DR. SNEHAL DESHPANDE is a Developmental Therapist and Certified Life Coach from Mumbai. She leads SNEH, an institution dedicated to improving people’s quality of life, and actively drives the Heartfulness CME initiative for healthcare professionals across India. Here, she shares some tips on what we can do to keep ourselves healthy.
What does health and wellness mean?
According to the UN, health is a complete state of being –physical, mental, emotional, social, occupational, and spiritual well-being. And health is a fundamental right of every human being.
For me, wellness is a state of oneness that you can feel; a feeling of joy whenever you’re doing something. My definition of wellness is to give yourself to the task at hand completely, with joy and an awareness of what’s happening.
What are the different aspects of oneness?
My career centers around children. Where I live, I will often see a little child playing with a toy, or outside on the grass, or talking with their mother. They are simply one with what they are doing. They are not concerned with anything else in the world. It’s so natural.
We are all endowed with that natural state, but we disturb the cycle by our own doings. Wellness is the journey of returning back to that state of naturalness, the state of ease; from doing things because the world expects them of us, to doing them with the heart.
We have gone against nature and built our own little worlds. We have created mini universes within, when we actually have a macro universal complete nature. And it has its own rhythm. Our body cells vibrate at the natural frequency of the vibrations of the universe, but we have moved away from that original vibration or state of existence.
How to choose a lifestyle of oneness?
First, find moments to “unplug” yourself.
Like our mobiles, we run out of battery and need to recharge. We think our batteries are never going to run out and go on abusing ourselves. We must find a way to take care of our body and our inner self – because that battery is within us. We don’t need to look for it elsewhere. We can derive so much energy from that.
To keep naturalness alive, it helps to be very soft and subtle from within, so that this energy can show itself in our life. Instead, we are so caught up that we are “holding on” in order not to feel lost.
Second, let go and feel one with nature.
It’s fun to let go and see what happens. Letting go is very important. It is something that kids do. They may like a toy, but the moment they see something else they forget about it. They don’t hang on to things.
Third, make time for human connection.
Across the globe, loneliness is becoming a big problem. It’s because we don’t connect honestly. We need to communicate not because of some artificial need to connect, but because there is a need to be together.
We must find a way to take care of
our body and our inner self – because
that battery is within us.
Dr. Snehal Deshpande
