By Tamara Gillest

According to the teachings of yoga, there are 5 layers to a healthy body, mind, and spirit.  And, for this article, let’s refer to spirit as a connection to something more than ourselves. It’s important to develop and understanding of these layers because health-success requires a balance, an interconnection to each other, our collective thoughts, as well as that which is beyond our mind and body.

Let’s look and explore how you would describe your health in terms of the five layers described below:

Physical balance: What do you do each day to focus on sustaining your joint stability and good posture? Are you as mobile as you would like? As balanced?  How would you describe your eating pattern and what foods make you feel good? Who well do you digest your food?

Energetic balance: How well do you bring your energetic bank account back into balance by exploring breathing, movement, and daily routine activities? How would you describe your breathing pattern? Do you monitor heart rate variability?

Mental balance: What activities do you do to sharpen or create new neurological pathways that sharpen memory and keep you active?  Do you seek to learn new skills, hobbies, concepts; read books, articles, or journals, memorization, etc.?

Emotional Balance: What makes your heart sing?  How stable is your mind and how resilient are you to the ebbs and flows of life?  Do you get caught in a rut when things related to a relationship with a person, job, pet, object come into your life? How well do you connect to others, i.e., do you have a sense of interconnectedness?

Spiritual balance: How well do you nourish your spiritual heart and stay connected to what sustains you?  Are you able to comfortably spend time alone and still feel connected? Do you have rituals that you practice helping you feel grounded?  Do you feel you understand what “grounded” means?  

Physical balance is the primary building block of good health. Gyms, fitness studios, and other movement establishments offer a variety of ways to tone your muscles.  Nutritionists, dieticians, and doctors are resources to understand foods and their effects on health.  If you are a do-it-yourself person, you can always pick up the latest book or video talking about food and exercise.  Diet and exercise are what make up physical balance, the first layer of health. 

The foods we eat become part of us.  Remember the old saying, “you are what you eat”?  There is some truth to that.  It takes approximately 72 hours for food to assimilate into our bodies - from mouth to food’s “final resting place”.  So, if you eat a cheeseburger today, that cheeseburger will be with you for the next 3 days.  It will wind its way through your intestinal track, break down into particles, and permeate through your intestinal walls, and get assimilated into your tissues.  Some particles that your body can’t use, get compacted into waste and will finally exit your body.   What goes on in the inside of your body is truly miraculous.  This is all part of physical balance.  What you put in your body matters to how you move, how you feel, and even how you think. 

Exercise and movement. There are so many ways to move and exercise, all have their virtues. Some are good for just about everyone and some might not be suitable for the average person.  The important principle to remember is that movement in all five directions that the body can move is important for balance and stability.  Doing this every day helps keep the body flexible and mobile.  Those five directions of movement are:  forward bending, back bending (even just gentle bending), lateral bending, twisting, and extension (as in “get tall”).  If you can establish a short routine that helps you bend in all directions, and you do this daily, even for just 5 – 10 minutes, you will experience much greater stability, flexibility, and overall balance.  A good practice is to undulate through your joint areas:  ankles, knees, hips, pelvis, spine, shoulders, neck, elbows, wrists and fingers.  Just count them down as you move!  

I have a few final words of wisdom given by Dr. John Doulliard in his book Mind, Body, Sport, which I highly recommend for summer reading.  Move to help your body feel good, flexible, and balanced.  The more you move in a healthy way, the more your tissues will stay pliable and ready for action.  “Exercise should not be a physically painful experience (there is no gain in pain). When you think about exercise, you should use it to:

1. Rejuvenate the body and cultivate the mind
2. Remove Stress
3. Develop mind-body coordination

Next Month I’ll talk about the Energetic Layer of Health. 

Article by:  

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.