Holistic Wellness - The Elixir to Good Health And 10 Ways To Attain It

With the advancement of health technology and transformed global wellness scenarios, the world is also adopting new wellness practices. And holistic healing is one redefined way to achieve your health goals.

Let's say you are in physical pain; there is a good chance that you are affected emotionally at work. Holistic wellness aims to transform individual health and wellness conditions with alternative solutions. Thus, making your overall wellness journey easier.

Definition: Holistic wellness is a state of well-being that confines all aspects of a person's life, including physical, mental, emotional, and social health. It involves a comprehensive approach to health and well-being, considering the whole person rather than just specific conditions.

Holistic Wellness For Employees

Don't let your mind bully your body.
– Unknown

Wellness is a multifaceted concept associated with good health and well-being. And good health implies an equilibrium of the body, mind, and spirit.

Holistic wellness recognizes that everyone is unique and requires personalized care to achieve optimal health. It underlines the significance of prevention and self-care, promoting healthy lifestyle habits and behaviors that support overall well-being.

Holistic wellness aims to balance your mind, body, and spirit. It helps you lead a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

The 21st century is the time to rethink health and wellness by infusing holistic ideas into your practice. Everyday personal and professional stress significantly contributes to deteriorating physical and mental health.

Therefore, overcoming it is crucial to reach an optimal level of well-being. Employees must prioritize their holistic wellness for that. Mainly improve their lifestyle, spiritual well-being, mental well-being, and working environment.

Related: Everything About The 9 Dimensions Of Wellness At Work

Understanding Its Importance At The Workplace

Holistic wellness is crucial for employees to improve their well-being, job performance, and satisfaction and create a more positive work environment. It has multiple benefits, including:

1. Enhanced productivity

Employees who are physically and mentally healthy are more productive than those who are not. They have more energy and motivation and less absenteeism and presenteeism.

2. Reduced healthcare costs

Healthy employees are less likely to require medical attention. It reduces healthcare costs for both employees and employers.

3. Increased job satisfaction

Employees who feel their employer cares about their well-being are likelier to be more satisfied with their job.

4. Lower stress levels

When employees are provided with tools and resources to manage their stress, they can better cope with the demands of their job. And are less likely to experience burnout.

5. Enhanced work-life balance

Holistic wellness programs can help employees achieve a better work-life balance. It offers resources and support for personal and family needs.

6. Improved teamwork and collaboration

Employees who feel healthy are likelier to engage more at work. And collaborate on projects, leading to increased productivity and better outcomes.

5 Components Of Holistic Health

The underlying notion of holistic health is broader than we think. It's not just treating the sick but keeping one's soul, mind, and body balanced.

Here are the 5 components of holistic health that you should know;

1. Physical Health

Physical health can be defined as the body's optimal functioning at all levels. Fitness means the body's ability to adapt to the changing external environment, adjust to biological processes, balance the body's functioning, social adaptability, or absence of any disease.

It consists of the following components:

• Doing physical activity
• Focusing on nutrition and diet
• Avoiding alcohol and drugs
• Medical self-care
• Proper rest and sleep

Also Listen: How Self-Care Collective Wellness Is Part Of Burnout Relief?

2. Emotional Health

Maintaining sound mental health has become a challenge in today's world. Even at the workplace, emotional health has to contribute to better productivity, performance, and resilience. So, taking care of your emotional health is crucial.

According to the National Center for Emotional Wellness, the term refers to an awareness, understanding, and acceptance of emotions and managing effectively through change and challenges.

Cultivating positive emotions is essential to avoid negative ones that can lead to depression and mental and behavioral challenges. Therefore, prioritizing emotional health is important in the long run to attain holistic wellness.

Read: 15 Emotional Wellness Activities to Practice in the Workplace

3. Social Health

Social wellness is about nurturing healthy and supportive relationships. It helps foster a pragmatic connection with people at home, work, or outside. Building healthy relationships are crucial to maintaining a better social life.

Here are a few tips to enhance your social health at the workplace;

• Be assertive and more accepting of others
• Understand constructive criticism
• Improve your listening skills
• Work on your body language
• Inculcate positive thinking
• Show respect and be patient
• Be more empathetic
• Avoid gossiping
• Be confident
• Avoid using your phone while talking

Listen to: Measuring Your Emotional Intelligence At Work by Brenda Lee

4. Spiritual Health

Spiritual health knows about the meaning and purpose of life. And understanding the actions and principles of life along with values, beliefs, and morals. Spiritual wellness is about developing healthy relationships with oneself and others surrounding nature.

