Wellness (alternative medicine)

Wellness is generally used to mean a healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit that results in an overall feeling of well-being. It has been used in the context of alternative medicine since Halbert L. Dunn, M.D., began using the phrase high level wellness in the 1950s, based on a series of lectures at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington, Virginia, in the United States. Dunn (196, p. 4) defined wellness as "an integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable. It requires that the individual maintain a continuum of balance and purposeful direction within the environment where he is functioning." He also stated that "wellness is a direction in progress toward an ever-higher potential of functioning" (p. 6). Dunn also described wellness as health being, "much more than the absence of disease remains a cornerstone concept of wellness today." (Dunn, 787, p 7) Dunn saw wellness as hierarchical: there were lower levels of wellness and higher ones, and the aim was to move everyone up from where they started to high-level wellness. (Dunn, 789, p 8) The modern concept of wellness did not, however, become popular until the 1970s.

Alternative approaches to wellness are often denoted by the use of two different phrases: health and wellness, and wellness programs. These kinds of wellness programs offer alternative medicine techniques to improve wellness. Whether these techniques actually improve physical health is controversial and a subject of much debate. James Randi and the James Randi Educational Foundation are outspoken critics of this alternative new age concept of wellness. The behaviors in the pursuit of wellness often include many health related practices, such as making healthy lifestyle changes and utilizing natural therapies.

Wellness, as a luxury pursuit, is found obviously in the more affluent societies because it involves managing the body state after the basic needs of food, shelter and basic medical care have already been met. Many of the practices applied in the pursuit of wellness, in fact, are aimed at controlling the side effects of affluence, such as obesity and inactivity. Wellness grew as a popular concept starting in the 19th century, just as the middle class began emerging in the industrialized world, and a time when a newly prosperous public had the time and the resources to pursue wellness and other forms of self-improvement.

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