Health Project

Throughout this health course, we have been learning how to explore different aspects of our health such as emotional, mental, and moral health. We've also briefly visited physical, social, and spiritual health. We did so by practicing counseling, looking into different therapies (coaching, psychotherapy, co-counseling, existential psychology, humanistic psychology, etc), considering moral dilemmas (looking at different situations, responding to them, and evaluating our response), practicing meditating, and doing activities that involve using our bodies more throughout the day and writing down how we felt after doing so. By doing such activities, we were able to better understand the many different ways health can be looked upon and how we can define/ better understand them.

During these investigations, we talked about how each of these different definitions/ ways to look at health in some way relate to each other. For example, being depressed affects the way you think morally. You might not care as much about a lot of things, and know the difference between what would be morally standard in a given situation but want to do the complete opposite. Also because of depression, you tend to not want to do anything involving other people ultimately affecting your social health and you might even be lazy which will affect your physical health. Then we looked at the bigger picture. People like this are considered unhealthy but what if something drastic/ life changing recently happened to them i.e. the death of a loved one, abuse, etc. Then someone like this is considered healthy. It is considered healthy to be in touch with your emotions and know how you’re feeling and what is causing the feeling but unhealthy to actually feel those emotions unless in a situation that society tells us it’s ok to feel i.e. depressed after the death that just occurred.

What stands out the most to me is moral health. I feel like moral health can really help us understand how we think and also connects back to just about every other subcategory of health. Also physical health. Physical health can help us feel more confident and have a higher self esteem. We can be happier, more social, mentally, emotionally, and morally healthier.

In our society it isn’t common for us to question definitions. We are told this means this point blank. After studying this health unit and taking Andy in general I learned that it’s better to question definitions especially if you don’t understand them. Before studying deeper into the concept of health I thought someone who was unhealthy was out of shape, emotionally disturbed (depressed, etc), and/or just crazy people (usually drunk people or the people that talk to themselves on the train). Now I understand there are many things you have to consider when thinking about health. I don’t think it is possible for anyone to be completely healthy in this society. In order to ‘deepen’ my own health, I’m going to try thinking more about the way I feel and what makes me feel that way. I’m going to try to eat healthier and participate in more activities that will help me feel better about myself. I’ve already tried talking to my dad about some of what we’ve learned in this unit to help him better care for himself. I feel like I have a much better comprehension of what being healthy really means.