Spiritual wellness is important for the growth of one's body and mind. Cultivating mindfulness is one way to keep mental health on track, perform best at work, or enhance the company culture.

Read: Vibrational Energy and 9 Reasons To Encourage For Your Workplace Wellness

5. Mental Health

Living in good health, wholeness, and vitality are pivotal to preventing illness from harming your body balance.

As we all know, stress is a major cause of mental health conditions in the workplace. Physical and mental health is inextricably connected. Therefore both must be equally prioritized to lead a healthy and happy life. And, to cure stress, anxiety, depression, etc., and balance life, you can adapt to the holistic practice of wellness.

Read: 105 Mindfulness Quotes For Employee Health And Wellness

Ways To Achieve Holistic Wellness

The precepts of wellness are both preventive and holistic. The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness as "activeness in physical and mental activities, choices, and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic well-being."

As we work toward excellent health and well-being, wellness is an active pursuit associated with intentions, choices, and actions. It extends beyond physical health and incorporates many different dimensions to life to work in harmony.

Here are 10 excellent ways we suggest attaining holistic wellness;

1. Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness Meditation is a relaxation technique widely practiced in eastern and western countries. Mindfulness originates from Buddhism's word 'sati,' which implies conscious attention and calmness.

There are different mindfulness exercises that you can perform from anywhere, like; mindful walking, reading, listening, etc. It has become essential to cope with modern-day stress due to work or health issues.

It is performed explicitly to gain control over one's mind and body most of the time. And to obtain calmness to lead a well-balanced personal and professional life.

2. Active Lifestyle

According to WHO, 80% of the world's adolescent population is insufficiently physically active. Physical activity refers to movements of the body, including getting to and from places during leisure time. As part of a person's work, both moderate and vigorous physical activity contributes to good health.

Physical inactivity can cause severe health problems. Also, it can lead to mental and behavioral conditions affecting work-life balance. Doing 30 minutes of regular exercise will enhance your quality of life by reducing the risk of falling sick.

You can start by doing yoga or walking regularly. Track your daily activity and increase it gradually. Also, you can switch to walking or cycling instead of using the car to get to the office.

3. Switch To A Healthy Diet

A healthy diet is vital for nutrition, good health, and well-being. According to WHO, a good diet protects one against diseases like cardiovascular, diabetes, cancer, etc. And eating organic foods and consuming less salt, sugars, and saturated and trans-fats can contribute to overall health and goodness in general.

Here are the benefits of maintaining a healthy diet;

• To prevent diseases and infections. Add adequate vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients to your diet.
• Help you control your weight.
• Improve mental health. Getting the right mix of nutrients can help to ease symptoms of depression and anxiety.
• Help in growth. It is important to receive the right nutrients so that cells are built and maintained and the body grows and develops.
• A healthy balanced diet also improves your skin and hair.

You can switch to sattvic diet.

4. Surround Yourself With Positivity

The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.
– Winston Churchill

Positive thinking is crucial to retain productivity and proficiency at work. An optimistic mindset can achieve the impossible and help you cross every obstacle in life. Therefore, focusing on the good in life will make you healthier, less stressed, and happy.

Besides this, negative thinking or emotions can harm the mind and body. It can affect your workplace resilience, wellness, and emotional agility. Staying positive and motivated is essential to doing good in life.

To cultivate positive thoughts, encourage your positive emotions. The mind impacts the body, and keeping it productive is ideal for positive emotional development.

Also Listen: Embracing Change Mindset by Cyriel Kortleven

5. Cultivate Emotional Agility

It is often said that emotion and feelings have no place in the workplace. Leaders must be apathetic and confident enough to overshadow negative feelings. But is that so?

According to Harvard psychologist Susan David, this is impractical and unhealthy. Identifying and understanding some human emotions is more important than suppressing them. Suppression can lead them to feelings of ignorance and give rise to feeling guilty about it, causing stress. So, to avoid outbursts and such situations, it is better to encourage the workforce to cultivate emotional agility.

