What if our society generally has a backward idea of wellness, which is why many people have many problems? When did being healthy become such a task? One that has become more vague than ever. Have you ever wondered if thereโs a better approach to health and wellbeing, one that makes sense?
Well, there is, and what youโre going to learn in this article will change the way you look at wellness in general.
Because we donโt just have a single body, we have four of them. Even though theyโre all interconnected under the human umbrella, they serve as separate functioning dimensions of your life experience.
The four-body approach refers to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of your being. This is a more holistic view of well-being, which suggests that you are an ecosystem that thrives when youโre balanced across all dimensions of experience.
Each body serves a different purpose and is responsible for a different dimension of your life experience. To live your best life, you need to find balance with your four bodies.
Letโs look more into each of these bodies and how you can find equilibrium among them.
What Is the Four Bodies Approach?
Western healthcare has always been a solution-oriented approach.
You have a symptom, you treat it. For the most part, this fix-it approach has gotten the job done, but there is clearly more to wellness than what meets the eye.
The truth is that weโre only looking at a fraction of wellness and trying to slot the whole thing into a specific category. But this isnโt how you become healthy. To get a full grasp on wellness as a whole, you need to understand how different parts of you all factor in to create a whole.
Look at wellness as a balanced ecosystem. Nothing that happens to you is an isolated occurrence. Each body is thoroughly interconnected with the others, and they all influence one another to some degree.
Just trying to fix a single body doesnโt cut it anymore. If you just look at your emotional issues but neglect the spiritual side, these issues will just keep coming back up. If you only try to fix your exterior (being your life situation), letโs just say thereโs a reason why the exterior isnโt looking so shiny.
As with the approach of personal ecosystems, the four-bodies approach is a holistic way to look at wellness as a whole. Because youโre not just your body, your mind, or your emotions. Youโre a conglomerate of different territories which all have their own identities.
Physical Body: The Material Body
Your physical body represents the external dimension of your life experience. This refers to your body itself, your physiology, your physical health, and your sensory relationship with the world around you and includes:
- The physical self
- Your physical health
- External reality
Look at your physical body as a vessel for consciousness, itโs like the container of your life experience. Itโs through this vessel that you interact with your surroundings, and in turn, these interactions influence your experiences. Your commute will be very different if youโre driving a beautiful, polished Lamborghini compared to an old decrepit lemon.
Whether itโs your physique, or your muscle, skeletal, blood, or organ health, your physical body is a reflection of your other bodies. Our society emphasizes physical health via exercise, eating healthy, and self-care, but tends to overprioritize your physical health concerning the other bodies. Regardless, itโs important to have a healthy body and relationship with the physical world to be a fully functional, and thriving person.
Arguably, your physical health is the easiest to take care of, as thereโs a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Signs of poor physical health are generally visible, and you can feel a tangible difference between a body in decay to a body in optimal health.
Polarity: Yang (Masculine)
The physical body is considered a masculine constituent of your wellness. This is because it’s systemic, where there is a clear cause-and-effect relationship. Your body operates in a way that is calculated, logical, and routine, and this is the best way to take care of it.
Element: Earth (Grounding)
The physical body is associated with the Earth element due to its physical nature. As the physical body must be grounded within reality to flourish (that is to give it the correct nutrients and expose it to the right conditions for it to thrive), there is an innate connection with Mother Earth, which provides for it and what it’s energetically connected to. Keeping your intake as pure as possible and as direct from the source is a good approach to managing your physical body.
Poor Health of the Physical Body
Your physical body being in a poor state is like the vehicle of your consciousness breaking down. There will be physical issues that prevent you from being at full vitality and capability. When thereโs an issue with your physical body, it will manifest as a malfunction in some form. This is most commonly seen as illness, disease, or abnormalities.
Here are some signs of your physical body being in poor health:
- General lethargy and lack of vitality
- Discomfort or pain in your body
- Skin conditions, rashes, and abnormalities
- High susceptibility to illness and disease
- Rapid aging and signs of wear
- Dysfunctions with organs
- Deterioration of brain health
- Obesity or malnourishment
- You become more prone to injuries
- Your recovery process becomes less effective
- Low stamina
- Weakness and a brittle body
Optimal Health of the Physical Body
When your physical body is at its optimal health, you feel robust. All parts of your body are functioning as they should. You feel clean, healthy, and energized. Your vehicle is thriving because youโre giving it the treatment it needs.
