Wellness and Creative Intelligence
Redefining Wellness is critical to our survival. By reframing wellness as a practice of awareness in action, not a state of being, we mobilize the mind-body connections to activate Creative Intelligence. “I do wellness practices” vs. “I am well.” Wellness practices connect us socially, rather than isolate us in our own self-centered pursuits. By reinventing Wellness as a process, we empower social connectivity, versus self-centered, ego-driven attainment. We realize our genetic heritage is designed to expand the awareness of “Me” to the creation of “We.”
Wellness flourishes when we access our inborn Creative Intelligence. Nature has endowed us with biological resilience to adversity and an innate narrative for Creativity—the resilient body and the creative story. Creative Intelligence emerges with mindful integration of Nature’s gifts: Resilience + Creativity = Creative Intelligence.
Wellness is kindled in one’s perception of reality, whether it is painful or pleasurable. The individual’s perceptions and experiences are private.
We can cultivate a mindful attitude toward the body by imagining: ‘mind is a loving parent’ and the ‘body is a child.’ This image empowers a seamless integration of protective nurturing in the mind-body connection. From the mundane experiences of hygiene, nutrition, sleeping, and exercise, our personal wellness forms the foundation of our resilience to stress and our joy in creating meaningful lives and relationships.
Expanding the concept of Wellness is critical to meet the health crisis challenges in the Global Village: climate change, mass migrations, mental, emotional, and behavioral burnout.
Mitigating Post-COVID Burnout
Sustaining Wellness through the pandemic is a biopsychosocial communication process that mitigates the natural stress reaction to the threat of chaos and death. Contemplation, cooperation, and the coordination of action are critical to this process of stress regulation.
The COVID pandemic stress load on individuals, families and the economy has yet to be fully evaluated. Far beyond the death toll, chronic, toxic stress is triggering a tidal wave of mental and emotional damage. Human Creative Intelligence is challenged to develop Wellness Training for the species on a global level.
Wellness practices are rooted in ancient and modern traditions: Yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, and many other practices. A consilient (unity of knowledge) approach to mind-body experience is emerging. Social neuroscience expands the importance of attachment theory in human relationships. Secure attachment in relationships is created by stress regulation. Wellness practices mitigate the natural formation of toxic relationship stress and promote creativity and resilience. Cooperation in all fields of knowledge from science, the arts, economics, spiritual practices, sports, politics, must lead the way in placing Wellness as the most important asset for species survival.
Cultivating Global Mind Wellness
The internet is the Global Brain for the Global Village. The evolution of the Global Mind will require a social evolutionary process. Wellness practices are critical to social communication between ordinary individuals and social institutions. The bottom-up and top-down communication system has been empowered by the internet. Influences now reverberate between individuals and large social systems, from government, corporations, religions, and secular groups.
Although this social evolution enterprise is challenged by deeply rooted patterns of adversity, bias, and opposition, there are large movements from all domains of knowledge that acknowledge a Global Mind
Imperative. Linking these various efforts in Wellness practices can kindle reciprocal amplification of the evolutionary process.
Small groups of like-minded entrepreneurs play a key role in the bottom-up link to large organizations. By focusing a diverse approach to Wellness, thinking ‘outside the box” is activated. Recruiting change in the top-down values of large social systems requires Creative Intelligence Training. This is critical to the success of any evolutionary process.