Real balance in life underlies good health-that's a fact. It is all too often ignored by those insisting on quick fixes.Their motivations may be innocent, a product of today's fast paced lives or less innocent if they seek financial gain. The truth is balance supports our energies, guides successful emotional lives and encourages ongoing positive change. With smart choices In your world, personal and professional, balance can ground you while leading to ever expanding happiness and success.
Vitality, the source of well-being, holds the key to healthy balance. What is vitality? The root word is vital, from the Latin word vitalis meaing "life" and today including "strong" and "active." When something is vital in the human body it is essential, important to the very existence of healthy life itself. The essential systems are:
- Oxygenation of the blood through healthy lungs
- Circulation of oxygenated blood through the entire body
- Healthy absorption of necessary nutrients in the digestive system
- Removal of all body system toxins and byproducts by appropriate organs systems
- Clear mental thought processes evidencing vibrant brain functioning
- Physical movement of the body
- The ability to rest all of the body systems in sleep easily achieved
When any of these abilities and systems are unreliable balance becomes impossible to achieve Any single body process disruption carries impacts in a negative and unhealthy manner to all of the body. Finally vitality itself diminishes.
Modern media has clearly and frequently highlighted some known sources of damage to vitality. Smoking, excessive alcohol use, illegal drug use, excessing calorie intake and a sedentary lifestyle continue to be the prime media areas of interest as health risks. Looking around in the everyday world shows how little impact these messages have achieved. Drive through vegetarian or healthy fast food restaurants do not exist.
Grocery store shelves overflow with high calorie, prepackaged meals lacking the essential ingredients to enhance nutrient absorption. In urban areas where sidewalks permit ease of walking the air itself can be so heavily laden with pollutants bringing toxins into the body with each breath.
Solutions do exist, solutions supported by valid scientific studies.
Often for the individual these changes require personalized motivation to maintain consistency. Here is where balance becomes the secret of success. A well visualized goal of a healthy body with individualized activities begins the process. A vivid goal and healthy diet makes the next priority exercise. This brings attention to physical motion with many possibilities:
- a daily walk in the outdoors, as close to nature as possible,
- a sitting ball at a desk where a chair had been before,
- a dance class 2-3 times per week
- yoga in all its varieties
- martial arts' classes with well qualified instructors
- gym, pool or trainer supported group workouts
The single most overlooked of the seven body systems listed is that of digestion, the absorption of nutrients and the removal of toxins by the body. Balance, or homeostasis, in this area is the foundation for vitality in the entire person. It is, all too often, not easily achieved. Fresh foods and careful diet choices are required.
Once the alternative, poor health, continued feelings of low energy, mental fogginess, perpetual low level exhaustion, broken sleep, tensions and unease are recognized the decision to embrace the better choices supports itself. The cost of the absence of health clearly exceeds the costs of choosing health.
Balanced vitality adds luster to each day. The momentum once created ascends upward to greater levels of health. Happily these often lead to an overall sense of well-being. This impacts all those people who cross any person's path each and every day. The awareness of the process is the beginning. Balance is required to maintain vitality for every person alive today.