – living with pictures, ideals and beliefs instead of refering to the innate awareness and wisdom to read the truth of the situation. How is it that we have ended up having health defined as something that does not make any sense to the experience of our bodies which are experiencing escalating illness and disease?
I like how you say true health encompasses every area of our life not just one aspect.. as in food. Our foundation for life comes from these choices how communicate, express, care for oursleves, exercise, walk for example, which are either loving and respectful to ourselves and others or disregard. It can only be one or the other. True health or not.
For many young people the possibility of being truly content, confident, active and enthusiastic about life is not even entertained, because everything you could ever want to have, be it money, looks, possessions, to live in a virtual world of gaming etc. can all be found on the Internet. This is a sad reality, and the reason why we need to have a seismic shift of how we use technology vs how we engage in our community and actually get OUT there.
Johanna a great summary of this ‘health throughout the ages’ Universal Medicine presentation, yes it was interesting to see how quickly over the years things have changed into atrophy and hence gave us also a picture forwards of the next decade (s) – at the rate we are going this, our health, our ways of relating, attitudes, behaviours and so on isn’t looking great at all.
I am far from perfect, but in conversation with someone recently, someone said this to me, ‘ You sound happy” Her words reflected our conversation: I shared how I lived, without not once mentioning any medical conditions or woes about my life. The older we get, it becomes usual for conversations to revolve round stories of medical conditions, and little else.
I agree Elizabeth. Many people equate retirement from job or role with retirement from life and fully contributing to their communities. Losing our sense of purpose makes us rudderless and to obsess over the minutiae of life means we miss its glory and grandeur.
Look in the eyes of people, and much is revealed: hopelessness, desperation, sadness, anger, frustration, confusion with life. Rare to meet someone with eyes that sparkle with joy and aliveness.
I agree Susan, We can be so caught up in our own lives, we miss signs that all is not well with another, and often those closest to us. It all comes back to us: the depth of connection we have with ourselves deepens the connection we have with all others.
“Health back then was without definition but the way of life was what supported healthy bodies”. A sad irony to believe we’ve progressed but when we look at the quality of life fifty years ago, we’ve actually regressed.
I heard someone say that they were all right because they ate a healthy meal last night but before that it was total disregard and now because of that one healthy meal he could go back to being in disregard again. It is crazy how we have shifted over such a short period in history from just living a healthy life to making health fitness and eating right a thing to either take or leave.
A pat on the back for a single act of self love is one thing, but integrating that into our daily lives and how we are living is the gold. It’s that which effects deep and substantial change in our bodies, in our relationships and in our interaction with the world.
In the late 50s, I grew up a block from the end of urban sprawl at the time. North and East, less than a football pitch from our house, was still woods and our playground. There were only 4 TV channels. Life was something you experienced and lived. Food was something that was always freshly prepared, and there were no home microwave ovens till 1967. Today could a college student survive without a microwave oven? True health today seems to be something we have to schedule it into our lives rather than live in its fullness.
This is an awesome sharing Steve, and you’ve raised a great question indeed; could our young generation in this current era live without all of the technology ‘conveniences’ that are available to them today? It would be a great experiment for everyone to try actually, not to rely on the Internet, TV or microwave ovens (!) for a week and see how our relationships change thereafter.
Susie W, there have been such experiments, aimed as you say at everyone, not just young people. For example, TV programmes have filmed families on ‘technology free weeks’. They usually reveal how addicted we’ve become to mobile devices with members feeling lost without them and not knowing what to do with themselves. After a few days they begin to play with the space opened up, communicate more with each other and find other things to do as a group, rather than as individuals. The problem is when experiments like this end, most revert to old patterns of behaviour.
Its true Johanna, health, wellbeing and vitality have to be redefined again. Brought back to a truth that holds equal for all and not compartmentalised in the sang “this is what works for me”. Yes, our bodies are at all different states of being however, there are principles that lead us into truth health and wellbeing, and that for me is simple honouring the body.
To have people from all ages in a room sharing their practical everyday experiences on health at their age is a wealth of research and knowledge. Here we have a range of different way of living and being, and the examples show how health has become something we have to get rather than what we naturally are in the body.
Thank you Johanna for helping to re-define health back to its original meaning rather than using the watered down and reduced version of health we talk about today: “True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more. It means we consider absolutely everything about us; how we are and most of all the fact that others are always on some level affected by what we think, say, do and express in life, just as much as we are. We may think whatever we like, but our bodies reveal the truth of our choices and the quality of the relationship we have with them, ourselves and life is the foundation for living in a way that is either harming or truly healthy.”
A great expose on the lies we have been sold on what health has become, and even under the burgeoning lies (as evidenced by the amount of lifestyle illnesses and disease) we still bury our heads in the sand on what true health is. I wonder what it will take to remove our heads from the sand? How bad will our health get until we do so?