Here are some signs of your physical body being in good health.
- High vitality and energy levels
- Physical strength and stamina
- You’re free from bodily pain or dysfunctions
- You are healthy and free from illness
- Everything is functioning at high performance
- Good organ health
- You are fit and capable
- Your bone health is good
- High stamina
- Strong sexual health and function
- You have a quick recovery from injuries and sickness
Restoring the Physical Body to Optimal Health
To restore your physical body to optimal health (and to maintain it), you need to incorporate practices into your daily routine that enhance your physical health. Having a healthy physical body is an endurance game. You canโt expect to be operating at your best when you have a lifestyle that doesnโt accommodate it.
This means that you need to adjust your lifestyle in a way that nourishes your physical health. First and foremost, you need to practice self-care by getting exercise, eating healthy, and taking care of your body. If youโre treating your body poorly by sleeping little, getting no exercise, and eating lots of junk, of course, your body is going to reflect the treatment youโre giving it. If you drink a lot of alcohol or smoke, this is going to be harmful to it too.
Therefore, try to reduce how much junk food, sugar, and anything else that you consume that is harmful to your body. Make sure it has all the vitamins and minerals it needs. Get plenty of sun and fresh air, and give your body some love and care, like a massage now and then. Groom it, stop biting your nails, and take care of your hair. Your body will respond to the love it is given, so if you give it a lot of love by nourishing it, it will reward you with vitality and performance.
After all, balance is key. You donโt need to be extremely strict like some people are, but you do need to actively take care of your physical body and incorporate those practices into your daily routine.
The Mental Body: The Realm of the Mind
The mental body refers to the realm of the mind. This body involves intellectual properties of yourself, including your thoughts, belief systems, andย perceptions of oneself and reality. This body involves:
- The mind
- Mental health
- The internal reality
Look at the mental body as the toolset required to navigate reality. This is how you organize yourself, plan, and, of course, survive. Your mental body has a big influence over your well-being, as the way you think leads to your actions, attitudes, and decisions.
Your belief systems create the foundation for how you choose to live your life. Your knowledge and intelligence determine how you go about certain things in life, how you process information, and what the results of those processes are.
Being in the realm of mind, your mental body also encompasses things like your identity, personality, traits, and characteristics. Itโs all the little pieces that make you who you currently are, and all those little pieces are malleable.
The mental body is also responsible for how you interpret situations and how you view yourself too. If you have a poor image of yourself where you battle withย limiting belief systemsย such as self-doubt, or you foster ways of looking at life that donโt serve your happiness, this advertently affects your well-being and sense of happiness.
Polarity: Yang (Masculine)
The mental body is masculine. As your mind is responsible for navigating yourself within reality, thinking, planning, acting, behaving, and doing, it’s a driving part of yourself that has an outward energy: structure. This is due to the analytical, structured, logical, and rational nature of the mind, which is very well attuned to masculine energy.
Element: Fire (Drive)
The mental body corresponds with the element of fire. As fire represents movement, drive, and power, the mental body is responsible for driving your life and creating it into something useful. It’s the sense of reason and doing. It’s the part of you that organizes your life and lays the road that your body drives on.
Poor Health of the Mental Body
When the mental body is in poor health, it creates problems with your mental domain. On the more mild side, this can create issues such as mental cloudiness, poor judgment, inefficient thinking, and limiting belief systems.
These problems affect your well-being by causing a lack of efficiency, clarity, or organization in your life.
On the more severe side, a dysfunctional mental body can lead to problems such as personality disorders and mental illness. People who have severe issues with their mental bodies may develop behavioral patterns such as narcissism, OCD, or paranoia. You may be egocentric and have a warped sense of self or a distorted position of authority, importance, or power.
As your mental body also affects your social life, a poor mental body can lead to excessive shyness and insecurity caused by beliefs of unworthiness.
Here are some signs of your mental body in poor health:
- Clouded mind and inability to think straight
- Incessant thinking and overwhelm
- Excessive stress, worry, or anxiety
- Identity disorders such as bulimia
- Insecurities and issues with oneself
- Personality disorders and neurosis
- You have harmful or limiting belief systems
- You have undesirable personality traits and characteristics
- Mental illness in its various forms
- Poor work ethic or inefficiency in work
- Forgetfulness and short memory span
Optimal Health of the Mental Body
A healthy mental body means that your thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions serve you and help you achieve your full potential in life. Having a healthy mental body is a big step in wellness, as your beliefs form the reality that you are living.
