Picture yourself at your best and then picture the reality of your life. Is there a difference? In your mind, are you managing the demands of the day, being effective at work or school, and still have time for family and friends? Typically, throughout the trials of a given day, people might fantasize about what it would mean to be in a state of “balance.” Being in a state of balance means being mentally steady or emotionally stable—having an internal state of harmony or symmetry. With that definition, balance becomes open to the interpretation that a person’s “mental steadiness” is dependent on his or her upbringing, culture, and lived experience.
Photos, from left to right, courtesy of Bryan Gosline, Sacca, wheany, Alaskan Dude, glasseyes view, and granth (CC-BY-2.0).
Take a moment and compartmentalize your life. Within your external “compartments,” does balance include your job, your family, and social life? Within the internal “compartments,” does your life include things such as a physical balance and spiritual balance? Also, are the internal and external components of your life in balance with each other? As you can see, the way that each of us answers these questions will be unique and intensely personal. We can speak of balance in a general way, but, in the details, it is different for each person.
What did you include as external compartments?
What does “wellness” mean to you? If you were to ask a doctor, a counselor, a personal trainer, or a nutritionist to define wellness, you are likely get answers that are similar yet different.
Although it is a challenging term to define, for our purposes, wellness is a state of being in which a person actively maintains a proper balance of physical, mental, emotional, and social health. This definition may be described as a bio-psycho-social understanding of wellness. (You will sometimes see this term written as “biopsychosocial.” We will use hyphens to separate bio, psycho, and social to emphasize the fact that there are separate sources of influence.) It should come as no surprise that balance and optimal wellness go hand in hand!
The Biology of Balance
There is a structure in the forebrain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus has been referred to as the thermostat for the body because it is responsible for maintaining homeostasis. Homeostasis is a technical term that describes the goal of a system—like your body—that tries to maintain a constant or optimal level of functioning. The hypothalamus is a system in the human brain that tries to maintain homeostasis. When the hypothalamus functions properly, it monitors temperature, fluids, metabolism, and level of nutrients to keep them at constant and optimal levels.
The Limbic System
This diagram shows the major parts of the limbic system, as well as the pituitary gland, which is controlled by it. From Flat World Knowledge, Introduction to Psychology, v1.0, CC-BY-NC-SA.
The hypothalamus plays a role for other forms of balance. In addition to acting as the thermostat for the body, the hypothalamus also play a role in primary motivation. For instance, motivations to drink, eat, and for sex are centered in the hypothalamus. In addition, the hypothalamus aids in sleep as it contains a substructure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The SCN is alert to light and dark and, as such, helps establish the times of day where we feel energized and times of day where we feel tired. When someone feels tired at night, the experience is due to the SCN signaling the release of the hormone melatonin.