That is the question Sarah, how bad does it have to get before we put two and two together.
Compartmentalisation of health is what allows us to continue living a convenient lie that we are ‘healthy’ when in fact there is little true health in our every day choices.
and without health in our everyday choices then there can be no health in our everyday lives and so if we want true health in our everyday lives then we have to make healthy choices in all aspects of our lives.
So true Henrietta its the putting things into boxes that gives us the view that life can be ok if we have at least one box that we are doing good in, but hardly ever do we feel how we are across all areas of life or see life as one constant.
Johanna, absolutely brilliant – the lie of Health is revealed though the discussion and how it has followed a slippery slope from what it used to be to be what it is today: “This means that activities and behaviours that go completely against ‘true health’ – ones that in fact abuse the body such as drinking, excessive exercise, smoking, starving oneself, overeating, eating sugary and fatty foods, spending excessive time on technology devices, getting little sleep, working in drive and so on, can play out while the body that is doing them still considers itself ‘healthy’ because it spends some time at the gym or ‘doing health’ now and then. And so the lie of health today is revealed.”
How we can slide down that slippery slope, so quickly is alarming, for if we don’t halt the slide and begin our return back up to the top, what are the low depths we will sink too?
In a project about true fitness I learned more about what fitness was, how it started with the gymnastic and how it has become this whole digital controlled movement with a focus on a ‘perfect’ looking body, without any connection to true health. The hardness people put their bodies in is incredible to do the so called healthy fitness shows there is no actual connection to the body.
I agree Monika and as a yoga teacher who taught yoga as strenuous exercise, (rather than the tool for re-connection that it is), I can categorically say that I had to dis-connect from my body in order to be able to exercise so strenuously because had I been connected, then there’s no way that I would have done the things with it, that I did. Ridiculous isn’t it that we have made yoga into the complete opposite of what it was originally intended to do.
I agree, Alexis, you in its true form is all about re-connecting and what the current forms of yoga offer is impossible to do without disconnecting. The world upside down and currently for people so ‘normal’ that they accept it and don’t know any better.
‘Life’s activities back then were what kept you healthy and people didn’t make time to ‘be healthy’ or ‘do health.’ It is as simple as that, just living naturally.
When the media champions or pushes a certain angle on statistics we can be fooled into thinking that we are doing better these days with our health and yes there have been some important advances in health and medicine. But when we really stop and ask the older generations what life was like we may realise that our health has actually not improved but may be declining.
One way of being healthy is what I experienced at boarding school – we had an ‘infirmary’ and one nun who was presumably medically trained, would dispense various potions whenever we were ill but I don’t remember ever taking any preventive medicines or advice on how to live to stay healthy. I do remember slogans such as ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’ presumably inviting us to eat more fruit. There was also ‘Early to bed, early to rise’, but never any mention of self care, of self nurturing, apart from advice to wear a sensible coat or a cardigan to keep warm and avoid ‘catching cold’. Perhaps if we were all taught self care at school and by our parents, there would be fewer beds needed in hospitals.
The beautiful thing is that however we change the meaning of a word the truth always remains. Our body will always be the marker of this truth and our body will show how we can’t compartmentalise health. It’s a way of living that will define if we are healthy or not.
Well said Leike. It is indeed the way we choose to live that will ultimately determine our state of health.
The more I simplify my lifestyle, the healthier I feel.
“I’m going for a run, to burn off the hang-over.” Or. “I’ve poured poison into my body which now feels massively debilitated and exhausted as it struggles to protect me from this toxicity and re-balance the gigantic sugar rush that came with the alcohol, and so to put it under further stress, I’m going to pound it along the streets, smashing my joints and exerting even more stress on the chemical imbalances of my body….oh, and at the same time, I’ll numb myself with some music so that even if I was open to listening to what my body was shouting at me, I am then so distracted that I can’t hear it.” If we were a bit more honest then maybe we’d make some wiser choices? This is an obvious and extreme example. But am I listening to everything that my body tells me? Certainly not. Whilst I no longer pour alcohol in to it, and whilst I am definitely healthier in my overall lifestyle than I used to be, there is still plenty of abuse that my body takes in my daily movements and expressions.
Well said Otto, and as we allow ourselves greater awareness, then more and more absurdities are revealed in terms of the things we accept and think are supportive when in fact they are to our detriment. Meanwhile we can be oblivious to the true meaning of health and think that we are indeed living a healthy life, but the body as the marker of truth will eventually give its signs to show our choices.
What a fascinating workshop. The notion of ‘doing healthy’ or ‘being healthy’ is a gigantic exposure of a massive lie. It’s the classic magician’s trick; “here, here, look over here…whilst over here, I am doing this.” Our minds might be fooled – but our bodies are way too wise to fall for such trickery. Our bodies know exactly what is going on and will always tell us the truth – hence, despite more gyms, diets, health food shops, fit-bits and millions of other health fads, we are in fact less healthy than we have ever been. Check the stats – they don’t lie. So for how much longer will we?