When itโs functioning at its best, the mental body facilitates the ability to solve problems efficiently. It provides reason and allows you to act from a place of composure and understanding without bias or discrimination. It also facilitates effective communication, concise thinking, and the ability to comprehend a broader scope of information and ideas.
Having a healthy mental body also means that you generally have a good relationship with people. You donโt foster the limiting belief systems that cause insecurities but rather healthy belief systems that promote confidence, charisma, positive traits, and characteristics that help you navigate the world of people.
Here are some signs of your mental body in optimal health:
- You feel focused and clear-headed
- You are proactive at problem-solving
- Strong comprehension and understanding of ideas
- You’re efficient at planning and organizing
- Desirable personality traits such as assertion
- Confidence and self-esteem
- Your perceptions of yourself and reality serve your growth
- Effective and healthy communication
- Strong work ethic and efficient working
- You’re rational about what needs to be done
- Good short-term and long-term memory
Restoring the Mental Body to Optimal Health
To restore your mental body to optimal health, you need to work on your mindsets and belief systems. Luckily, everything that forms the way you think and behave is malleable as itโs a property of the mind, meaning that with some work, you can completely change how you identify with the world, and create mental systems that drive your growth and potential.
Restoring your mental body starts by reinforcing better ways of looking at yourself and your reality. You want to cultivate thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions that benefit you and other people. Start by identifying the different mental systems that arenโt serving your happiness, and identify better systems and beliefs that do. Continuously reinforce those beliefs and make a conscious effort to change the way you think.
Stretch your mind by pushing yourself to think in different ways. Have interesting conversations with people, and observe different behavioral traits people have that are helpful. Utilize the full capabilities of your mind by learning, studying, and researching. Most importantly, strive to create change in your life by creating a stronger foundation to plan, organize, think, and perceive.
You also need to identify theย negative patternsย in your life and make a conscious effort to prevent yourself from slipping into them. For example, if you identify a pattern where you shy away from intimacy or perhapsย get triggered in certain situations, be aware of it and take healthier steps to work on those perceptions.
The Emotional Body: The Realm of Feeling
The emotional body refers to the realm of emotion. When it comes to your emotional body, your state of wellness is identified by how you feel. The emotional body involves:
- Your emotions
- Emotional health
- Feeling
If you carry a lot of emotional pain in the form of trauma, resentment, guilt, and anger, you feel terrible. When you feel terrible, it impacts your equanimity, sense of contentment, enthusiasm, motivation, and morale.
Look at your emotional body as your internal compass. It tells you what feels good and what feels bad. When you follow this compass, it leads you in a direction that facilitates healing, growth, and happiness. If you ignore this compass, it leads you astray, where youโll battle emotional pain,ย emotional baggage, and undesirable feelings.
How you react to and feel about different situations in your life is also tied to the emotional body. Whether you feel like life is generally unfair or whether you have a lot of regret about things that happened in your past are signs that your emotional body is out of balance.
Experiencing emotional pain is a part of life. This is how we learn and grow as people. If a friend turns their back on you, youโre going to feel betrayed. But if youโre swimming in it where you constantly feel like crap, then there is something that needs to be healed within your emotional body.
Polarity: Yin (Feminine)
The emotional body is feminine as it is deeply connected with feminine values and characteristics. feeling, intuition, and connection with self are all elements of the divine feminine. This means that the emotional body is at its best when you navigate it with feminine principles such as empathy, nonresistance, and feeling.
Element: Water (Flow)
The emotional body is represented by the water element. As water is about flow, creativity, and expression, emotions are synonymous. Your emotional body is functioning at its best when it flows without resistance, that is to experience all the emotions and sensations without creating a forcing current or preventing the expression of self.
Poor Health of the Emotional Body
When the emotional body is in poor health, it translates to a lack of joy in your life. It means that you are not healed, and this has a huge impact on your well-being, and ability to live your best life.
Youโre likely to experience reoccurring painful emotions in the form of resentment, guilt, shame, hatred, and so forth. These stagnant emotions are often the residue of old traumas that have not been successfully healed. This emotional pain can lead to self-destructive behavior, self-harm, and self-sabotage because you have a mound of trauma getting in the way of your sense of inner peace.
