From the perspective of Integrative Wellness, there are seven key areas of health and well-being. Evidence suggests all of these contribute to overall wellness, affecting both mental and physical health. We can use these categories to quantify our wellness and guide our health goals.
Core Areas of Health & Well-being
The core areas of wellness include:
- Sleep
- Movement
- Nutrition
- Relationships
- Resilience
- Purpose & Meaning
- Environment
| CORE AREA | WHAT IT IS | WHY IT’S IMPORTANT |
| Sleep | Consistent, adequate rest | Impacts all aspects of our mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual selves |
| Movement | Physical activity | Improves overall health and fitness while reducing risks for many chronic diseases |
| Nutrition | Consuming primarily whole, non-processed, nutritious foods | Contributes to longevity and decreases risks for certain diseases |
| Relationships | Respectful, meaningful, supportive connections with others | Promotes longer, healthier, and happier lives |
| Resilience | Stress-protective activities | Combats stress, increases contentment, promotes relaxation, builds coping skills |
| Purpose & Meaning | Values and beliefs we hold about ourselves and our world | Provides sense of self, spirituality, and direction |
| Environment | Internal and external cues from physical surroundings | Affects sense of ease and balance |
An Integrative Approach to Wellness
As the term “integrative” implies, each of the core areas of wellness are related to each other. Although we may talk about them in isolation, our wellness in one area affects our wellness in all other areas. They are interdependent.
For example, when we struggle to sleep well, it often affects our energy to exercise, cravings for junk food, patience with our loved ones, and so on. On the other hand, when we wake feeling rested, we have more energy to workout, avoid stress-induced food cravings, and are less grumpy in our social interactions.
Thus, our overall sense of well-being is a composite of all of these areas working together. Often, traditional western medicine will focus on a few of these key areas of health, mostly diet and exercise. There is good reason for this: there is substantial evidence that a healthy diet and adequate exercise lead to longer, healthier lives.
An integrative approach expands the traditional perspective by taking into account the interaction of all areas of well-being. It’s helpful to look at the whole picture, or the interaction of these core areas, to get a deeper understanding of an individual’s health.
When we aren’t as healthy as we’d like, there is often some level of imbalance within one or more of these categories. It’s helpful to quantify our health in each core area to get better perspective on what’s contributing to our current experience. This insight is foundational for setting new health goals to boost well-being.
Rate Your Wellness
Think of this exercise as taking a 25,000-foot view of your well-being. It’s a big-picture assessment of how you’re currently doing. To get started, simply rate your wellness in each core area. You can print out the graph below or simply sketch it out on paper.
Using a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, how do you measure up? Remember, this is how you would rate yourself, not how someone else would rate you. Don’t worry about how this compares to others. It’s just about you and your well-being.
Identify Your Wellness Focus
Connect the dots for each rating, completing a circle. Consider if your circle of well-being would be a functional wheel. Are there any ratings in particular that are giving you a “flat tire” because they are so low? Can you leverage the areas in which you score the highest to make improvements in other areas?
Another way to evaluate your scores is to categorize them according to your ratings. Use the following parameters:
- Prioritize: The areas with a score of 4 or lower
- Improve: The areas scored 5-7
- Maintain: Areas with a score of 8+
Use both your categories and wheel analysis to consider the most important starting point. There is no right answer. You may want to start with your lowest score because it causes you the most discomfort. Or, you may want to start with another category in which you already have some momentum.
There are no bad decisions here as long as you’re focusing on a core area of health and well-being that’s important to you.
Set Your Wellness Goal
It’s best to keep your initial focus on just one core area of health and wellness. Consider how your ranking in this area impacts the other areas of wellness. If you were to improve this area, how would it change your overall wellness?
Use these insights to guide your goal setting. Set a small, attainable goal that would raise your wellness rating in this core area by one point. Start small and enjoy some early wins to improve the likelihood of sticking with your new health and wellness goal.
With this integrative approach to wellness, we can make better decisions about where to focus our attention. Choosing one core area of health and well-being is a key starting point for setting a wellness goal, making it more effective and easier to manage. It’s useful to come back to this exercise periodically to reassess and refocus goal setting.
