where is health?

As I began to carry this question with me, I started seeing it everywhere. Every time the presence of health poured into my awareness, I would notice the insides of me becoming very quiet. A resting, content quality came to the surface. In the quiet, a wordless trust showed up. It’s song is a whisper that is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.

Health is used to humming in the background, but enjoys being acknowledged and given permission to step front stage where it can expand and ripple onwards. It never resists the positions it finds itself in. Even in the background it finds its way forward because it knows its own brilliance and potential, and the impossibility of its absolute extinction. Like gravity, health is constant and constantly interacting and being interacted with, but instead of being a law of nature, health is a force of nature.

When health is allowed to enter front stage, a sense of the whole increases. Health can introduce itself as openness and curiosity, the full of wonder, the explorative and playful. It can reveal itself as the courage to show up for yourself and others and stay present in the midst of turmoil. An increased coherence and integrity is a sign of surfacing health. A more whole individual has the capacity to act in the world in a more insightful, compassionate manner. Health can show up as the ability to speak up when called for, as well as the capacity to remain silent when needed. It speaks the language of depth understanding and acceptance.

As I dive down to greet health where it originates in the body, that familiar quiet starts breathing in the cellular structure. There is a dark, yet luminous silence. Will is surrendered and replaced with a willingness to be changed. A golden, fluid, spiralling motion. A vibrancy and a quickness that can not be followed, but allows itself to be noticed. A four-dimensional softening and widening. Certainty is taken over by trust. I can include more and more can include me. It feels like homecoming. It’s the same yet different every time I take the ride.

As a constant, the amount of health doesn’t grow when recognised, but when one does come into a more rounded relationship with it, the quality of life changes. Practices need to be mentioned for the capacity to facilitate that qualitative shift. Varieties are as many as there are individuals, and hopefully we all have many, for the many different situations. A good practice also questions whether or not it is relevant to the situation at hand.

Whenever I feel fed up, anxious, exhausted, deflated, I intentionally enter a dialogue with what I light-heartedly like to call Life. Summarised, our conversation usually goes along these lines:

“Hi. It’s me. Again. I’m feeling pretty shit and I’m not sure how to go on.”

“I can tell. You look rough.”

Life has a sense of humour and tends to finish it’s phrases with a delicate wink and a smile.

“I can’t, I won’t, I shouldn’t, I’m not able to, I’m too exposed, in too much pain.”

And so on, when fear has taken the lead and found itself a megaphone.

“Yes. All of that. I hear you. You are where you need to be. This exact thing that you are experiencing right now, is also me.”

Life has a way of saying precisely the right things so that it’s great comrade, health can emerge and infuse the situation with its perspective. I might still be exhausted and in pain, but I feel supported in it, as if swimming in the oceanic depths of compassion. I feel more open to respond to the situation, instead of jumping into habitual chains of reaction

. As I come into a more intimate relationship with what is, I invite life in all its expressions to take place - to take my place, here.

As soon as the invitation is sent out, health responds: I've been here all along, thank you for noticing. For health to reveal itself, all we need to do is persistently show up for it.