When your emotional body is unhealthy, you may find that you have lots of triggers. You may lash out at people or find that you have disproportionate reactions to certain situations. Certain things may cause you to feel painful emotions, and those painful emotions tend to linger for a long time. You likely also have poor ways of managing your emotions, which lead toย projection, blame, and escapism.
If your emotional body is unhealthy, you may have a disintegrated sense of self. That means youโre wearing a mask, and youโre not authentic to who you are (or what youโre feeling). You also struggle to express yourself freely.
Here are some signs that your emotional body is in poor health:
- Unresolved trauma and deep-rooted emotional issues
- A lack of emotional intelligence
- Lack of empathy and understanding
- Inability to feel love and gratitude
- Emotional blockages such as the inability to get into your heart space
- Emotional instability and dramatic mood swings
- Emotional pain in the form of reoccurring resentment, anger, guilt, etc.
- Depression and feelings of hopelessness
- Inability to fully express yourself
- You express yourself in an unhealthy way
- You have ineffective coping mechanisms
Optimal Health of the Emotional Body
If your emotional body is in optimal health, you feel good internally. This means that your expression of self is joyful, where you mostly feel positive emotions such as gratitude, compassion, and hope. You have good emotional intelligence and know how to manage your emotional body for clarity, healing, and learning.
Being emotionally healthy means that you are generally healed. You donโt carry around pain from the past, and you embrace tomorrow with a clean slate. Having a healthy emotional body means that your emotions are in balance and that youโre centered within yourself. Situations may cause you to feel pain, but you will quickly heal from that pain.
By having a healthy emotional body you areย centered within your heart space. This means that you listen to your heart and the energies that come from the heart. You tap into the higher self instead of wasting your time away with the egoic self.
Here are some signs that your emotional body is healthy:
- You have emotional intelligence
- You are generally healed
- Feeling at peace and calmness
- You express yourself fully
- Emotional stability
- Honesty and transparency
- You are transparent and honest
- You are in alignment with your heart space
- Inner equanimity
How to Restore the Emotional Body
Restoring your emotional body simmers down to healing. This means that you need to work on clearing trauma and any feelings that no longer serve you. The best way to heal your emotional body is by listening to it. Sit with your emotions and feel into them rather than pushing them away or deferring them. Make a habit of being in alignment with your emotions, and your emotional body will recover.
Work on your emotional intelligence and make sure that you listen to your bodyโs signals. Do the inner work by constantly working on yourself to become a better, happier, and healthier person. Learn how to embody behaviors and attitudes that make you feel better about yourself, and facilitate a happier life experience.
Shadow workย is an important component of emotional health and balance. This is the process of integrating the abandoned parts of yourself, which is required for proper integration and healing.
Spiritual Body: The Realm of Consciousness
The spiritual body refers to the realm of the spirit. This aspect of the 4 bodies is often interpreted as the soul or spirit, and itโs the energetic body that connects you with higher planes of existence. The spiritual body involves:
- The soul
- The astral realm
- The spiritual dimension
Your spiritual body can be seen as the driver of your vehicle. This is your consciousness, not the body, not the mind, and not your emotions. Itโs the spiritual constituent of your being that is connected to the deepest levels of reality. In essence, your spiritual body is the true you beyond all the layers of self that exist within this realm of experience.
Your spiritual body is your sense of meaning in this world. You can create, to manifest, your drive and a deeper meaning in your life that exceeds the physical body, the mental body, or the emotional body. The spiritual body is your anchor to something deeper inside yourself thatย connects you to all consciousness.
In todayโs world, most peopleโs spiritual bodies are in poor health because modern society generally doesnโt acknowledge the existence of the spiritual body. This is responsible for the general lack of a higher meaning to our social structure, however, it is making a resurgence.
Polarity: Yin (Feminine)
Your spiritual body, and spirituality in general is feminine as the pursuit for meaning is a subjective, organic process without structure or rules. Spirituality is something that must be cultivated via nontangible means such as intuition, nonresistance, and feeling, which is why it’s feminine in nature.
Element: Wind (Wisdom)
The spiritual body is associated with the element of wind. As wind is the element of the elders that represents wisdom, your connection to spirituality orbits a deeper wisdom within you that exceeds the realm of form.