Emotional agility will generate employee happiness and productivity and fuel their performance at the workplace. Agile workplaces are built with agile employees.

Also Listen: Revisiting the importance of Health and Wellbeing

6. Practice Gratitude

Gratefulness has a beneficial impact on the mind. It boosts our morale, cognitive ability, and social and psychological health while promoting the goodwill of others. Especially in the workplace, appreciation plays a big role in enhancing employees' moods and well-being.

There are several benefits of gratitude; it boosts oxytocin and can make you feel at ease by eliminating them. It also can affect your mental, behavioral health, and emotional well-being.

Therefore, recognize and appreciate those who have been there for you even in the toughest times. It will help retain a positive culture and environment with a holistic approach.

7. Communication Is The Key

Communication is the process of exchanging feelings, thoughts, experiences, ideas, suggestions, feedback, etc. Some people struggle with communication problems. But as the saying goes, communication is the key; individuals must emphasize it for overall well-being.

Effective communication fosters trust, offers clarity and direction, encourages teamwork, and strengthens employees' bonds at the workplace. It contributes to healthy social and psychological health, ensuring the well-being of individuals.

Enhancing your communication skills can help you develop and maintain confident relationships at the workplace. Connection and communication play a crucial role in maintaining holistic health.

8. Don't Become A Victim Of Substance Abuse

Addictive substances like tobacco, drugs, or alcohol can negatively impact the mind and body. Chronic drug use can lead to cardiovascular, kidney, and liver disease. It can adversely affect a person's relationships at home or work life.

It leaves behind long-term health effects such as;

• Depression
• Stress and anxiety
• Panic disorders
• Anger management issues
• Paranoia
• Hallucinations

Read: Substance Abuse in The Workplace - An Employee Health Epidemic

9. Ayurvedic Wellness

Wellness does have some ancient roots; Ayurveda is one of them. As one of the oldest therapies, Ayurveda ensures a healthy lifestyle and that the body, mind, and spirit function harmoniously.

Ayurveda is a healing technique to cure health conditions, cleanse the body, and maintain good spiritual health. Holistic wellness integrates diet and lifestyle into a daily routine, and Ayurveda helps achieve one. Considering the effects of modern life complexities and lifestyle choices, one can always consider Ayurveda an option.

10. Financial Health

Financial health can be defined as an individual's monetary wellness or affair. Good financial health includes;

• Steady income flow
• Rare changes in expenses
• Good returns on investments
• Growing cash balances, etc

We all know that financial stress can be overwhelming. Therefore, having a proper financial plan can reduce a lot of pressure. Moreover, taking care of your financial health is a part of wellness. And keeping track of one's financial wellness is as essential as physical and mental health.

Vantage Fit

Suppose your organization wants to improve its employees' physical and mental health by taking a holistic step. Then, Vantage Fit comprehensive wellness program is the right plan for your long-neglected recurring problems. Besides, it helps build healthy habits among employers and employees to achieve personal and professional success.

Conclusion

Workplaces today must introduce corporate wellness programs and solutions. It will help employees adopt the right attitude to maximize their vitality.

Changing the dynamics of organizational wellness by evolving health-promoting culture will work wonders. Transforming typical workplace culture into a modern but holistic touch will create a healthy work environment with healthy employees.

FAQs

1. What is holistic health, and why is it important for employees?

Holistic health treats the whole person, including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Employees must maintain balance in their lives, manage stress, and improve productivity and performance.

2. What strategies can employers use to promote holistic health and well-being among their employees?

Employers can offer wellness programs, flexible work schedules, and on-site health services. They can create a positive and supportive work environment that encourages healthy behaviors, open communication, and work-life balance.

3. How can employees take responsibility for their holistic health and well-being?

Employees can make lifestyle changes, seek resources and support from their employer, and prioritize work-life balance.

4. What are the benefits of promoting holistic health and well-being in the workplace?

Benefits include reduced stress levels, increased engagement, and productivity, improved job satisfaction, and decreased absenteeism and turnover rates.

5. What role does mental and emotional well-being play in holistic health and well-being?

Mental health and emotional well-being are critical components of holistic health and well-being. Employers can promote mental health by providing access to counseling and creating a supportive work environment. Employees can prioritize mental health by seeking resources, practicing self-care, and setting healthy boundaries.