It is such a good subject to raise that over just a few generations, we have gone from naturally living healthy lives to having to basically bring in artificial ways of staying healthy that just don’t seem to work, judging from our overall health.
Yes I agree Kevin and this trend will continue as long as we keep seeking quick fix solutions to our health problems rather than looking deeper at the underlying causes.
I’m not 100% that the way we used to live was ‘healthy’ and we need to be careful of the rose-tinted spectacles. But what I do feel is that it was more honest – and that is reflected by the body. 20 years ago, you got cancer. A single form of cancer that pointed directly at a behaviour you were carrying out. It was then your choice as to whether you listened to this warning or didn’t. Simple. You do this, body shows you that. A clarity of communication. Now, we live with such dishonesty and with so many layers of untrue behaviours, and our bodies are reflecting this. Multi-symptoamtic diseases layered on top of each other. Our bodies having to deal with stuff on so many levels. And now, because of all these lies, because of the fact that we are so dishonest, we are then faced with a web of communication from our body that we have to disentangle. It’s so classic and makes so much sense. You tell one lie, you have to then tell two more two cover it up, and so on. This is what our bodies and the state of society’s health is reflecting. We are lying. This, to me, seems to be the big difference between our health now our health 30? years ago.
I’m now in my 40’s and can remember when the gym scene really started to come in to vogue and running was promoted as being fit and healthy. I can remember the pressure I felt from this and how I really did not like running but would push myself to try it because that made me healthy. It’s fascinating to see how over the ages our whole body awareness has deteriorated down to a box ticking exercise and what we believe we can get away with, as long as we attend gym, drink a juice or protein shake, go for a run or do a detox each week.
I found it very scary that most people now “considers itself ‘healthy’ because it spends some time at the gym or ‘doing health’ now and then.” Where is our natural feeling for our body awareness???? It seems to be that most of us are getting more ignorant about the fact that our body is our temple we are living in.
Our heads will always disconnect us and our bodies will always re-connect us. Our heads are an ‘away from’ God and our bodies are a ‘towards’ God.
It’s a bit like sporting events, you play at home, or you can play away. There is always a home field advantage and this case everyone wins.
The further we get from our bodies the further we get from ourselves.
and the further we get from ourselves, the further we get from God.
This is so great what you have shared. The word ‘health’ is banded around so much on products, tv, magazines, adverts, media but this just highlights we haven’t actually (or not that I have been aware of) had the discussion of what does health truly mean to us and how has this changed through the ages and of course why has it changed. I feel this is the beginning of something we need to continue to discuss.
I think it’s a good point about how we can think of health as something that we can do in certain areas of life and then forget about it in others, rather than having a consistent approach to all areas of life, not expecting perfection but just knowing that all areas do count. And also how we can have a picture of health and what is healthy from beliefs and ideals we have picked up as opposed to learning from our own experience and living wisdom.
The illness and disease rates tell it all really. If we were truly living the health we say we are then we would not have such high rates of illness and disease.
A great topic to focus on here. I remember seeing that photo too and being struck by the ease of the people in it. Simply being our natural selves is true health.
I get what you observe early on in this blog Johanna, that we have taken health from something that we naturally would very likely have had in the not so distant past, to something that we now DO – ie. we are ‘being healthy’ when we make a certain choice about food for example. Whereas, it can be that the way of life, simply lived is a life where health (in its fully encompassing sense) is a part of that whole way of living. We just ARE healthy as a consequence of living … “True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more. It means we consider absolutely everything about us”
Back in the 60’s/70’s wanting to lose weight or get a little fitter did not mean excessive workouts in the gym or extreme going for the burn sessions. It meant going for a walk after work, going for a bike ride, stretching exercises and eating less cake and more vegetables. It all seemed so much simpler then. I recall my parents wanting to lose some excess weight back in the late 70’s and as described above was the extent of their activities.
When looking into health from its roots in Latin, it would seem that true health is about salvation and deliverance from evil, which I take as being connected to our Soul so we have natural healing, which comes from our connection sharing what works for us as far as what is truly healthy.
Wow – I had not thought about it like that but it is so true that we are having to ‘do health’ these days – such a giveaway that the way we are living in itself is detrimental to our well-being.
There has been a major shift in how we see and feel about health. I know for myself, I would be reluctant to say I am healthy, if I haven’t been exercising. It is great to reveal this ‘healthy’ culture and see how we have subscribed to it or not.
A great point Fumiyo, before we were healthy and now its a £3.7trn industry.
