Our Healing Journey: Restoring Connection, Finding Hope and Evolving Wellness

Abstract

Wellness is more than the simple absence of disease. As such, health can be envisioned as a journey to a state of optimal wellness and not a simple destination. To measure progress on such a journey, defining wellness by measures other than disease risk factors and biomarkers is necessary. Health can be defined by five areas of functionality: metabolic, physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. Indeed, an individual's behaviors are the outward expression of an inward integration of the metabolic, physical, emotional, and cognitive functions in a fully actualized mind, body, and spirit. Personalized Lifestyle Medicine recognizes the importance of facilitating lasting behavioral change but facilitating this change may be difficult and may resist standard practice models. It is our proposal that a major obstacle on the journey to achieving full wellness is the brokenness of an individual's connections to self, to purpose, to community, and to the environment. Programs aimed both at defining an individual's authentic self and providing patient education using Functional Medicine's unique philosophy can facilitate a patient's creation of a lasting vision that is the work of successful behavioral change.

Figure 1.

Interaction of the Four Physiologic Functions - Metabolic, Physical, Cognitive, and Emotional. Figure 1 shows the authors’ model of self that is consistent with Wilber’s integral psychology approach. Many factors can influence the motivation and ability to perform a behavior. Behaviors are meaningful as an outward expression of functional capacity and of a balance of interior psychological processes - hidden versus emergent, soul versus ego, and cultural versus personal values.

Figure 2.

Acknowledgment of Suffering as an Impediment to Wellness and Healing. Developing helping relationships and acquiring resources are key components of a therapeutic model that values safety, persistence, and trust to facilitate healing and the recovery of wellness. (With permission from the NOVA Institute for Health of People, Places, and Planet.)