By Tamara Gillest, MS

Good health and great healthcare is a collaborative effort.  It’s like a team sport.  Each person has their job to do their “role” to play and enjoy the game.  The meaning of health needs to be much greater than what our current understanding of how healthcare is defined.  Sure, you can rely on practitioners, researchers, insurers, policy makers, and educators for healthcare, but without your participation and action, your health might be in the wrong hands .  Are you the captain of your health team?  What is your game strategy?

Measurement of good health should include a healthy body, mind, social structure, spiritual connection, and ecological harmony.  Innovative health management should include and encourage self-management treatment, prevention, and promotion of wellness for all the above using a wide array of mind-body practices.  And it should place you in charge.

The model for good health includes mind-body practices like meditation, breathing exercises, and movement (yoga is a good example, but not exclusive).  Self-regulation through mind-body awareness has been documented in medical journals as a way to impact and relieve the number one health related issue known today:  stress.  Yoga includes basic tools that can be incorporated into a daily routine that help to support self-management and regulation of the physical body and the nervous system.  Many other movement modalities are also effective namely Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Feldenkrais, just to name a few.   

A recent report suggests that we are in a crisis of perception about how health transpires individually and socially.  The understanding of what is available for support doesn’t often suggest interconnectedness between us and our environment nor interdependencies of our body and nervous system.  We seem to have a poor understanding of how we are connected to our environment as humans, and we lack understanding of what it means to thrive, not just survive. By incorporating ethics, philosophy, and self-reflection, the perception of health becomes much broader.   

Your call to action is to put yourself in the driver’s seat for personal health:  Incorporate basic tools into your life that help you manage and regulate your body, nervous system, and emotional thinking.  

Find ways to connect to the world around you:

1. Get your hands dirty in the garden. 
2. Look up and notice the world around you.  What is your relationship to planet earth?
3. How well are you connected to your community?   
4. Explore mind-body movement modalities like yoga as it has all the elements to support innovative health for proactive and reactive health management.  Its elements include:
   1. Philosophy and Ethics that allow the student to identify with social and spiritual values as well as internal discipline.
   2. Breathing exercises that increase mindfulness, self-awareness, and control over the autonomic nervous system.
   3. Movement and postures are accessible to the physical and mental needs of populations that may or may not be suffering from chronic or acute conditions.  
   4. Meditation practices that increase mindfulness, self-awareness, concentration, and management of emotional fluctuations.  

Find a place that offers movement suitable for your body, mind, and spirit.  Not all movement studios are for every body.  It’s more important to find a movement modality that suits your life style and physical abilities.  Once you find your place of practice, explore the tools, find a home in your own health and see your health as more than just healthcare and insurance policies…  Make health innovation your way of life.

Resource  sited:  Weber, Kristine Kaoverii, Sculthorp, Brett, “The Leading Edge of Health Care Innovation:  Yoga for Population Health”, March 2016 www.subtleyoga.com.

Tamara Gillest, MS, Certified Yoga Therapist, E-RYT-500

Owner of BendnMove Yoga and Movement Studio, West Seattle, www.bendnmove.com

tamara@bendnmove.com, 206-697-4399

Tamara has her Master’s degree in Science and is a Certified Yoga Therapist and Educator of Yoga.  She currently offers individual and group yoga therapy sessions, as well as Buteyko Breath Education at her studio in West Seattle.  Tamara collaborates with health care professionals to support and improve individual health and quality of life with a non-invasive, nurturing experience.