It is a superb moment to reflect upon the fact that despite our evident technological advances the quality of our health is definitely sliding downhill. In the same way we all know what foods and beverages are good for us, it’s the same with our gadgets, indulgences and distractions. Everything we do has an effect that heals or harms us; learning to observe the effects and make different choices is a powerful movement back to true health.
You would think that with the state of our health at the moment with all the illness and disease and disconnection we have that we would all willingly turn back the clock to simpler times that were not that long ago without all the fast food, technology and so called health fads. What a price we are paying for not wising up.
We champion how advanced we are technologically, medically and what is all possible today but, and that is a big major but, we have lost quality in all our striving which is so clearly reflected in our health and daily well-being.
Thank you for sharing the subject of this presentation. It took me back to my childhood in the 50’s and 60’s. I rarely heard the word health, we just lived our lives. We had enough to eat, and didn’t over-indulge. Living in the country, I regularly walked miles to visit friends or family in the next or neighbouring villages. It’s what we did, no effort at all and natural to us.
This is such a great perspective on how we consider health these days. Health does seem to come in boxes, books, and life style choices which is ridiculous because true health is simply a way of being not an outside piece of ‘knowledge or information’ we slot into our day.
It’s a real eye opener to consider what is offered here and how in fact over the years we’ve gotten good at compartmentalizing life but we do not in fact live life fully in all facets … we’ve embraced even more ‘on’ and ‘off’ and consider that doing extra healthy activities means we can do the other stuff we know is not supportive for us. Life is all it’s parts and each part matters, and the sum of all of course.
If we take health back to a way of living where the body is in its natural flow and harmony we would not be compartmentalising our lives into work, exercise time, recreational time and family time.
Health is now an industry rather than a result of correct living. I love how Serge Benhayon has expanded my understanding of true health and true intelligence and how the two are inextricably linked. Every Universal Medicine event I have the grace to attend is like a workout for my whole being.
I agree when you look at photos of young people a few years ago around the 50/60’s and 70’s there did seem to be an ease and freedom; I feel young people now have a lot more stresses than young people did then .. more pressure. Only yesterday one person showed me a photo of her 19 year old daughters lips, she had gone and got a lip filler injection in them and they were really swollen and a younger women with me shared she was going to get ‘birthday botox!’. You would think that over the years we would learn from our mistakes and make things lighter and easier for ourselves but this hasn’t happened at all.
Johanna, I also attended this presentation where the photo of teenagers now and in 1960’s/70’s were shown. The difference was huge and I felt how much pressure there is nowadays on young people to be a certain way – to be cool and to fit in. This did not seem to be the case 50 years ago, people seemed to be much more comfortable simply being themselves as their bodies reflected in the photo.
If we make a photo of a group of people now, they are either posing or somebody will be looking at their smartphone or perhaps all of them …
There is nothing more exposing of the rapid decline in our relationship with health than people sharing about their personal experience of health in their youth as was in the workshop revered to here. In just one lifetime – the world has changed from health and vitality being an integral part of life, to an extra-curricular activity! No wonder the rate of illness and disease has also been increasing.
It’s certainly getting more intense in the world. One only has to work in a customer facing role or look at medical stats to see that evidence.
Indeed and I loved seeing the photos of what was presented at that Universal Medicine event, it helped me appreciate just how unhealthy we all are today.
I see this at the gym everytime I go. It feels like most go to the gym to justify their “unhealthy” and in truth abusive habits elsewhere in life. It could be that they drink alcohol and eat lots of fatty foods (or do so as a “one off” here and there) and consequently feel guilty and know that it is not good for their shape. Exercise is in this way viewed as a remedy a bit like a confession and a “I have to own up to this to pay for my bad behaviour elsewhere”. But what quality are we then exercising in if we are doing it for this reason? We tend to over exercise, push way to hard and tend to get obsessed about going thinking it is important to rebalance our health but in truth all of these stances often lead us to abuse our bodies in exercise too just like in the rest of our life.
Many people describe this as a ‘balance’. They allow themselves their chocolate cake because they can work it off in the gym. But is this truly a balance?
We can try to fool ourselves with so many different ideas, our body will always communicate the truth of the choices we made. We can label them as ‘healthy’, but the consequences will be digested by our body and it will let us know whether it was healing or harming.
Universal Medicine continues to support unified growth and learning by bringing together people from all generations and walks of life to share and understand our changing lifestyles and values and in doing so shine a clear light on the core ills that are plaguing humanity today.
It seems that we have shifted the goal posts on the meaning of health through the generations as we have in fact become less healthy.
We may think we are living as healthily as we can but there is always a refinement we can make, whether it is adjusting the type of foods we eat, the amount we eat, or the conversation we have whilst eating. And always there is the monitoring of what energy we have aligned to that then guides our every thought and movement. There’s definitely more to health than eating gluten-free muesli for breakfast.
