Aiming for wholeness may help us achieve that sense of fulfillment we can’t get from outside factors.
According to writer, editor, and podcast host Elise Loehnen, components of the wellness industry—from practices borrowed from all over the world to even something as essential as water—have been increasingly commoditized and commercialized.
It’s now a $4.4 trillion global industry and expected to reach $7 trillion by 2025. Something that was supposed to be healing for everyone is becoming more and more inaccessible.
These days, people are tracking what they eat, how many steps they take, how they sleep, just to name a few. In her essay for Oprah Daily, Loehnen claims that “Besides holding ourselves to unreasonable standards of perfection, this feels like a disservice to the body’s manifold complexity and intelligence.”
For her, wholeness and peace is found through an inner knowing, a sense of feeling in integrity, of feeling complete. Here are some ways thought leaders have embraced wholeness to get in touch with their truest selves.
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Forget perfection
Katherine Morgan Schafler, a New York-based psychotherapist, says that accepting yourself as a whole human being, flaws and all, helps with achieving a sense of wholeness.
“I try to remember that joy, love, dignity, connection, and freedom—these are birthrights, not prizes. I deserve them now, this very second. Not because I’m performing well, but because I am alive,” she says.
Seek purpose
Having a chosen purpose gives us clarity when facing stressful problems and decisions, says Andre Sólo, co-author of Sensitive and co-founder of SensitiveRefuge.com.
“If something does align with your purpose: Do it. Fight for it. Get up early for it. Because putting energy into your purpose gives you the opposite of stress. It gives you wholeness.”
Enjoy the journey
“Wholeness is fluid, seasonal, and cyclical, and diluting it to a to-do list doesn’t do it justice,” says Kaitlin Curtice, essayist, poet, public speaker, and author of Native.
Wholeness is something you embrace throughout your whole life and finding out what it’s asking of you in the moment is more important than checking off another item on your to-do list.
Nourish yourself in every way
Finding wholeness means nourishing your whole being—mind, body, and spirit. Maya Feller, founder of Maya Feller Nutrition in Brooklyn and author of Eating from Our Roots talks about embracing the culture behind our food as well as welcoming intentional rest.
This can mean “Spending time in green spaces, taking time away from screens, and carving out space for pleasurable movement, breath, and enjoying meals,” Feller says.
“I’ve found that time in nature is particularly restorative, and a reminder that we are part of a larger universe.”
Banner photo via Pexels by Jackson David.
