What is Lifestyle Health?

Lifestyle Health is simply a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, resulting from a person’s ‘style of life’.  

Over recent years a strong and growing evidence-base has been generated through ongoing research to highlight the many mental and physical health benefits of:

  • Arts and Crafts                              
  • Food and Drink                              
  • Gardening & Nature                   
  • Movement and Play                    
  • Social & Emotional Interest   

One of the first projects that the Lifestyle Health Foundation has embarked on is the creation of a library. The major purpose is to enable you to both access and share various resources that provide information and education concerning the importance of each of these areas to support the mental and physical health of children.  

     Lifestyle Health

If you wish to access the resources, or you know of, or perhaps even created any resources (including research papers, books, videos etc), and would like to help contribute to the library by sharing them with others, we invite you to join the library and start sharing, so others can benefit, today.  

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Emotional Health – What is it?

There is currently no internationally agreed definition for the term “Emotional Health”. Why, you may ask? There will be a number of reasons.. One of those is perhaps a reflection on society and the scientific community failing to recognise (or perhaps ignoring) the significance of emotions when it comes to our health and wellbeing. It is thanks to people like Daniel Goleman, who introduced the term “Emotional intelligence”, who stimulated the neuroscience research community  to  delve deeper into how human health and wellbeing is connected to the fullness in expression of emotions.

In terms of a definition, perhaps a good place to start is the WHO definition of “Health” which is: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” 

Then, the word emotional:

Daniel Goleman’s definition of “Emotional intelligence” is ‘the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.”  

A more recent definition published in 2016 is: the ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions. 

By taking a combined approach, and in partnership with the Person-Centred Neurosciences Society, we offer the following for a potential working definition of ‘Emotional Health’:

“An uninterrupted two-way (bidirectional) relationship, enabling the timely and appropriate free expression of ALL emotions to maintain a person’s health.”

Given this is a rapidly developing field of health, you may also wish to contribute a thought or two on what emotional health means to you. We would be pleased to hear from you, so just get in touch with us. In the meantime if you may find using our new resource, SmartTracker® will spark a few thoughts.