This is very exposing of health now not being part of life. I am in my 30’s and feel the pressure of a diet and an exercise program to mean I am active when I can see that in the past it has been about lifestyle. It also means we add in guilt for not working out or sticking to a program or diet, and so we are in a constant cycle of trying to enforce something on ourselves so we tick the boxes of health
I was at this forum hosted by Universal Medicine and the photos you mentioned showed a profound difference of how people were physically in the 60’s/70’s, and also the spark for life they carried, there was an aliveness in their eyes and an openness to life in their bodies. Reading through your blog and reviewing the discussion on the day has been very valuable, health today is like a formula sectioned off as parts of our life but not the entire way we live.
Could it be that the spark for life in the early photos came from living life? Where today the spark is what powers the screen we hold in our hand? Health today has become something we Google.
Well stated Steve… this certainly is the trend we are seeing of life and health over the ages and especially in the recent 50yrs. Living life instead of a ‘virtual life’ is what keeps the spark vibrant, alive, forever progressive, instead of being a ‘couch potato’.
I recall seeing that very same photo. I could feel how being vital and joyful was an everyday experience. You just see it by how everyone was together. Yes they were a group of younger people, but the standout thing was when a photo of a group of younger people from now was shared, That same sense of vitality and joyfulness was not present. The discussion in the age groups was very worthwhile as we could feel how our wellbeing had changed over 50 years and not for the better.
The same can be said of different time periods but also countries. In the 1990’s, on holiday in the French Alps, I observed a difference between European and British teenagers. It was refreshing to see teenagers being themselves, natural, free and unselfconscious. My experience of many in the UK was that a teenagers acted a part, tried to be cool, wore lots of makeup and followed fashion trends. What they lacked was a natural ease with themselves and certainly not the joy and vitality you describe and seen in continental European teenagers I met.
Yes Elizabeth, I can relate to what you share. I don’t ever recall meeting an obese child and very rarely were adults overweight. The life style we had then was designed for health, not ill-health as it is today.
Love your account of this workshop Johanna. Health is now big business, marketed to convince us that health involves doing something other than simply live life healthily. To expose the lie and separation of this is brilliant. With care and attention we discern truth from untruth ourselves and move in a way that aligns to our own inner wisdom.
When we compartmentalise our health and rely on the gym, exercise program or dieting club to undo the stress we have taken on during the week, we are expecting so much from these activities to fix us. There comes a time though when they no longer work.
As has been suggested, health encompasses a whole lot more. For example, I know that if I have expressed where once I would have bottled things up – this does a lot more for my overall well being than an hour at the gym!
Yes Michelle, I can relate to this: sharing our feelings with another is therapeutic. Health goes way beyond stepping on treadmills and pushing weights.
I also had confirmed in a beautiful revelation today that conversation and expressing what is true has the power not only to release tension in your own body and support with your own health, but it has the power to raise those you are speaking with to a more evolved awareness and vibration too. A win, win!
Yes Michelle, even more powerful to know this. With this awareness we cannot hold back from expressing truth, there’s everything to gain for all of us.
What you share is huge. Such facts as you finding the difference between expressing or bottling things up is far more significant than an hour in the gym, ought to have us stop and re-assess our beliefs about what affects our health. And perhaps re-examine what our notion of health is in the first place.
Absolutely. When we ask what health means to people, to most nowadays it means not being ill. Do we ever stop to consider however the true definition of health which encompasses vitality, abundance, joy – an overall zest and quality filled love of life?!
These are great management tools but they don’t resolve the underlying reasons why we respond with stress and behaviour that harms our health. Exactly.
“Fix” is an apt word to use Julie. After a session in the gym or run, there is a temporary feeling of wellbeing with endorphins released. People crave for this pumped up ‘high.’ But unless other parts of our lives are balanced, nothing really changes.
Health can become about going to the gym, putting yourself on a diet and having a good work/home (on/off) life balance. But what if it was more about how responsive we are to our body’s communication to us? And how much we act on the messages we are given?
Thank you Jane, important observation and timely for me.. The head often pulls us in one direction and what we need is to ignore it and feel what the body needs. A walk nourishes the body and connect us to nature and other people.
We need not come up with anything, just simply respond to what is already there.
Yes, what a revelation to find that a walk be called for instead of a nap, that activity is nourishing and revitalising.
Taking our perceptions of what health is to a deeper level feels not only true but responsible. In an era where Ill health is not only off the scale but is normalised it is important to discuss!
So true that the way we relate to health these days, as more of a tick box exercise, can mean that we can be quite dishonest about the state of our own health. For example if I’m eating all the things I think are good for me, yet still working at 100 miles an hour, pushing myself and my body to its limits, then how healthy am I, really? What strikes me the most about how things have changed is our relationship and ease with time, and the expectations we put upon ourselves – which then of course affects our health.
