What Is Deep Health? Everything You Should Know

What Is Deep Health? Everything You Should Know : Scientists are starting to understand that health extends well beyond the state of one’s body. Our emotions, relationships, goal attainment, and mental state all play a foundational role in our overall health.

Deep health — sometimes referred to as whole-person development — is the idea that people must find balance in the various facets of their lives to be truly healthy. Here are the various categories of deep health and how to address each one.

Physical Health

Physical health encompasses everything to do with the physical body. This aspect of your health could be how successfully you implement exercise routines from Energized Lifestyle and the nutrition habits recommended from a dietician. It refers to the broader aspects of your physical health, including socioeconomic implications, disease management, abilities and so on.

On a daily basis, your physical health could simply reflect how you feel. Are you energetic or tired? Do you feel vibrant or dull? Physical health tends to be the primary focus in all things health and wellness, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Emotional Health

Your emotional health pertains to how you feel and process emotions. This aspect of deep health often goes hand-in-hand with emotional intelligence. It dives into what you’re feeling and why, but also how you identify and handle those feelings.

For example, someone with strong emotional health knows they’re feeling angry and can take some space to calm down before engaging in a conversation. Those with poor emotional health feel overwhelmed by that anger and lash out, not knowing why they react the way they do.

Relational Health

Relational health pertains to interpersonal relationships, whether with family members, a romantic partner, co-workers, or friends. Relational health can also relate to how you view yourself in the context of other people. Do you feel connected or isolated? Do you feel like you can be authentic, or do you feel the need to wear a mask?

Relational health often gets overlooked in the health and wellness industry. The focus of this industry tends to be on self-care and self-improvement. While taking care of oneself is important, humans thrive on connections with one another. A bad relationship can have devastating effects on one’s emotional and physical health, and vice versa.

Environmental Health

The term environmental health can be confusing for newcomers to the idea of deep health or whole-person development. Your environmental health stems from knowing whether your surroundings support your growth and goals. These surroundings could be physical or pertain to the people and situations you put yourself in.

For example, someone who has a goal of addressing their health by creating healthy eating habits and improving their sleep needs to create an environment that makes it possible. On a basic level, this effort could include removing junk food from their house and making exercise more accessible. On a deeper level, it might mean rethinking friendships with those who don’t support those goals.

Mental Health

The World Health Organization said it perfectly: without mental health, there is no true physical health. While we tend to associate the term mental health with a manifestation of emotional health, it also pertains to cognition and focus. In other words, what are you doing to fuel your mind and keep it functional throughout your life? Continued learning and development are essential for long-term cognition and mental health in the broader sense.

Existential Health

Finally, existential health (or spiritual health) is the sense of belonging and purpose in the world. It’s the driving force behind our motivations and our “why” for moving forward. In many ways, existential health can be the most challenging to address.

Assessing Your Deep Health

Once you have a basic understanding of deep health, you can identify where the gaps fall in your bigger picture. Take some time to reflect and understand which aspects of your overall health feel well-addressed and which parts need more work. The answers may surprise you.