Poor Health of the Spiritual Body
Your spiritual body in poor health means that youโre disconnected from it and that youโre disconnected from the source of creation (or god). Being disconnected from the source causes a state of unconsciousness in a lack of a deeper awareness of self. When it comes to wellness, the spiritual body is the spark in you. It is the very reason to not just live, but thrive, change the world, and help others out.
Having an unhealthy spiritual body is like living as a husk with no meaning. You just grind through life with superficial desires, but there is no substance. There is no reason. You may find yourself getting exhausted or that something is missing in your life, but youโre not sure what. You may feel empty inside, despite how much you try to fill that hole.
When people are disconnected from their spiritual bodies, they tend to become increasingly materialistic. Their values become warped. Disconnecting from your spiritual body results in a contraction of consciousness. This means that your scope of awareness reduces, and brings you into a state of spiritual unconsciousness.
Here are some signs that you are not connected to your spiritual body:
- Lack of self-awareness
- General unconsciousness
- You are governed by your programs
- No spiritual or existential beliefs
- You lack a sense of meaning in life
- You have an exacerbated fear of death or mortality
- Life seems sense, contracted, and simple
Optimal Health of the Spiritual Body
Spirituality nourishes you. When you are connected to your spiritual body, you have a more complete sense of wellness as it fills a hole inside you that canโt be filled any other way. You are at service, and you feel the most fulfilled being at service.
Spirituality is your cord into other dimensions of experience. When this connection is strong, you tap into your soul nature more. This means that you start having more spiritual experiences and insights, and can get deeper into your spiritual practices. A very strong spiritual body may facilitate the development of psychic abilities or spiritual gifts.
When you are connected to your spiritual body, you have a higher awareness about life and yourself. You recognize that you are not your body, and a deeper connection with spirit allows you to embody the higher self rather than the egoic self.
A strong spiritual body creates space for better ways of looking at reality and your place in it. It provides better philosophies to live by, which make you feel fulfilled, happy, and at peace with your reality.
Here are some signs that you are connected to your spiritual body:
- You have a deeper sense of awareness
- You see beyond your conditioning
- You have a connection to the higher self
- You have a higher perspective on life
- You feel connected with all things
- You live by values
- You live with morality
- You regularly have deep insights and revelations
- You have a sense of meaning
- It facilitates self-actualization and growth
- Life seems limitless, expansive, and incomprehensible
How to Restore the Spiritual Body
To restore your spiritual body, you need to nourish it. This creates a stronger connection between your physical body and the soul inhabiting it. Itโs important to understand that you are more than your body. You are an infinite consciousness that is connected to all things in this universe and beyond. When you have that seed of curiosity about what you are and life after death, make sure you water that seed and encourage it to grow!
Walk your path of discovery to try and find a deeper sense of meaning within your life. Life is an individual journey and if you do the same things without exploring your reality, youโre not going to be fulfilled. Pursue a journey of personal and spiritual growth, and see what dimensions of your life experience unfold.
Pursue spiritual wisdom and practice spirituality. Everyone resonates with different spiritual practices, whether itโs meditation, yoga, fasting, prayer, worship, or whatever makes you feel connected to a deeper part of yourself. I encourage you to explore different cultural modalities and ancestral wisdom, and strive for understanding.
Applying the Four Bodies Approach to Everyday Life
The current model of wellness just doesn’t cut it considering the plague of mental health crises, physical deterioration, and spiritual detachment ripe in society.
It has become more apparent than ever that our ‘fix it’ model is not serving us. This is why the 4 bodies approach to wellness is slowly replacing the conventional model, as it views our body as an interconnected whole with four primary faces.
In my observations, most people neglect their spiritual bodies first and foremost and overemphasize the wellness of the physical body (the manifestation). However, despite so many people’s attempts to maintain optimal health of the physical body, a huge number of people see rampant illness, and regardless of how well they take care of their physical health, illness emerges.
This is because the spiritual body is neglected. The emotional body doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, and the mental body remains a challenge to understand and identify.
Ultimately, this is why I recommend that you revolutionize your approach to wellness by adopting the 4 bodies approach and applying it to your own everyday life. This is to nourish all facets of being rather than solely the material and treat wellness as an interconnected ecosystem.
This approach to wellness will help you identify the aspects of your wellness you’re neglecting and work towards creating equilibrium and balance, which ultimately results in wellness.