True health comes first and foremost from our willingness to accept that we are love and then the commitment to live it. That we are plagued with such high levels of ill health and disease even in first world countries, shows us how far from this simple truth we have strayed. No technology in the world can save us if we have made the choice to not be the love that we are. From here it is just preservation and survival by any other means necessary as we sink deeper and deeper into illusion as to what is really going on.
It is time that we bring health back to the whole of how we are living, in every aspect of our life. It comes back to the way we live that determines our health and vitality but we need to be careful not to go about it by the many beliefs we have but by connecting with our bodies and let them show ourselves the way. And that is as simple as feeling how we are feeling, if there is tightness, stiffness, pain, tiredness or even exhaustion, moodiness etc. etc., there is something about our daily rhythm that causes these symptoms, so there is something in our day to day life we can do to bring a change.
My mum has often shared with me how growing up they grew all their own vegetables and the kids had to come home from school and tend the garden as part of their daily routine, this got me thinking what a healthy lifestyle she had compared with kids today. The exercise and the fresh veg compared to Tv and fast food for a lot of kids these days. I have also seen a photo of mum and dad with a group of friends at the beach when they were young and what struck me about that photo was how healthy and vital they looked and there was a real community feeling with the photo also.
Studies have also found that when we are ten years old, we get imprinted with the values of the decade we were living in. There are the baby boomers from the 50s, to the, I want it now generation. We seem to have lost in our evolution of society our natural health that was just the way we lived! The pressures outside of us have eroded and stripped away our natural health, in the same way, commercialised farming has stripped the land, from overproduction. Now the land and ourselves, require things from outside of us to grow.
To understand that to be truly healthy you have to live a life that is healthy, basically equates to Life being our medicine as long as its lived in connection to what the body is asking for. It seems from what you have presented here Johanna is that 60 plus years ago we were living much more in accordance with our bodies and the natural world around us than we are today, and interstingly as a society, we are much sicker today than ever before.
When things change gradually over time, we can turn a blind eye and not notice – we reach the place we are today, where health has become a commercialised idea, rather than a way of life and much has been lost from the pasts simple way of life
The other thing that we’re able to do by making ‘health’ separate to life, is charge a lot of money for it!
Exercise is seen as being a healthy thing and yet the way that I used exercise was incredibly unhealthy. For twenty years I used exercise to temporarily stifle the feelings of anger and frustration that were ever present in my body. What this meant is that I lived for all of that time with those very harmful emotions deep within my organs. Not only that but everyone around me was affected by the anger and frustration that were inside me; even if those emotions didn’t surface very often, they were non the less there and therefore detectable by others.
There is a belief that we can vent our anger and frustration on a pillow, a punch bag, through martial arts or going to the gym but if these activities are done in the angst of emotions it is only magnifying that energy, leaves us exhausted and has us heading for the bar to be propped up by more false energy.
Johanna thanks for conveying the workshop with so much clarity that it’s easy for the reader to get the full revelation of what was offered on the day. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when I was at, what society would have categorised as my most ‘healthy’ , my health was at its worst. My body was racked with pain from the relentless exercise that I had pushed it through for twenty years and I was absolutely exhausted from never allowing myself to rest. I had held a rigid picture of what it was to be healthy and I had held onto it very tightly, despite the fact that my body was screaming at me to tear it up. When my body broke down and ground to a halt then and only then was I able to truly examine my previously held pictures of what it was to be in ‘good health’.
I am in my 60’s and I completely relate to what is shared here that health was a result of how one lived and going to the gym I perceived as a form of obsession. However, I have come to realise that exercise as part of one’s living is beneficial.
It is indeed revealing how we have made the scale of what we call healthy slide only to not fully expose that our lifestyles are slowly killing us.
Just this week I spoke with someone about that picture and that presentation and how life had a much more natural flow to it back then which showed in the condition of those bodies. We worked and played together, outside, used our physical bodies and flowed more naturally with nature’s rhythms. When we observe this we cannot say we have evolved since then, in fact I would say we have lost much of importance.
I agree Caroline. This workshop exposed in a simple way society’s slide down a slippery slope to catastrophic ill-health in less than 50 years and what we have today quickly normalised. People are beginning to question why this is and the crisis beginning to surface in the national and global consciousness. Last night, for example, the BBC aired the first of a three part TV documentary ‘Britain’s Fat Fight: Why we’re losing”. The presenter explored and exposed Britain’s growing obesity crisis and examined causes from individual choices feeling demand to multi-national food corporations deluging communities and retail outlets with unhealthy food products. Critically, it observed that being overweight is now ‘normal’. We’re told obesity, has reached epidemic proportions (with two-thirds of the UK population overweight) and replaced smoking as the nation’s first addiction. The programme focuses on a one year social experiment in Newcastle aiming to recruit 100,00 people to join a programme to change eating habits and lose weight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43838655
It’s amazing the difference in our relationship and understanding and use of the word ‘health’ today compared to the past. If it keeps going this way we will be unable to function and still be called healthy!
