Open to the Elements

I mentioned in a previous post [Purposefully Healthy] that it helped me to categorise my health into 5 specific aspects: the physical, physiological, mental, emotional & spiritual. As individuals, each of these categories of health is personally coded to our individual nature and, in turn, each of these 5 aspects has their own nature. To help us better understand them, we can assign an element to each one to match their individual nature as follows:

Physical Health is represented by Earth, which reflects that which sustains us, and the wide and varied landscape of our bodies. Our physical health refers to the combination of cells that we recognise as our body, whose structure provides both the framework and support for all other systems and categories of health.

Physiological Health is represented by the element of Fire, mainly because of its relations with the resourcing of and distribution of energy, also known as metabolism. Our physiological systems provide fuel for the other health aspects, enabling us to physically move, process thoughts and express our feelings as emotions.

Emotional Health is represented by Water as we see how our emotions, like rivers, are able to erode response pathways and influence our behaviour. Our emotions can lift us and carry us forward like swimming with the tide, or they can ambush and overwhelm us as we drown in the tsunami of their sensory overload. They are essentially metabolic manifestations of our perception and are therefore a key channel that connects our physiological health aspect to our mental health aspect.

Mental Health is represented by the element of Air. We know that air is there, even though we cannot see it, in the same way that we can see brain activity but not know what the thought is. Our mental health mirrors the nature and effects or air, whether a gentle breeze that sends ripples across fields of wheat or in the more destructive force of a hurricane that blows the roof from a house. The potential power of air can be harvested for purposeful use and so we aim to harness our mental processes in the same way to optimise our mental health.

Spiritual Health corresponds to the element of Space, the vast, dark expanse that includes our universe and the many universes that are yet to be discovered. What we know simply isn’t enough to fill the gap of what we don’t know and will likely never know. Whatever our origins are, we might never know the original cause; the spark that set the whole process in motion. For the gaps in our knowledge and to support our spiritual health, we require a degree of faith and balanced belief, with the threads of hope and trust woven in between.

When our health falters, it is helpful to identify which aspect(s) are the cause, and by understanding the effects of their nature, we can better understand our own nature. By improving awareness of how we are affected by each of these aspects we can act accordingly to prepare ourselves. We exercise and eat well to make the body stronger and more resilient against infection or disease, and so it makes sense to find appropriate activities to help build our mental and emotional defences. Activities with purpose mean acting with awareness or…
Awareness in Action!