I love how you expose in this blog how far we have gone from the true meaning of health and also how we have actually convinced ourselves that we are still okay: ‘This means that activities and behaviours that go completely against ‘true health’ – ones that in fact abuse the body such as drinking, excessive exercise, smoking, starving oneself, overeating, eating sugary and fatty foods, spending excessive time on technology devices, getting little sleep, working in drive and so on, can play out while the body that is doing them still considers itself ‘healthy’ because it spends some time at the gym or ‘doing health’ now and then. And so the lie of health today is revealed.’
It is interesting how the word ‘health’ has been bastardised over the years into something very diminishing and far from the truth. Unless we are prepared to be willing to see that health is the way in which we live and not something we do, then illness and disease will undoubtedly, continue to rise. But this is our own making, our own creation because of our unwillingness to see truth and take responsibility for our lives.
I took part in this workshop and it was a huge eye opener for me, as I had not taken the time to consider just how differently we live our lives now from when I was young 50+ years ago, and how much illness and disease has increased in such a short space of time. I have heard people say this is because Modern Medicine is more sophisticated and able to detect all the different diseases today that people were dying of in the past undiagnosed but to me this this is not the true picture. We pride ourselves on our intelligence but when it comes to our bodies to me we behave in a very unintelligent way.
We cannot separate health to everything that occurs in all areas of lives, for everything that occurs in our relationship to self and with others and beyond, affects our health in one way or another.
Johanna, thank you so much for sharing this presentation. This is super interesting and really makes sense; ‘Life’s activities back then were what kept you healthy and people didn’t make time to ‘be healthy’ or ‘do health.’ What I can feel now is how we can lie to ourselves and say ‘well I went to the gym so Im being healthy therefore I can have that piece of cake or indulge in some other way.’ Rather than consistently living a healthy life in all ways.
I like the way you refer to people ‘doing’ health, I have seen many people go to the gym or eat a muesli bar in the belief that they are being healthy, not realising that it is their whole life that needs to be encompassed i.e. healthy relationships, healthy thoughts, healthy movement, healthy lifestyle, healthy expression and totally healthy diet
It’s impossible to compartmentalise what health is, keeping it as a separate activity from the rest of one’s life. True health is all encompassing, from the way we eat to the way we walk, from the quality of the way we look after ourselves and even to how we treat others. True Health, to me, is a way of living in harmony and simplicity with everything within us and around us.
I am in my sixties and I have definitely seen a shift away from health being our natural state to something we have to get and generally invest in: there are things we can do to be healthy and as long as we have a “healthy ‘ element in something then we can relax and think we are looking after ourselves and consider ourselves ok. Talking to some young people in their twenties recently this was highlighted when they considered that having a cake that had carrots in it must be healthy whatever else was in the cake didn’t matter and the fact that cake itself can be heavy in the body did not feature either. It seems that choosing what to eat or drink was a matter for the head and generally doing what everyone else was doing and not anything to do with the relationship they had with their bodies except on a purely functional level.
I remember that photo too – and the sharings. Back then (1950s 60s) we had no internet, no mobile phones, not even a landline in some cases, so we interacted with each other when we got together. Today I see groups of people – of any age – spending more time on the screens than with each other. Let us deeply value our friends and relationships – they may not always be there….
‘And so the lie of health today is revealed.’ A very interesting blog to read. It is easy to forget that when I was a child in the 70s how the elder population had a lot more vitality and were indeed devoid of as many illnesses and diseases as we can see abound today. I appreciated the exposure of the ‘health’ consciousness we have taken on and how in fact it is just that – a consciousness that doesn’t really support overall health and vitality but allows us to tick boxes thinking we are doing ok.
I’ve often gotten comments “You’re so healthy” etc. With a tone that says “That’s a huge task/it’s hard” etc. But I couldn’t live the way I do and have the energy I have if I was constantly Doing to be this way. My energy levels, refined diet, increased commitment to work and deepening understanding/lessening judgements have come from Doing less and Being more. Focusing on how I do not what I do.
We all have different experiences of health, being active and looking after ourselves, so to shape the way forward it absolutely requires all of us to support each other through this lived experience
The term ‘health package’ comes to me after reading this. It is very evident that we have lost our natural understanding and appreciation of what it means to be healthy when we promote health packages that only consider our physical health, but fail to take into consideration the health of our inner well being, self worth, relationships, commitment to life and our vitality. Any imbalance in any one of these areas indicates an ill, which at some point will manifest in our bodies. When we focus on bringing all these aspects of our lives into a balanced and healthy expression, we establish a health that embraces all of us.
As I write this, I was sent and viewed a video clip by a friend of a circular rainbow filmed in Bahia, Brazil, never seen before. It relates to our subject, the wholeness of health that cannot by compartmentalised.
‘True health is about ‘all of us'” How true this is Joanna and important to expose the lie that comes with the promotion ‘health’ today. Attending Universal Medicine presentations changed my perception of health. It is far more than exercise, cycling to work, going to the gym and changing our diet in a tick box fashion. It’s how we live in every part of life: how we breathe, walk, talk, relate to one another, eat, sleep, keep our home, spend our time. Everything contributes. Until we all have the same understanding, many will believe they are healthy but not feel it in their bodies.
Yes health can’t be a tick box exercise that we do on the side, health is there or it is not there in our bodies and that should be the only way we measure health. Just saying from our heads that we are healthy because we go to the gym, eat healthy foods and are considerate of the environment etc. is not it, it does not guarantee per se that our body is healthy too.
Putting health on the ‘to do’ list makes it a chore rather than a natural way of living.
Being in my sixty’s, the gym, was a class in school no one liked except for the jocks! But, I remember the jocks, driven by their fathers! Why did our lives become like broken safety glass with the thousands of fractured little cubes that we compartmentalise ourselves into? When did we become, not enough?
Thank you Johanna for reminding me of this photo and the great discussion we had which you have summarised so well for us. I do well remember life in the fifties being so much less stressful for people than it is now. Probably we still had all the same types of momentums going but the acceleration of this is very clear to see – and this is partly because of the increase of energetic awareness that is is now available to us. Life was simpler in some ways. Only a few people had phones (landlines), there were no computers or Internet. The twice a year movie was a wondrous thing! The health food store in Lismore was upstairs, dark narrow stairs, and the darkish room was full of jars of molasses, big sacks of lentils. chick peas etc., and my mother used to go up there occasionally to buy things. So the notion of ‘health foods was around in Lismore in the 50s! Additionally my parents, who were atypical, had some idea of ‘health’. We did not eat desserts unless the grandparents were visiting, and that was a social demand! We could sometimes have a piece of fruit after lunch. My brother and I were not allowed to have tea or coffee because they thought it would stunt our growth. They also had the idea that milk was healthy, which was hard luck for me who hated milk. So there were thoughts about health and being healthy and not eating or drinking rubbish. Life was an easier pace and there was a kind of innocence somehow.
It’s common to look back at the past and reminisce with nostalgia for the ‘good old times’. I’ve always known this isn’t true but can see now that this habit has stopped me seeing there is huge power to be had to look back questioningly. Then you can start to see the illness in the way we live that has intensified and the beauty we have ignored along the way. Thank you Johanna.
Mention of serious illness has become so common that we have started to accept ill health in its many forms as normal.
Thanks Johanna, this blog has captured the slow decline of awareness of true health under the prescribed current framework of what ‘being healthy is’. It has exposed how we now have to ‘Do’ health rather than allow the beautiful natural livingness of what ‘Health’ truly is to unfold from within us.
Christine great point, its that gradual erosion of what healthy is that means we can choose to turn a blind eye to the dramatic difference in just a few years.
This article really supports you to stop and feel how our health, being healthy and the definition of health has changed over the last 80 years, how we now settle for a definition of health that is actually far away from what true health is for us all.
It’s so interesting how being ‘healthy’ has become a ‘thing’, which involves specific activities, foods, clothes and social media posts in today’s society, and no longer are we looking after ourselves and exercising/being active in our day to be simply fit for our life. Making it a ‘thing’ means that a lot of people now identify with this personality, but I also think it puts a lot of people off as it is quite overwhelming the seeming commitments you have to make to be ‘healthy’.
Reading this article, it is glaringly obvious that the way Health is ‘done’ today is not a true support of our bodies. Yet if we achieve the toned figure we think is the epitome of health, we think we are healthy. Something to deeply ponder here if we really want to understand why the rates of illness and disease, especially among those that live today’s health model, is so great.
This is amazing and I had not ever really considered how health can be undefined because it simply is what life is made of and not something separate that we go and do to create the image of health over and on top of the reality that exists.
Love, Love Love it – Bringing it back to truth “True Health means we consider how we work, how we relate, speak with family and friends, the depth and quality of all our relationships and interactions, maintaining a consistency, respect, sensitivity and much more.”
What this discussion makes me realise, is that the way that I viewed ‘being healthy’, i.e. seeing it primarily as the way that I ate and the fact that I exercised regularly and not much else, ensured that I felt that I had good health covered, which meant that I paid very little attention to any other aspects of my life when considering what good health looked and felt like. So in summary and hindsight I can categorically state that the widely accepted view of what constitutes ‘good health’ contributed directly to my ill health.